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Nachschlag -
Literally 'after-stroke'. The way of finishing a long trill. A trill quickly alternated the written tone and the tone above. The finish or [Nachschlag] is to descend to the tone below, return to the primary tone, and proceed to the next tone after the trill.
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Napoleon (Beethoven's dedication of "Eroica") -
Beethoven saw Napoleon as the symbol of victory for the common man and dedicated his Third Symphony to him. When Bonapart placed the Emperor's crown on his own head, Beethoven, enraged, defaced the dedication and rededicated it to the memory of a hero, thus 'Eroica', heroic.
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Natural horn -
It has no valves to lengthen the tube, the only pitches available are those of the harmonics. To produce other pitches the hand of the player must be pressed to varying degrees into the bell of the instrument. This not only changes the pitch, but the tone color.
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Natural trumpet -
A trumpet using only the harmonics with no alteration by valves placed in the air-stream.
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Nave -
Comes from 'ship', meaning the part of the church where the congregation
sits, which is like an inverted ship. There is a mariners' church in
Montreal in which the nave is built like the hull of ship.
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Neapolitan -
A particular type of harmonic function. It is the use of the second step of the scale, but lowered by a half step. For example, rather than in the key of C using a D chord (D, F-sharp, A) the composer uses a D-flat chord (D-flat, F, A-flat), usually with the F in the bottom. This was a favorite device of Schubert, the most notable use of his Neapolitan inflection being the very ending of his Quintet with two cellos, which has all players alternating D-flat and C chords with those tones alone finally played in unison and octaves D-flat to C to end the masterpiece. It was a fairly new idea in Schubert's time. Not once in his large output did J. S. Bach use a Neapolitan chord.
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Neo-classic -
20th century music looking back to devices and lean textures of 18th century music.

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Ney -
An end-blown flute important in Middle Eastern music. Indeed, it is often the only wind instrument. "Ney" is a Persian word for "reed", so it is no surprise that the instrument is a hollow piece of reed with five or six finger holes and one left handed thumb hole. Though a virtuoso on the instrument can play the range of three octaves, it is more common to have more than one player, each one playing in a reduced *tessitura. Some modern neys are made of metal, which substantially alters the *timbre.
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Night music -
A term used to describe the sometimes eerie and brooding slow movements by Mahler and Bartók or imitations of them. Often filled with nature sounds over sustained tones, this kind of night music is far from the ethos of a serenade.
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Night on Bald Mountain -
By Modest Mussorgsky was used in Disney's [Fantasia].
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9/8 -
Nine beats in one measure with an eighth note receiving one beat. This is usually thought of as three beats with three subdivisions on each beat. In this case it was as described. This same sub-division is quite famous for the generation familiar with Dave Brubeck's [Blue Rondo a la Turk], which opens with 1-2, 1-2, 1-2, 1-2-3 then does one measure of 1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2-3, and back to 1-2, 1-2, 1-2, 1-2-3.
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Ninth -
The distance in music from one letter to the next with the same name (an octave or eighth), plus one.
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Ninth chords -
Once one has the basic triad of a chord (say, A-C-E), then one can continue adding tones by thirds. The E is the fifth, so the G would be the seventh, and the B would be the ninth. Therefore, a ninth chord would contain root, third, fifth, seventh, and ninth.
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Nocturne -
An introspective 'night piece'. Not to be confused with a Serenade, which is also a night piece generally intended as a love song.
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Non-harmonic tone -
A tone which is not part of the prevailing harmony. These tones most often drive the music along by creating the need to find resolution.

Non-Harmonic tones have names depending on what precedes and follows them. Four of the commonest are the *upper neighbor, *lower neighbor, *passing tone and the *appogiatura.
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Non-retrogradable rhythm -
Rhythms which work like palindromes, the same going forward or backward.
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Non-standard bowing effects -
Such things as bowing on the bridge, using the wood of the bow, bowing on the wrong side of the bridge, bouncing the bow heavily on the strings, bearing down heavily to create sounds like creaking hinges, etc.
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Non-symmetrical meters -
Try counting '1-2-3-1-2-3-4-1-2-3-1-2-3-4' for awhile to understand this idea. Or try '1-2-1-2-1-2-3-1-2-1-2-1-2-3'. Jazz pianist/composer Dave Brubeck supplied several works in this vein. The famous 'Take Five' is '1-2-3-1-2-1-2-3-1-2' and 'Blue Rondo a la Turk' is '1-2-1-2-1-2-1-2-3-1-2-1-2-1-2-1-2-3.'
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Non-tonal -
Having no tonal center or key. There are many kinds of non-tonality, from Wagner's constantly shifting key-centers to Schoenberg's conscious eradication of the trappings of tonality to the lack of key being a byproduct of other esthetic considerations.
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Nuance -
Little expressive touches gained by using slight shadings of loud and soft to shape phrases or even single tones.
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Nut -
The wooden ridge that defines where the vibrating part of a string ends near the tuning pins.