Humorous Glossary of Musical Terms

· TempuWhile we await the next lesson...
...here are some musical terms you won't find  using in his nightly music discussion
during concerts. These excepts come to us courtesy of choirsinger.com

ChoirSinger.com - Humorous Glossary of Musical Terms
· Accent: An unusual manner of pronunciation, e.g. "Y'all sang that real good!"
· Accidentals: Wrong notes
· Agitato: A string player's state of mind when a peg slips in the middle of a piece.
· Agnus dei: A famous female church composer.
· Allegro: Leg fertilizer.
· Atonality: Disease that many modern composers suffer from. The most prominent
symptom is the patient's lacking ability to make decisions.
· Augmented fifth: A 36-ounce bottle.
· Bar Line: A gathering of people, usually among which may be found a musician
or two.
· Beat: What music students to do each other with their musical instruments. The
down beat is performed on the top of the head, while the up beat is struck under
the chin.
· Bravo: Literally, "How bold!" or "What nerve!" This is a spontaneous expression
of appreciation on the part of the concert goer after a particularly trying
performance.
· Breve: The way a sustained note sounds when a violinist runs out of bow.
· Cadence: When everybody hopes you're going to stop, but you don't.
· Chansons de geste: Dirty songs.
· Chord: Usually spelled with an "s" on the end, means a particular type of pants,
e.g. "He wears chords."
· Chromatic Scale: An instrument for weighing that indicates half-pounds.
· Clausula: Mrs. Santa.
· Coloratura Soprano: A singer who has great trouble finding the proper note, but
who has a wild time hunting for it.
· Compound Meter: A place to park your car that requires two dimes.
· Con Brio: Done with scouring pads and washboards.
· Conductor: A musician who is adept at following many people at the same time
· Countertenor: A singing waiter.
· Crescendo: A reminder to the performer that he has been playing too loudly.
· Cut time: When you're going twice as fast as everybody else in the ensemble.
· Da capo al fine: I like your hat!
· Detache: An indication that the trombones are to play with the slides removed.
· Di lasso: Popular with Italian cowboys.
· Discord: Not to be confused with Datcord.
· Duration: Can be used to describe how long a music teacher can exercise
self-control.
· Embouchre: The way you look when you've been playing the Krummhorn.
· English horn: A woodwind that got its name because it's neither English nor a
horn. Not to be confused with French horn, which is German.
· Espressivo: Close eyes and play with a wide vibrato.
· Estampie: What they put on letters in Quebec
· Fermata: A brand of girdle made especially for opera singers.
· Fermented fifth: What the percussion players keep behind the tympani, which
resolves to a 'distilled fifth', which is what the conductor uses backstage.
· Fine: That was great!
· Flute: A sophisticated pea shooter with a range of up to 500 yards, blown
transversely to confuse the enemy.
· Glissando: The musical equivalent of slipping on a banana peel. Also, a technique
adopted by string players for difficult runs.
· Gregorian chant: A way of singing in unison, invented by monks to hide snoring.
· Half Step: The pace used by a cellist when carrying his instrument.
· Harmonic Minor: A good music student.
· Harmony: A corn-like food eaten by people with accents (see above for definition
of accent).
· Hemiola: A hereditary blood disease caused by chromatics.
· Heroic Tenor: A singer who gets by on sheer nerve and tight clothing.
· Interval: How long it takes you to find the right note. There are three kinds:
Major Interval: a long time; Minor Interval: a few bars; Inverted Interval: when
you have to back one bar and try again.
· Intonation: Singing through one's nose. Considered highly desirable in the Middle
Ages
· Isorhythmic motet: When half of the ensemble got a different photocopy than the
other half
· Major Triad: The name of the head of the Music Department. (Minor Triad: the
name of the wife of the head of the Music Department.)
· Mean-Tone Temperament: One's state of mind when everybody's trying to tune
at the same time.
· Messiah: An oratorio by Handel performed every Christmas by choirs that believe
they are good enough, in cooperation with musicians who need the money.
· Metronome: A dwarf who lives in the city.
· Minnesinger: A boy soprano or Mickey's girlfriend in the opera.
· Modulation: "Nothing is bad in modulation."
· Musica ficta: When you lose your place and have to bluff till you find it again.
Also known as 'faking'.
· Neums: Renaissance midgets
· Opus: A penguin in Kansas.
· Orchestral suites: Naughty women who follow touring orchestras.
· Ordo: The hero in Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings".
· Pause: A short period in an individual voice in which there should be relative
quiet. Useful when turning to the next page in the score, breathing, emptying the
horn of salvia, coughing, etc. Is rarely heard in baroque music. Today, the
minimum requirements for pauses in individual pieces are those of the Musicians'
Union (usually one per bar, or 15 minutes per hour).
· Recitative: A disease that Monteverdi had.
· Ritornello: An opera by Verdi.
· Rota: An early Italian method of teaching music without score or parts.
· Rubato: Expression used to describe irregular behaviour in a performer with
sensations of angst in the mating period. Especially common amongst tenors.
· Sancta: Clausula's husband.
· Score: A pile of all the individual orchestral voices, transposed to C so that
nobody else can understand anything. This is what conductors follow when they
conduct, and it's assumed that they have studied it carefully. Very few conductors
can read a score.
· Sine proprietate: Cussing in church.
· Stops: Something Bach did not have on his organ.
· Supertonic: Schweppes.
· Tempo: This is where a headache begins.
s perfectum: A good time was had by all.
· Tone Cluster: A chordal orgy first discovered by a well-endowed woman pianist
leaning forward for a page turn.
· Transposition: An advanced recorder technique where you change from alto to
soprano fingering (or vice-versa) in the middle of a piece.
· Trill: The musical equivalent of an epileptic seizure.
· Trotto: An early Italian form of Montezuma's Revenge.
· Tutti: A lot of sackbuts.
· Vibrato: The singer's equivalent of an epileptic seizure.
· Vibrato: Used by singers to hide the fact that they are on the wrong pitch.
I left out the ones that might not make a lot of sense to non-musicians but if you want to
see the entire list then go check out the site.

I wonder what term we'll be graced with tonight? Stay tuned!