Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

canon, in music

(Encyclopedia)canon, in music, a type of counterpoint employing the strictest form of imitation. All the voices of a canon have the same melody, beginning at different times. Successive entrances may be at the same...

canzone, in music

(Encyclopedia)canzone or canzona, in music, a type of instrumental music in Italy in the 16th and 17th cent. The term had previously been given to strophic songs for five or six voices; usually the canzone had thre...

Tanglewood Music Festival

(Encyclopedia)Tanglewood Music Festival, formerly the Berkshire Festival (until 1984), summer music festival held since 1937 at “Tanglewood,” a former estate in the adjoining towns of Stockbridge and Lenox, Mas...

variation, in music

(Encyclopedia)variation, in music, a compositional device in which certain features of a musical unit, e.g., phase, are altered while others are retained in a subsequent statement of the unit. Modifications include...

triangle , in music

(Encyclopedia)triangle, in music, percussion instrument consisting of a steel rod bent into a triangle, open at one angle, and struck with a steel rod. Only since the end of the 18th cent. has it been an orchestral...

bass, in music

(Encyclopedia)bass bās [key], in musical harmony, the part of lowest pitch. The term is used for the lowest-pitched male voice and for instruments of low pitch, such as bass clarinet, bass drum, bassoon (bass oboe...

time , in music

(Encyclopedia)time, in music: see tempo; meter; rhythm; syncopation; metronome and musical notation. ...

rococo, in music

(Encyclopedia)rococo, in music, 18th-century reaction against the baroque style. Less formal and grandiose in structure, it was a graceful rather than a profound style, more hedonistic than venturesome. Extreme man...

scale, in music

(Encyclopedia)scale, in music, any series of tones arranged in a step-by-step rising or falling order of pitch. A scale defines the interval relationship of each tone to the others upon which the composition depend...

Browse by Subject