Music Theory & Compositions
sound strong and driving rather than leisurely and soothing? The answer can be found by turning to music theory, the study of the concepts and compositional methods involved in the creation of music. Music theory examines musical qualities such as timbre, tone, pitch, and texture, as well as compositional elements such as rhythm, dynamics, tempo, and more.
Music Theory & Compositions Encyclopedia Articles
Featured Articles
Adagio for Strings
Adagio for Strings, orchestra arrangement of the second movement of American composer Samuel Barber’s String Quartet (1936). It premiered on November 5, 1938. It has long been associated in the United...
cantata
Cantata, (from Italian cantare, “to sing”), originally, a musical composition intended to be sung, as opposed to a sonata, a composition played instrumentally; now, loosely, any work for voices and instruments....
Finlandia
Finlandia, tone poem for orchestra by Jean Sibelius, the best-known of his works. It was composed in 1899 and premiered in the composer’s native Finland, reaching an international audience the following...
scale
Scale, in music, any graduated sequence of notes, tones, or intervals dividing what is called an octave. The specific selection of different tones in any piece of music generally reveals a pattern of relationships...
mode
Mode, in music, any of several ways of ordering the notes of a scale according to the intervals they form with the tonic, thus providing a theoretical framework for the melody. A mode is the vocabulary...
The Lark Ascending
The Lark Ascending, tone poem by English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, first performed in London on June 14, 1921. The piece was scored for solo violin and piano in 1914 and revised by the composer...
shape-note singing
Shape-note singing, a musical practice and tradition of social singing from music books printed in shape notes. Shape notes are a variant system of Western musical notation whereby the note heads are printed...
musical variation
Musical variation, basic music technique consisting of changing the music melodically, harmonically, or contrapuntally. The simplest variation type is the variation set. In this form of composition, two...
rhythm
Rhythm, in music, the placement of sounds in time. In its most general sense, rhythm (Greek rhythmos, derived from rhein, “to flow”) is an ordered alternation of contrasting elements. The notion of rhythm...
throat-singing
Throat-singing, a range of singing styles in which a single vocalist sounds more than one pitch simultaneously by reinforcing certain harmonics (overtones and undertones) of the fundamental pitch. In some...
harmony
Harmony, in music, the sound of two or more notes heard simultaneously. In practice, this broad definition can also include some instances of notes sounded one after the other. If the consecutively sounded...
tuning and temperament
Tuning and temperament, in music, the adjustment of one sound source, such as a voice or string, to produce a desired pitch in relation to a given pitch, and the modification of that tuning to lessen dissonance....
instrumentation
Instrumentation, in music, arrangement or composition for instruments. Most authorities make little distinction between the words instrumentation and orchestration. Both deal with musical instruments and...
musical notation
Musical notation, visual record of heard or imagined musical sound, or a set of visual instructions for performance of music. It usually takes written or printed form and is a conscious, comparatively...
fugue
Fugue, in music, a compositional procedure characterized by the systematic imitation of a principal theme (called the subject) in simultaneously sounding melodic lines (counterpoint). The term fugue may...
counterpoint
Counterpoint, art of combining different melodic lines in a musical composition. It is among the characteristic elements of Western musical practice. The word counterpoint is frequently used interchangeably...
concert
Concert, social institution for the public performance of music outside of a religious or dramatic context. Concerts developed in their present form from the informal music-making of the 17th century....
improvisation
Improvisation, in music, the extemporaneous composition or free performance of a musical passage, usually in a manner conforming to certain stylistic norms but unfettered by the prescriptive features of...
musical composition
Musical composition, the act of conceiving a piece of music, the art of creating music, or the finished product. These meanings are interdependent and presume a tradition in which musical works exist as...
Star Wars
Star Wars, film score by American composer John Williams for George Lucas’s Star Wars (1977), which launched the film series of the same name. At a time when many scores were largely compilations of popular...
