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country music

(Encyclopedia)country music, American popular music form originating in the Southern and Western United States. Country music is directly descended from the folk songs, ballads, and popular songs of the English, Sc...

aleatory music

(Encyclopedia)aleatory music āˈlēətôrˌē [key] [Lat. alea=dice game], music in which elements traditionally determined by the composer are determined either by a process of random selection chosen by the comp...

Chinese music

(Encyclopedia)Chinese music, the classical music forms of China. Throughout the political and social turmoil following World War I, Western (classical and popular) and Japanese sources dominated Chinese music. At...

church music

(Encyclopedia)church music. 1 Music intended for performance as part of services of worship. With few exceptions, music is essential to the ritual of every religion; the singing of prayers and portions of Scripture...

chamber music

(Encyclopedia)chamber music, ensemble music for small groups of instruments, with only one player to each part. Its essence is individual treatment of parts and the exclusion of virtuosic elements. Originally playe...

serial music

(Encyclopedia)serial music, the body of compositions whose fundamental syntactical reference is a particular ordering (called series or row) of the twelve pitch classes—C, C#, D, D#, E, F, F#, G, G#, A, A#, B—t...

popular music

(Encyclopedia)popular music: see country and western music; folk song; gospel music; jazz; rap music; rock music. ...

program music

(Encyclopedia)program music Instrumental music of the 19th and 20th cent. that endeavors to arouse mental pictures or ideas in the thoughts of the listener—to tell a story, depict a scene, or impel a mood. Mousso...

passion music

(Encyclopedia)passion music, choral music whose text depicts events immediately surrounding the crucifixion of Jesus. The earliest passions, composed from the 9th to the 14th cent., were monophonic and employed the...

rap music

(Encyclopedia)rap music or hip-hop, African-American popular music style that originated in the mid-to-late ‘70s, which incorporates DJing, MCing, dance, and fashion. See studies by M. Costello and D....