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Rachmaninoff: Symphony no. 2, cut or uncut
Merely a matter of about seven minutes. But that small amount is often the difference between less than and more than an hour.
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Raked stage -
Not flat but rising on an angle from the front to the back. It is from this convention that the names upstage and downstage come.
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Rallentando -
Slowing.
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Ranks (organ) -
Each rank is a complete set of pipes of the same type. Each rank is turned on by the use of a stop.
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Rataplan -
An aria or chorus accompanied in part by a snare drum.
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Recapitulation -
The return of the material as originally stated. The final section (save the optional coda) in a *Sonata allegro form.
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Recitative -
Using the irregular rhythms of 'reciting' speech while singing. Used in opera to advance the plot quickly. See *Recitativo secco and *Recitativo accompagnato.
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Recitative style -
Without strict meter, without a steady underlying pulse. Its implication is that it is in the irregular rhythms of 'reciting' or of speech. When it is, indeed, sung, then the word 'style' is not appended. The 'style' usage means that an instrument is imitating the freedom of non-metrical speech.
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Recitativo accompagnato -
Sung speech patterns accompanied by orchestra.
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Recitativo secco -
Sung speech patterns accompanied only by a keyboard instrument such as a harpsichord or forte-piano.
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Red Priest at his girls' music conservatory -
is a reference to Vivaldi, red-headed, and the director of a music school for indigent or orphaned girls.
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Reductions -
Taking a large work and arranging it for smaller forces: a symphony arranged for *piano trio or *piano duet; or an opera accompaniment arranged for solo piano.
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Register -
High or low within the range of a particular instrument or voice.
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Registral -
1) Having to do with the register of instruments or voices, which is to say where they lie in the continuum of high and low. 2) On an organ it has to do with what stops are used.
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Registration -
What stops are used on an organ or harpsichord.
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Rehearsal number (or letter) -
In order for players and conductor to find the same place in a piece of music, letters or numbers are marked on the score and in the musicians' parts at the same place. A common instruction from a conductor in a rehearsal might be 'After 44, three bars,' or 'Two before letter C.'
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Reiner, Fritz -
The legendary conductor (Chicago Symphony in the "50s and '60s) is noted for having a very small beat. Many an apocryphal tale involving any player in the back of the orchestra and binoculars have circulated with Reiner's miniscule beat as the object of attention.
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Relaxed cadences -
Phrase endings which are allowed to become softer and a touch slower for expressive purposes.
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Release -
The moment and method of ending a tone.
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Remarque, Erich Maria -
was one of the main spokesmen in Germany for the Lost Generation. Best known for Nichts neues im Westen (All Quiet on the Western Front), his Drei Kameraden (Three Comrades) paints a moving picture of the post-WWI years in Germany. I once studied with an elderly German who knew Remarque in those years. He told us that the author's name was not really the distinctive 'Remarque', but the ever-so-common German surname 'Kramer'. Spell Kramer backwards and S
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'Remember the Ninth?' -
The comedienne Anna Russell discusses Wagner's 'Ring Cycle' in which for long periods of time (like one 5-hour opera) the ring in question goes unmentioned. When she finally mentions it again in her routine she suddenly turns to her audience as asks, 'Remember the ring?' She also pulls the same line with 'Remember the Rhein?' when the river which theoretically is the geographic fulcrum of the story goes unmentioned for over 10 hours of music.
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Requiem (Verdi) -
Is it religious/liturgical or secular/operatic? In our time it really doesn't seem to matter very much.
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Resolution -
A tense tone in relation to its context moves to a more relaxed tone.
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Resonator -
Something which enhances the sound of a vibration. Hollow cylinders or wooden boxes are common. Body of a stringed instrument is a resonator, enhancing the sound of the bare strings. A good concert hall is to a certain extent a resonator. One of the largest resonators I know is the Great Auditorium at Ocean Grove, an all-wood building seating nearly 7,000 in which a string quartet on stage can be heard well in the farthest seat.
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Respighi's Roman legions who wore black shirts in the 1920s -
We often forget that Respighi was composing in Mussolini's fascist Italy.
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Rest -
A measured silence. Rests have the same duration values as notes.
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Retransition -
The transition from the *development into the *recapitulation.
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Retrograde -
Reverse. A motive or melody is played backward from the way it was first performed. This practice reaches back to medieval chant and perhaps beyond into antiquity. See also *Original, *Inversion, *Retrograde inversion, and*Permutations, basic.
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Retrograde Inversion -
The backward and upside-down statement of the original motive or melody. See also *Permutations, basic; *Retrograde; *Original; and *Inversion.
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'Retuned solo violin' -
See *Scordatura.
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Rhapsodic cadenzas -
Periods of showing off technique, while waxing poetic.
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Rhapsodic style
Free-form, often with sweeping emotions.
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Rhythm -
The lengths of sound when compared to a steady underlying pulse.
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Rhythmic modes -
A 13th and 14th century method of regularizing *polyphonic music. It uses the poetic meters and applies them to music. While the subject is the stuff of Ph. D. theses, most simplified it translated the Trochee (dah-di), Iambus (di-dah), Dactyl (dah-di-di), Anapest (di-di-dah), Molossus (dah-dah-dah), and Tribrach (di-di-di) into three-beat musical terms. The practice died out with the rise of two-beat meters in music.
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Ricercar -
Another term for fugue, at least when Bach was writing them. It is remarkable that he took the word and used it as an acrostic honoring Friedrich der Große, his son's employer.
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Ricochet bowing -
Asks the player to bounce the bow on the strings.
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Rienzi -
The earliest of Wagner's operas (1842) which still holds the stage at all. Composed in the style of Meyerbeerian Grand Opera, it has some very Wagnerian touches, yet clearly has its roots elsewhere. It was a great success in Dresden.
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Ringwald-isms -
Roy Ringwald was the choral arranger for Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians. His fluid style is quite distinctive.
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Ripieno -
The non-solo group in a *Concerto Grosso. The soloists are called collectively the Concertino or Concertato.
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Rising 4th -
Sing 'The farmer in the dell.' From 'The' to 'far-' is a rising 4th.
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Rit. & Ritard. -
Abbreviations for Ritardando,*
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Ritardando (in ensemble) -
Gradually slowing. This is usually over a fairly short period of time, a few seconds at most. It is like applying the brakes. Imagine yourself and the person driving in the car next to you trying to brake at precisely the same rate. That's the difficulty in playing in good ensemble.
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Rite of Spring -
Stravinsky's famous and once infamous ballet which caused a riot at its Paris premiere in 1913. He and Diaghalev, the director of the Ballet Russe, knew there would be fireworks and retired to a nearby coffeehouse after the first few measures, leaving conductor Pierre Monteux to deal with the commotion. The work is now in the standard repertoire.
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Ritornello -
As the word suggests, a short recognizable phrase for instruments which returns again and again at the end of sung verses of an aria. The device was used in early opera during the 17th century. One sometimes uses the term in a modern fashion without the necessity of the larger part of the music being vocal, and with the "ritornello" being an episode shorter than one might expect to find as the returning "A" in a full-fledged *rondo.
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Rococo -
A transitional period between baroque and classical periods in the 18th century. It lacks the emotional depth of the baroque, tending toward the elegance of the classic. Yet the baroque-style bass line is still apparent in such composers as Abel and even in early Hayden.
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Rolled chords with four mallets -
Four bars of wood are struck by the four mallets two at a time, but alternating very quickly with a rolling motion of the wrist. Hence the name for the technique.
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Rolled chords -
In imitation of the harp or guitar, rather than strike all the tones at once, they are played in rapid succession and allowed to resonate.
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Roman numerals -
Used to indicate the steps of the scale and the chords based upon them. Thus a V chord is built on the fifth step of the scale.
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Romanesca -
A 17th century improvisatory style.
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Romantic music -
Music filled with emotional content. Elements of the romantic style were extremes in size from intimate solo piano miniatures by Schumann (as one instance) to multiple ensemble extravaganzas by Berlioz (his Te Deum as one instance). Mahler is the extreme edge in romanticism. Another element is the inclusion of extra-musical content, often of a
scenic, poetic, mystic, or mythological nature (Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique or von Weber's Der Freischütz spring to mind). As part of this, opera was the rage in 19th century romanticism.One more very important element was the heroic (tragic or not), from the characters depicted to the demands made on the performers. By the end of the 19th century the second violin part of Richard Strauss's Don Juan is more technically demanding than Beethoven's Violin Concerto near the beginning of the century.
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Romantic realization
Refers to the fact that the bass line was all that was originally written for the accompanist. The upper part would have been improvised by the performer. In this case the piano part was written out - or realized - and made to sound about 100 years later than it was.
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Romantic realization -
In baroque music the bass line was all that was originally written for the accompanist. The upper part would have been improvised by the performer. In this case the piano part was written out - or realized - and made to sound about 100 years later than its true style.
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Romantic -
The period in music from about 1810 including von Weber's Der Freischütz, Beethoven's Eroica, Schubert's C major cello quintet, and the bel canto opera. Romanticism may be said to have died as a casualty of World War I, though Richard Strauss kept it alive. American nationalism, as with other earlier nationalisms, is a form of romanticism.
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Rondeau -
A form in which there are repetitions of the same material at periodic intervals. French spelling of *Rondo.
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Rondeau -
AABBA AABr AABBAr; or ABBAABr ABBAr. 'r' is an unrhymed refrain, which, however, relates to the A. The 15th century poet Françoise Villon used the form. Richard Strauss borrowed it for his musical depiction of the 14th century social satirist Till Eulenspiegel.
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Rondo -
A form in which a thematic group returns alternating with contrasting themes. A-B-A-C-A-D- etc. Typically a rondo turns around at some point and brings the intermediate episodes back to their starting point: A-B-A-C-A-D-A-C-A-B-A. When in this configuration, it makes a type of *Bogen form. It was quite a standard form for the final movement of a concerto in the Classical period.
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Rope field drum -
A drum meant for use in battle. The drumheads are tightened by means of ropes which are laced back and forth between the two heads making a zig-zag the length of the drum barrel. Each pair of upward pointing lacing sections has a leather cylinder which is pushed down to tighten the drum by pulling the ropes together and loosened by pulling the cylinder up.
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Rossini crescendo -
The term stems from the composer's liking for long, gradually building climaxes built by both playing louder and adding instruments. The idea is to time the biggest sound to arrive at the same moment as the first note at which the repetitive pattern is broken and the piece moves on. It is not uncommon to hear an orchestra arrive too early at loud or, conversely, to be forced to make an embarrassingly sudden leap too loud at the proper place.
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Rotary valve -
The ability to lengthen the tubing of a brass instrument for the purposes of playing more than the *open tones has resulted in two kinds of air valve. The rotary valve moves a disc into the air stream to divert the stream into the proper tube. This is always used on the french horn, but is quite common for trumpets in the Germanic lands. American trumpeters often use rotary valve trumpets when playing German music. (see also *Piston valve)
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Roto-tom -
A drum which is essentially only the rim and head with no resonating barrel
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Roulade -
An elaborate run of several notes sung on one syllable. A type of *melisma.
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Round -
Each voice imitates what has come before, always circling around within a closed harmonic scheme which repeats ad infinitum. 'Row, row, row your boat' is perhaps the most famous round..
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Row -
A series of tones, usually using all the twelve pitches, from which a *twelve-tone (or other serial) work is then derived.
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Royal Subject (or Royal Theme) -
The melody composed by Friedrich der Große (Friedrich II of Prussia) for Bach to use as the basis for improvisation as he tried out the king's newfangled fortepianos.The theme: C, E-flat, G, A-flat, B, G, G-flat, F, E, E-flat, D, D-flat, C, B, G, C, F, E-flat, D, C.
When he returned home, Bach recreated and spiffed up his improvisations into what is now called The Musical Offering. The *Ricercar à 6 is the final apotheosis of the work's investigation of intricate contrapuntal devices.
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Rubato -
"Robbery". It means the 'stealing' of time from one place and then replacing it elsewhere for expressive purposes. And that means that a phrase may be held back in speed then pushed ahead.
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Run-out -
A concert not in one's home hall but requiring no overnight stay.