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madrigal

A Renaissance choral piece, usually unaccompanied.

maestoso

Maestoso (Italian: majestic) is used to suggest a majestic manner of performance, either in mood or speed.

maggiore

The major mode.

Magnificat

The Magnificat is the canticle drawn from the biblical words attributed to the Mother of Christ, My soul doth magnify the Lord. It forms part of the evening service of Vespers, in the Divine Office of the Catholic liturgy, and thus appears in composed settings. As part of the evening service of the Church of England it has similarly been subjected to musical treatment. There are notable settings in the early 17th century by Monteverdi and a hundred years later by Johann Sebastian Bach and by Vivaldi, among many others.

major

“Greater.” A term used in music theory to describe intervals, chords and scales.

major chord

A triad composed of a root, a major third, and a fifth.

major Scale

A diatonic scale in which the half steps fall between the third and fourth, and the seventh and eighth degrees.

malagueña

A malagueña is a Spanish dance from the region of Málaga. The word is later used to indicate a form of Spanish gypsy song. There is an example of the mood and rhythm of the Malagueña in Ravel's Rapsodie espagnole.

Mandolin

The mandolin, a plucked string instrument similar to the lute, exists in various forms. It has fixed metal frets and metal strings in pairs. The prevalent method of playing is tremolando, the notes rapidly repeated with a plectrum. It has been used in opera, notably in Verdi's Otello and in Falstaff, and in the concert-hall in Mahler's Seventh and Eighth Symphonies.

Mannheim school

A Preclassical group of German symphonic composers whose style including extended crescendo (called steamrollers) and melodies that arpeggiated upward, (called rockets).

Mandolin

The mandolin, a plucked string instrument similar to the lute, exists in various forms. It has fixed metal frets and metal strings in pairs. The prevalent method of playing is tremolando, the notes rapidly repeated with a plectrum. It has been used in opera, notably in Verdi's Otello and in Falstaff, and in the concert-hall in Mahler's Seventh and Eighth Symphonies.

manual

The manual is a keyboard for the hands, the word used for instruments such as the organ or harpsichord that often have more than one keyboard. It is opposed to the pedal-board found generally on the organ and much more rarely on the harpsichord or fortepiano.

march

Music for marching, such as in a parade or procession, in duple or quadruple time.

Marimba

The marimba is a form of resonating xylophone occasionally used in the Western orchestra in compositions of the 20th century.

Mass

The musical setting of the Roman Catholic Church service, usually the Ordinary, but sometimes also the Proper.

Mazurka

The mazurka is a Polish dance, transformed by Chopin in some fifty piano pieces in this form.

measure

A measure is, in English, a bar, in the sense of the music written between the vertical bar-lines written on the stave to mark the metrical units of a piece of music.

melodie

The French art-songs of the 19th and 20th centuries are known as mélodies, the counterpart of the German Lieder.

melodrama

A melodrama is a drama with musical accompaniment and interludes, although the word has come to have a different popular meaning in English. In the technical sense of the word, Bizet's collaboration with Alphonse Daudet in L'Arlésienne is a melodrama, and the word is used to describe the grave-digging scene in Beethoven's opera Fidelio.

meno

Meno (Italian: less) is used in musical directions to qualify other words as in meno mosso, with less movement.

mesto

Mesto (Italian: sad) is used in directions to performers as an indication of mood, as in the slow movement of the Horn Trio of Brahms, which is marked Adagio mesto.

metamorphosis

Metamorphosis, change of shape, is used particularly to describe the process of thematic metamorphosis, the transformation of thematic elements used by composers such as Liszt, a procedure unkindly satirised by one contemporary critic as the life and adventures of a theme.

meter signature

See time signature.

metronome

The metronome is a device, formerly based on the principle of the pendulum, but now controlled more often by electronic means, which measures the equal beats of a piece of music, as a guide to players. The metronome mark of 60 indicates one beat a second, 120 is twice as fast and 240 twice as fast again. The principle was based on the work of Galileo, but the most frequently found clockwork metronome was devised in Vienna by Beethoven's contemporary and briefly his collaborator Count Maelzel.

mezzo

Mezzo (Italian: half) is found particularly in the compound words mezzo-forte, half loud, represented by the letters mf, and mezzo-piano, half soft, represented by the letters mp. Mezzo can serve as a colloquial abbreviation for mezzo-soprano, the female voice that employs a generally lower register than a soprano and consequently is often, in opera, given the parts of confidante, nurse or mother, secondary rôles to the heroine, usually a soprano. The instruction mezza voce directs a singer to sing with a controlled tone. The instruction can also occur in instrumental music.

minor

Minor (= Latin: smaller) is used in musical terminology to describe a form of scale that corresponds, in its natural form, to the Aeolian mode, the scale on the white notes of the keyboard from A to A. Two other forms of the minor scale are commonly used, the melodic minor and the harmonic minor. The melodic minor scale is a form of minor scale that uses the natural minor form descending, but sharpens the sixth and seventh degrees ascending. The harmonic minor scale uses the natural minor with a sharpened seventh degree ascending and descending.The intervals between the first note or tonic (key note) and the third, sixth and seventh degrees of the natural minor scale are described as minor (that is, C to E flat , a minor third; C to A flat, a minor sixth; C to B flat, a minor seventh). C to D flat forms a minor second. A minor chord or minor triad consists of a bottom note with a note a minor third above, and, optionally, a note a perfect fifth above the bottom note. In this way the chord or triad C - E flat - G is described as minor.

minstrel

The word minstrel has been used loosely to indicate a musical entertainer, providing his own accompaniment to his singing. The medieval minstrel, a secular musician, flourished between the 13th and 15th century, generally as an itinerant singer.

minuet

A minuet (= French: menuet; German: Menuett; Italian: minuetto) is a triple metre French dance popular from the second half of the 17th until at least the end of the 18th century. It appears as an occasional element of the baroque instrumental suite and later as a movement in the pre-classical and classical symphony and allied forms, gradually replaced by the scherzo. The minuet usually has a complementary trio, a contrasting section in similar metre.

miserere

Miserere (Latin: have mercy) is the first word of Psalms 50, 54 and 55, and the word appears on numerous occasions in Latin liturgical texts. There is a famous setting of Psalm 50 (= 51 in the Hebrew and English Psalter) by the early 17th century Italian composer Gregorio Allegri, the property of the Papal Chapel, written down from memory by Mozart at the age of fourteen, during his visit to Rome in 1770.

missa

The Latin word Missa, the Catholic Mass or Eucharist, is found in the title of many polyphonic settings of the liturgical texts. The phrase Missa brevis, short Mass, was at first used to indicate a Mass with shorter musical settings of the Ordinary. It later came to be used on occasion for settings that included only the first two parts of the ordinary of the Mass, the Kyrie and the Gloria. Mass titles, particularly in the 16th century, are often distinguished by the musical material from which they are derived, sacred or secular, as in Missa Adieu mes amours, or Missa Ave Regina. The Missa Papae Marcelli, the Mass of Pope Marcellus, is the setting of the Mass written by Palestrina, supposedly to preserve polyphony from condemnation by the Council of Trent.

Mixolydian

A medieval mode starting on the fifth degree of the diatonic scale with half steps between the third and fourth and sixth and seventh degrees.

mode

A type of scale with a specific arrangement of intervals.

modal

Pertaining to modes.

modern

Music written in the 20th century or contemporary music.

Moderato

Perform at a moderate speed

modulation

To change keys; the transition from one tonic center to another within a piece.

molto

Molto (Italian: much, very) is often found in directions to performers, as in allegro molto or allegro di molto, molto vivace or molto piano.

monody

A solo or unison song with accompaniment.

monothematic

Music based upon a single theme.

monophony

Music written in a single melodic line, as opposed to polyphony.

morceau

“Morsel.” A musical work or composition.

mordent

An ornament consisting of an alternation (once or twice) of the written note by playing the one immediately below it (lower mordent), or above it (upper, or inverted, mordent) and then playing the note again.

mosso

Mosso (Italian: moved, agitated) is generally found in the phrases più mosso, faster, and meno mosso, slower.

motet

A choral composition, generally on a sacred text.

motif

A short melodic pattern or musical idea that runs throughout a piece.

moto

Moto (Italian: motion, movement) is found in the direction 'con moto', with movement, fast. A moto perpetuo is a rapid piece that gives the impression of perpetual motion, as in the Allegro de concert of Paganini or the last movement of Ravel's Violin Sonata.

movement

A self-contained section of a composition, such as a sonata, symphony, concerto, etc.

musicology

The study of musical composition and history.

music drama

Opera, especially that of Richard Wagner.

musique concrete

Music composed by manipulating recorded sounds—specifically “concrete,” real-world sounds (noises, nature sounds, etc.) rather than sounds that are generated electronically.

mute

Mute (=Italian: sordino; French: sourdine; German: Dampfer) are used to muffle the sound of an instrument, by controlling the vibration of the bridge on a string instrument or muffling the sound by placing an object in the bell of a brass instrument.