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I have problems remembering the meanings of foreign musical terms. When I practice I look them up, but after a week or so, I've forgotten the exact meanings. One of my resolutions this year is to commit more terms to memory.

I had an idea this morning that if I wrote down the meaning of terms from the music I am currently working on, they might stay with me longer. So, to that end, if no one objects, I'm going to be adding terms and definitions to this thread as I encounter them in my work (at the rate of no more than 1 a day), and review them every day in the hopes that this added attention will help me retain their meanings.

I'm doing this publicly because I thought it might be useful to some of you too. Please join me if you like--and then I'll learn even more.

Here's my very first term:

Teneramente (Italian); Tenderly, softly, delicately.

P.S. I would like to ask those of you who would also like to participate to please not add more than 1 word a day or it will be too much all at once and defeat the purpose. Thanks so much.

P.P.S. I'm not going to add terms I already know, so you won't see any of the tempo markings from me.

Bernard, Here is a new one for me but I can't find the definition in my music dictionary...
"Strepitoso". Do you know what it means?

Sometimes I write the translations to foreign terms on the sheet music to help me remember. Of course, as soon as it shows up on a new piece, I have forgotten and must look it up again. :rolleyes: Let us know if you come up with any special tricks for memorizing these terms.

In Italian strepitoso is an adjective derived from the verb strepitare, which means to make a sudden, loud noise or to yell and shout as would a wild crowd. Strepitare is also the verb used to describe the noise made by a chain, the links clanking. Strepitoso is sometimes translated as "shocking" which is sort of an idiomatic version, but conveys the effect; it can also be translated to mean "clamorous" or "resounding".

Musically, I would position it as similar to a notation of sffz or something along those lines. If used on a phrase or passage, my interpretation would be a loud, perhaps detached, marcatissimo.

My teacher has me do multiple things to help my memory. Besides looking up the meaning, I write it on the music, we discuss the word origins perhaps or use word games to try to make the memory stick. Perhaps even playing a short excerpt while saying the word aloud might help.

My teacher sometimes has me march out rhythms with my whole body to really trigger a physical response. Oh, it does look silly in that big picture window to the neighbors walking the dogs! :p

My word of the day is "Ossia" - or; or else; indicates an reading or fingering of a passage.

A favorite of mine:

Mesto - mournful, serious.

when you see the words "meno mosso", doesn't that mean "less more"? I could be way off, but it seems wierd if that's what it means.

If you think these are tough, just take a look at Sciabin's last 4 piano sonatas. If you don't understand French, they are quite an eyeful!

Hmm... Isn't the slow movement of LvB's Op. 10 #3 Largo e mesto?

Yes.

Another great moment is in the Mendelssohn Midsummer Night's Dream Overture (just before the recap).

Edit:

"Meno mosso" means "less movement." "Less more" would be "meno piu."

Thanks, Matt... this piece ought to be fun.

I love Erik Satie's indications in Gnossienne n° 2 :

"Très luisant"(Shining)
"Sur la langue"(On the tip of the tongue)
"Postulez en vous-même" (Wonder about yourself)
"Du bout de la pensée" (From the tip of the thought).

What book can I buy for looking up these words?

A dictionary!

Kenny, I have a little pocket dictionary of musical terms from Hal Leonard. It has most of the basics but there seem to be many more expressions that cannot be found in this little book.

Here is my musical term for the day. (See, Bernard, I was paying attention and am sticking to just one new word each day )

Ben Legato

Now, legato we all know but what (or who) is Ben??? :p

I'm thinking (I heard this somewhere) that Ben Legato means very legato.

Hey! When I was a kid my nickname within the family was "Ben" !

My little "The Clark New Pocket Music Dictionary" says Ben means: Well, good. Sounds like aznxk3vi17 is right on.

Harvard Concise Dictionary of Music

...and for the more obscure ones, I have Italian, German, French, and Spanish language dictionaries on the shelf, too.

Speaking of Satie and Scriabin, didn't they both used to write really bizarre directions in some of their works?

Apparently Scribin wrote weird things in his later works like 'Luminously and more and more flashing', and Satie, to a comic extreme, would write 'Play this piece as if you were going to the market to buy a piece of meat'. Of course, Scriabin probably meant his instructions to be taken more seriously.

For those who use a Palm OS PDA, there is a freeware musical terms dictionary you can download, here . Uh, I have no association with the authors, this is just what I have for now and I find it quite useful. Slower to use than a real book, but OTOH as I tend to carry my PDA everywhere I always have it with me.

Regards,
Simon

Some of my favorite Scriabin performance indications:

"With a sweetness that becomes more and more caressing and poisoned."

"The dream takes shape (brightness, gentleness, purity)."

"Gentle, languishing"

"Sudden collapse"

Maybe the last one means to have a memory slip.

Louder, softer, faster, or slower, Alexi?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

Are those supposed to be in order?

My word for today: Calando (Italian); "Decreasing"; growing softer and (usually) slower.

Satie's Sonatine Bureaucratique

Off he sets
He makes his wayt merrily to the office
"stuffling" as he goes
He is pleased and wags his head
He is in love with a fair and most elegand lady
His penholder, his green lustring cuffs and his chinese skull-cap
He takes long strides ; rushes at the stairs and climbs them upon his back
What a mind !

etc.(I can send the end if anybody is interested)

There are more classic indications as well :
Allegro, Andante.

Satie certainly was a father of the surrealists.
Quite a gentle soul.

Keep in mind though that those are not really performance instructions but rather the musical programme of the sonatine.

Another musical term, found in the 2nd movement of my Sonatine (still not finished):

Non teneramente - Not tenderly

Didn't he also once say something like:

"Like your on the way to the market for a loaf of bread"

or something like that, anyway.

jgoo

I do not know about that one, but I found a few more.

Ignore one's own presence
Very good
Like a gentle question

and these exquisite two :
With great kindness
Don't be proud

MRenaud
(about Sonatine Bureaucratique)
You are quite right.
These were more like a script for a film

I am just wondering why that echt-German Brahms should mark the Andante molto passage in a mixture of Italian and French: "sempre les deux Pédales" (1st movmt. F minor Sonata Op. 5).

Okay, new word; I think the first two are quite solid now.

This one sounds rather basic and it seems I should really know it, but I get it confused with Sforzando because they sound so similar.

Smorzando (Italian); fading away.

Bernard:

Smorzando is one of my favorites, especially because it's often abbreviated as smorz. For some reason that abbreviation just hits my funny bone-- I think because the sound of the word just is so different than what it's intended to convey...

It's in the Chopin Op. 10 #3 Etude, which I'm working on now. I'm still trying to block out the contrary chord progressions on pg. 3... since there's no way I can sightread those pests at speed. Such a beautiful melody, with one of Chopin's famous migraines (as I imagine it) tossed into the middle...

Nina

I have never been able to understand the passage you mention. Do you think it really fits in any way in the piece?

What passage is this "contrary chord progression?"

Just when I thought I saw it all, now I saw a new word in my score from Scherzo no. 2 by Chopin that says "slentando" which means "going slower"! I didn't know what it meant, but I was doing it anyway before I found out about it!

How about Con Molto Cajones or is that too indelicate for classical music.

pianoloverus, Oh yes, the imagery I have of this piece makes sense of it all. I hear the beginning (approx. the 1st page) as calm, sort of pastoral, very serene with a touch of nostaglia, we're playing outside in lovely weather. Slowly we become aware of clouds in the distant sky, but they are far off. The wind picks up, debris starts to fly about and the sky darkens (page 2) and then it all let's loose, claps of thunder and a HUGE downpour (page 3), the storm passes and all is idylic again.

I also feel this serenity, approaching storm, storm and calm as an emotional journey sometimes.

Nina, you're right--it sounds like something they eat around a campfire!

Bernard-- your imagery is much nicer than mine! I really do think of a migraine headache. Similar thought on the first part, then the migraine slams in after a bit of frivolity (you know, that little transition few bars that sound so mazurka-like), it comes on quickly then crashes around with those heavy chords then gradually dies away with the contrary motion chords, at last, back to normalcy!

I think I'll use yours instead, since even playing the piece right now gives me a headache! (May be where I got the idea.)

Nina

Bernard, you've figured it out! Chopin sat around the camefire eating Smorz, then got a migraine from the chocolate.

Music historians, rejoice!

Today's word (more like this week's word): Rallentando ; Italian. Gradually slower.

So it seems to me, therefore, that smorzando + rallentando = calando.

These words make me hungry! They sound like food.

I think that Chopin probably could no longer develop this theme, so he threw in some virtuoso passage that he had laying around in his head, and just brought the beginning back in the end. Genius? Ha! What trickery!

8ve from my french book. Is that common?

How about 16a? The only time I've seen that marking is in Ravel's G major concerto, third movement.

I am particularly good at playing pieces marked:

"Poundo sloppo non expressivo"!!

Here's one I am struggling with "acciaccatura".

Maybe this is a good place to get help. My dictionary shows it as one of those little grace notes with a slash through it. Def. reads "a short accented appoggiatura"

When I look for that it explains that I play it with the main note but release immediately. But it describes it as a second above the principle note. In my case, Greig's My Homeland has it as the same note as the principal with a tie. How do I play this? As a 16th, like a quick repeat or simultaneously and then release?? Or do I hold it as in a tie? Even my teacher wasn't sure!

Boy, I think one term a week is more my speed :p

Up two octaves. Should be 15ma, though.

15ma also appears in my very own piano concerto .

Btw, the longest tempo marking can be found in Beethoven's Mass in C op. 86:

Andante con moto assai vivace, quasi Allegretto, ma non troppo

I used to sing in a choir, and there was a marking I think I remember as "lunga poss." - as long as possible (holding a note). One of the tenors suggested it meant: "until your lungas poss out!"

My favourite direction is from Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody Number 2, at the climax: 'con tutta forza e prestezza' - with ALL force and speed. Wicked. Gotta love Liszt, the old vagabond.

'Cajones' isn't Italian, but rather the Spanish for 'packing cases' or 'chests'. You probably meant Cojones I've never seen it on a score by Albeniz or Granados, but I wouldn't be surprised -the Spaniards are a vulgar lot.

Actually, I did mean cojones and, as one who believes "discluding" to be a word in the English Language, you really have some to correct my spelling. :p

Yes, quite common, meaning the notes are to be played an octave higher than written.

Umm, wrong guy, JBryan.

A bit of arch humor, hardly a defense or statement of belief!

As is practically everything stated in connection with this topic.

Yeah, sorry, that business about 'discluding' was a vain attempt at tongue-in-cheek. Oh well.

Yeah, we're trying to be serious here so watch it.

These two are from 1st movement of Prokofiev's 2nd Piano Concerto -- Precipitato and Colossale. Don't know what they mean, I've only guessed, but my guess sure fits the character of this movement!

pepper, my Schirmer Pronouncing Pocket Manual of Musical Terms says that Precipitato (Italian) means "With precipitation, impetuosity, dash." Colossale is not listed but it probably means what it sounds like, colossal.

You're absolutely right, colossale is italian for colossal.

Bernard:

You could also use the age-old vocabulary flash-card technique. Write the foreign expression on one side of the flash-card, the equivalent English meaning on the other, and regularly quiz yourself. The ones you know already go into your "A" collection, or "A" list - to be reviewed only occasionally; the ones you can never remember stay in your "B" list and are reviewed frequently until they work their way into the "A" list. Every once in a while, you shuffle your cards to make sure that you are testing the words for their meaning and not through remembering the order in which they always appear on your lists.
In no time at all, you will be a walking encyclopedia of musical terms; we will all be impressed and will turn to you for answers.

Regards,

Thanks, BruceD, I will do that; it sounds like a great idea. I wonder if there are any of these flash cards sold somewhere?

Try http://www.musicmotion.com/pages/ca...p;l=0&trcflg=0&affl=&id=2208