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Ma non troppo -
'But not too much.'
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Ma Vlast -
My Country. The series of six tone poems by Bedrich Smetana which represent either geographic or legendary elements of Bohemian life. They are the corners to me . . . .
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Machaut, Guillaume -
(b. Machaut, ca. 1300 - d. Rheims ca. 1377) A priest, he composed the oldest existing polyphonic setting of the Mass. He was a renaissance man in that, as a poet, he was one of the greatest influences on Chaucer. Machaut was the last of the troubadour tradition of composing both words and music.
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Madrigal -
Originally an Italian musical form of the 14th century. But it is more commonly used for 16th century and 17th century settings of various types and forms of secular verse. It was without a doubt the most important genre of the late Renaissance and, with the masque, is an important immediate source of baroque opera and secular polyphony.
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Magic bullets -
The crucial element in Der Freischütz.
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Mahler's idyllic piece with a trumpet theme -
A theme Mahler reused from the incidental music to a poem by Scheffel entitled Der Trompeter von Säkkingen. The music is lost except for this trumpet tune. It is interesting to note that Victor Nessler's opera of the same title, composed in 1884, a year after Mahler's youthful treatment, became Mahler's stand-by opera when he needed to fill the schedule during his tenure as conductor of the Vienna Imperial Opera. Known for his Wagner, statistics show that he did as many performance of Nessler's kitsch opera as of Tristan.
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Major chords -
A major third on the bottom and a minor third on top. A to C-sharp is a major third; C-sharp to E is a minor third. A - C-sharp - E is a major chord.
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Major scale -
Two major *tetrachords separated by a *whole step. It is generally considered to have a positive, even happy character.
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Major tenth -
would be, for instance, from an A up past the next A and reaching to C#. Another way of thinking about it is a stretch of nine inches (22.5 cm) on the keyboard.
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Major third -
Four half-steps, e.g. C to E. In physics a pure major third is the distance from the third to the fourth *harmonic.
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Major triad -
A three-note chord in which the distance from the root to the 3rd is two whole-steps and the distance from the 3rd to the 5th is one-and-a-half steps.
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Mannheim rocket -
An orchestra device associated with the 18th century orchestra at Mannheim. Imitative musical lines stack up one after the other like the successive bursts of a fireworks rocket. Mozart's large G minor Symphony has several.
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Mantoux -
A test for tuberculosis. We suggest that Rodolfo and Alfredo, the tenors in La Bohème and La Traviata respectively, take the test, for they are enamored of young women who die of TB.
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Marais, Marin -
(b. Paris, 1656 - d. Paris, 1728), the baroque French bass viol virtuoso and composer (a student of Lully). His viol music is marked by its fluidity and difficulty.
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Marcato -
Markedly, with precise and accented rhythms.
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Mariachi -
is a style of music prevalent in Mexico and other Latin American countries. It typically includes trumpets, guitars, and marimbas.
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Marimba -
A percussion instrument with wooden bars laid out in the pattern of a keyboard which are hit to produce a sound. Tubes called resonators are placed beneath these "keys" to aid in getting the sound out. The instrument has a quick tonal decay: the bars of wood which are struck to make it sound rather quickly cease to vibrate, even with the resonators. Smooth or sustained playing is either fast enough to render the decay immaterial or gained through the use of drum-roll technique on one tone-bar or the rapid alternation of two or more pitches in a *tremolo.
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Mark -
A term used when a performer does not wish to play or sing full-out in rehearsal.
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Martellato -
'Struck'. Vocally it means swift new attacks of successive tones.
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Mask -
The face. Used by singers to refer to those parts of the face which vibrate because they are hollow.
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Matched tone qualities -
It is important in orchestras for the players of like wind instruments, wood and brass, to match each other's sounds, vibrato speeds, etc., to achieve blending.
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Mediant -
The tone half-way between the *Tonic (I) and the *Dominant (V), in other words the third step of the scale (III).
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Melisma; melismatic -
Many notes on one syllable.
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Melodrama -
Drama (or speaking) with musical accompaniment. The letter scene in La Traviata is temporary melodrama. The scenes from, say, Beethoven's Egmont in which the actors speak while the incidental music continues underneath are melodrama. Some works like Richard Strauss's Enoch Arden are wholly for speaker and music under (in that case, piano).
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Memorize -
What most piano, violin, and cello soloists do as a matter of course. So do most concerto soloists on other instruments. But in chamber music it is rare. In an earlier generation, both the Smetana and Janacek String Quartets played from memory. Their joint performances of the Mendelssohn String Octet are legendary partly because of the freedom memorization gave them.
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Mendelssohn, Felix (opera) -
"Had he actually tried opera" ... is one of those tantalizing "what ifs" like "what if Mozart had lived to the age of 70?" Mendelssohn got so close to opera in Elijah that Wagner borrowed from it (without credit, of course) for the style of Lohengrin. And, Mendelssohn's Die erste Walpurgisnacht (The first witches' sabbath) is a sparkling scene mixing high seriousness and ironic humor, which sets Goethe's poem about Christians and Druids in a fully operatic manner. But it's not even one full act in length, just a one-scene teaser.
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Menuetto -
Another word for *Minuet.
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Mephistopheles -
The lead bass role in Gounod's Faust.
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Messa di voce -
A singer starts on a pitch softly, brings it to medium loud, then returns it to soft.
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Metalaphones -
Tuned percussion instruments laid out in the same pattern as a keyboard in which the bars one strikes to produce a sound are made of metal.Rather than strike a metalaphone such as a Glockenspiel or vibraharp with a mallet, a penetrating ringing sound can be produced by using a bow from a stringed instrument drawn across the end of the bars.
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Meter -
The regular repetition of accents. "The BOY stood ON the BURN-ing DECK" is iambic in poetry. The way it feels in music is "three, ONE-two, three, ONE-two, three, ONE-two, three, ONE-two", which would be a triple meter.
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Meter changes -
The patterns of accenting shift depending on the meter.
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Metric modulation -
Vastly simplified: a change from one metric pattern to another meter through manipulation of note-lengths and different notations of equivalent note-lengths.
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Metrical definition -
Well defined accents which allow the ear to easily hear the underlying meter.
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Metronome -
Invented by Winckel in Amsterdam in 1815 and copied by Maelzel. It was then a clockwork device which produced ticks at a rate per minute controlled by moving a counter-weight up an down on the part of a pendulum above the fulcrum. Maelzel's one improvement on Winckel was his use of a scale of numbers on the pendulum indicating beats per minute. In modern times metronomes are electric, but the changeable scale remains the same.
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Mezzo piano -
Medium or moderately soft.
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Mezzo-forte -
Medium loud.
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Mezzo-soprano -
The second lowest female vocal range. She can sing as low as A or maybe G below middle-C. In the upper voice she would be hard pressed to produce an B or C in performance, though she should be able to hit that in warm-up. A high A would be expected.
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Mezzo-soprano (instrumental) -
Lying in the mezzo-soprano range (G below middle C up to A above the treble staff), but played by an instrument.
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Mi -
In solfeggio syllabification either the third degree of the major scale (*moveable Do) or E (*fixed Do)
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Microtones, microtonal -
Intervals smaller than the half-step, which is the smallest in western European music.
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Mighty Five -
Rimsky-Korsakov, Borodin, Moussorgsky, Balakierev, and Cui. In the late 19th century these composers developed a particularly nationalistic school of composition. Each one took a slightly different path, but each maintained a connection to folk music, old modes of church music, and Russian history.
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Migratory tonal centers -
While the key of a baroque piece is well established at the outset, the journey of the music is one of touching on several different tonalities before finally arriving "home."
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Milhaud, Darius -
(b. Sept. 4, 1892, d. June 22, 1974) One of the French group called Les Six. Influenced by Brazilian music while he was in the diplomatic corps, his music often has a deep jazz influence. His Creation of the World is a classic. He studied with D'Indy at the Paris Conservatoire, and in turn taught at Mills College in Oakland, California, from 1940 to 1947. Among his students there was the famed jazz pianist and metrical innovator Dave Brubeck, whose early octet arrangements are clearly under the influence of Milhaud. Even after Milhaud returned to France to become professor of composition at the Paris Conservatory, he returned each year to teach at Mills College. He retired in 1972.
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Military topic -
The use of drums, march rhythms, flute or piccolo obbligatos, and march rhythms.
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Minimalism -
A style of composition taking its name from the minimal number of motives used and/or the repetition of but one idea over a long time span with only small alterations. This latter is minimal development.
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Minor chords -
A minor third on the bottom and a major third on top. A to C is a minor third; C to E is a major third. A - C - E is a major chord.
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Minor *intervals -
Distances between pitches are called intervals and are described by the use of a number. For instance, from A to B would be a second; A to C, a third; etc. But this must be further refined, for any kind of A to any kind of C is some kind of third. Since Major means large and minor means small, then A to C is a minor third, but A to C-sharp is a major third. Intervals which can be either minor or major are the second, third, sixth,
and seventh.
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Minor mode, minor scale -
Starting pitch, up a whole-step, up a half, up a whole, up a whole, up a half, up a whole, up a whole. This is called 'Natural' minor or 'Signature' minor because it is just what a key signature will give you. Because this construction lacks the half-step from VII to I (VIII) (Roman numerals are used to signify the steps of the scale) so characteristic of Western music, two alterations of Minor are prevalent. In one, *Harmonic minor, step VII is raised a half step, thus boldly creating the needed VII - I half-step. The other alteration smoothes out the exotic one and a half steps which the harmonic minor has stretched between VI and VII, by raising VI as well. This makes something called melodic minor. Because, when ascending, it begins as minor, but ends as the upper half of a major scale, it doesn't sound like minor when moving downward. So to make sure it sounds like minor when descending, the original 'Natural' minor is used. If you think this is confusing, just try whipping these three versions of minor scales off at a great clip under pressure from memory. You can't get out of any known conservatory without doing just that, so fundamental are they to a performer's technical language.
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Minor ninth -
One half-step larger than an octave. It is the most dissonant of all combinations of two pitches.
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Minor-tonality variation -
In a classical set of variations composed in a major key there is always one variation in minor (Minore), usually near the end of the set. It is always followed by a major (Maggiore) variation.
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Minore -
Italian for minor, as in minor mode. Sets of variations on a major tune always included near the end one variation in dark-hued minor, followed by a bright variation in Maggiore, major. (see *Minor-tonality variation)
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Minuet -
A slow dance of the 18th century with three beats to a measure. It is divided into regular numbers of measures with eight measures to each section: AABBCCDDAB, with the CCDD as a contrasting Trio or Minuet II section.
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Missa brevis -
A short setting of the *ordinary of the mass which uses no textual repetition and slow tempos only when absolutely necessary.
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Mixo-lydian -
One of the early church modes, characterized by half-steps between steps three and four, and steps six and seven. This can be played on the white keys of a piano by starting and ending on G.
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Mixture -
An organ stop, comprising from two to five ranks of pipes, used only in combination with other more foundational stops. Also called {fourniture} in French parlance, it consists of high harmonics of the fundamental pitch of the key being played.
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Mode, modal -
Using scale configurations which are in the standard relationship of whole and half steps found in Western music, but which are neither what we call major or minor but use alternatives. Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Æolian (*signature minor) and Locrian are the names of the Greek modes.
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Moderato -
At a moderate speed.
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Modulation -
Changing tonality or key. Usually this is accomplished through a series of harmonies which lead the ear to a new tonality. See also *common-tone modulation
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Monody (monodic) -
Music which is an unaccompanied voice or instrument playing or singing a single line. Early chant is the most usual example of monody.
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Monothematic -
Using only one theme. This can be a special kind of *sonata allegro in which both thematic groups use the same material.
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"Monster" -
Musicians' slang for a really, really hard piece. Also slang for a person who can play really, really hard pieces.
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Moravians -
A Christian sect, an outgrowth of Jan Hus, the 15th century Bohemian martyr. In their 18th century revival they were well known as musicians. It was, for instance, the Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, Moravians who first performed Haydn's Creation in America while the composer yet lived. Benjamin Franklin visited there and was serenaded.
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Mordent -
An 'upside-down' trill in which the main tone alternates swiftly with the tone a step down, rather than a step up as in a trill.
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Motet -
A choral work which, in its earliest manifestations in the 13th century, used a known tune in the tenor and other melodies and texts in the voices above. By the 16th century it had evolved into a polyphonic choral work with a sacred though non-liturgical text.
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Motives -
Small fragments used to build larger musical structures. Probably the most famous motive is the di-di-di-dah which begins Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. Both melodically and rhythmically its importance is felt throughout the entire symphony.
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Motivic -
Constructed out of *motives.
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Moto perpetuo -
Perpetual motion. Repetitive figures chugging along in machine-like fashion as if they will never stop. Indeed, one of the challenges of writing a moto perpetuo is how to end it. The pop-music cop-out of fading away through engineering magic just wasn't available to earlier composers.
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Moto-rhythm -
A brief rhythmic pattern which repeats like a motor, propelling the music along. Moto-rhythms are most often accompaniments. Bartók is known for these
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Moveable Do -
The solfege syllable "Do" is the first step of the scale.
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Mozart, "Late" -
There is no such thing as late Mozart because he died so young: 1756-1791. Had he lived to be Beethoven's age (57) he would have died in 1813. Had he matched his great friend Haydn, he would have died in 1833 in the post Symphonie Fantastique world of Berlioz, when both Verdi and Wagner were 20-year-olds. It boggles the imagination.
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Mozart/Stadler -
The first 108 bars of the *Larghetto and *Allegro in E-flat Major are believed to have been composed by Mozart in 1782-83, the remaining 118 measures of music were added by the Abbé Maximilian Stadler, an Austrian composer, music historian, and keyboard player. He completed a number of fragments and sketches by Mozart. (NC)
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Mozart's 'Big' G minor Symphony -
He composed an earlier G minor symphony often called the 'Little G minor', so one supposes this far more famous one should be called the 'Big' one.
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Multi-phonics -
is producing more than one pitch at a time on an instrument not really designed to do that.
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Musette -
1) Bagpipes; small-pipes. 2) Music imitating the sound of bagpipes.
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Musica ficta -
The practice of raising or lowering certain pitches to give special flavor to medieval and early renaissance music. These accidentals were not written in the music, but the performer was expected to understand when to use them in performance - often at cadences.
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Mute -
A string mute is a device which prevents the bridge from vibrating fully, thus softening the sound of the instrument. A brass mute is a device which is placed in front of, or inserted into, the bell of the instrument, not only softening it, but changing its tone color.
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Mühlhausen -
A little town in Germany where J. S. Bach wrote many of his early compositions, primarily for organ.