Missouri Classical Music News and Notes : Missouri Music Teachers Association

A crack team of musicologists working at MMTA world headquarters has discovered these long-forgotten but very useful musical terms:

ALLREGRETTO - When you're 16 measures into the piece and realize you took too fast a tempo

ANGUS DEI - To play with a divinely beefy tone

A PATELLA - Accompanied by knee-slapping

APPOLOGGIATURA - A composition that you regret playing

APPROXIMATURA - A series of notes not intended by the composer, yet played with an "I meant to do that" attitude

APPROXIMENTO - A musical entrance that is somewhere in the vicinity of the correct pitch

CACOPHANY - A composition incorporating many people with chest colds

CORAL SYMPHONY - A large, multi-movement work from Beethoven's Caribbean Period

DILL PICCOLINI - An exceedingly small wind instrument that plays only sour notes

FERMANTRA - A note held over and over and over and over and. . .

FIDDLER CRABS - Grumpy string players

FLUTE FLIES - Those tiny mosquitoes that bother musicians on outdoor gigs

FRUGALHORN - A sensible and inexpensive brass instrument

GAUL BLATTER - A French horn player

GROUND HOG - Someone who takes control of the repeated bass line and won'! t let a nyone else play it

PLACEBO DOMINGO - A faux tenor

SCHMALZANDO - A sudden burst of music from the Guy Lombardo band

SPRITZICATO - An indication to string instruments to produce a bright and bubbly sound

TEMPO TANTRUM - What an elementary school orchestra is having when it's not following the conductor

VIBRATTO - Child prodigy son of the concertmaster

posted by Brent Hugh at 5/23/2007
permanent link to article: Intensive research discovers long-lost musical terms

Missouri Classical Music News and Notes

On this page...

Related resources