madrigal (Italian madrigale, "song in the mother tongue") (1) Fourteenth-century Italian poetic form and its musical setting having two or three stanzas followed by a RITORNELLO. (2) Sixteenth-century Italian poem having any number of lines, each of seven or eleven syllables. (3) POLYPHONIC or CONCERTATO setting of such a poem or of a sonnet or other nonrepetitive VERSE form. (4) English polyphonic work imitating the Italian GENRE.
madrigal comedy, madrigal cycle In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, a series of MADRIGALS that represents a succession of scenes or a simple plot.
madrigalism A particularly evocative-or, if used in a disparaging sense, a thoroughly conventional-instance of TEXT DEPICTION or WORD-PAINTING; so called because of the prominent role of word-painting in MADRIGALS.
major scale DIATONIC succession of NOTES with a major third and major seventh above the TONIC.
march A piece in duple or 6/8 METER comprising an introduction and several STRAINS, each repeated. Typically there are two strains in the initial KEY followed by a TRIO in a key a fourth higher; the opening strains may or may not repeat after the trio.
masque Seventeenth-century English entertainment involving poetry, music, DANCE, costumes, CHORUSES, and elaborate sets, akin to the French COURT BALLET.
Mass (from Latin missa, "dismissed") (1) The most important service in the Roman church. (2) A musical work setting the texts of the ORDINARY of the Mass, typically KYRIE, GLORIA, CREDO, SANCTUS, and AGNUS DEI. In this book, as in common usage, the church service is capitalized (the Mass), but a musical setting of the Mass Ordinary is not (a mass).
mazurka A type of Polish folk dance (and later ballroom dance) in triple METER, characterized by accents on the second or third beat and often by dotted figures on the first beat, or a stylized PIANO piece based on such a DANCE.
mean-tone temperament A type of TEMPERAMENT in which the fifths are tuned small so that the major thirds sound well; frequently used for keyboard instruments from the RENAISSANCE through the eighteenth century.
measure (1) A unit of musical time consisting of a given number of beats; the basic unit of METER. (2) Metrical unit set off by barlines.
mediant In a PSALM TONE, the CADENCE that marks the middle of the PSALM verse.
Meistersinger (German, "master singer") Type of German amateur singer and poet-composer of the fourteenth through seventeenth centuries, who was a member of a guild that cultivated a style of MONOPHONIC song derived from MINNELIEDER.
melisma A long MELODIC passage sung to a single syllable of text.
melismatic Of a MELODY, having many MELISMAS.
melodrama A GENRE of musical theater that combined spoken dialogue with background music.
melody (1) Succession of tones perceived as a coherent line. (2) Tune. (3) Principal part accompanied by other parts or CHORDS.
melody and accompaniment A kind of HOMOPHONIC TEXTURE in which there is one main MELODY, which is accompanied by CHORDS or other FIGURATION.
mensuration canon A CANON in which voices move at different rates of speed by using different MENSURATION SIGNS.
mensuration signs In ARS NOVA and RENAISSANCE systems of rhythmic NOTATION, signs that indicate which combination of time and prolation to use (see MODE, TIME, AND PROLATION). The predecessors of TIME SIGNATURES.
meter Recurring patterns of strong and weak beats, dividing musical time into regularly recurring units of equal duration.
metrical psalm Metric, rhymed, and STROPHIC vernacular translation of a PSALM, sung to a relatively simple MELODY that repeats for each strophe.
minim In ARS NOVA and RENAISSANCE systems of rhythmic NOTATION, a NOTE that is equal to half or a third of a SEMIBREVE.
minimalism One of the leading musical styles of the late twentieth century, in which materials are reduced to a minimum and procedures simplified so that what is going on in the music is immediately apparent. Often characterized by a constant pulse and many repetitions of simple RHYTHMIC, MELODIC, or HARMONIC patterns.
Minnelieder (German, "love songs") Songs of the MINNESINGER.
Minnesinger (German, "singer of love"; also pl.) A poet-composer of medieval Germany who wrote MONOPHONIC songs, particularly about love, in Middle High German.
minor scale DIATONIC SCALE that begins with a WHOLE STEP and HALF STEP, forming a minor third above the TONIC. The sixth and seventh above the tonic are also minor in the natural minor scale but one or both may be raised.
minstrel (from Latin minister, "servant") Thirteenth-century traveling musician, some of whom were also employed at a court or city.
minstrelsy Popular form of musical theater in the United States during the mid-nineteenth century, in which white performers blackened their faces and impersonated African Americans in jokes, skits, songs, and dances.
minuet DANCE in moderate triple METER, two-measure units, and BINARY FORM.
minuet and trio form FORM that joins two BINARY-FORM MINUETS to create an ABA pattern, where A is the minuet and B the TRIO.
mixed media Trend of the late twentieth century that combines two or more of the arts, including music, to create a new kind of PERFORMANCE ART or musical theater.
mixed parallel and oblique organum Early form of ORGANUM that combines parallel motion with oblique motion (in which the ORGANAL VOICE remains on the same NOTE while the PRINCIPAL VOICE moves) in order to avoid tritones.
modal Making use of a MODE. Compare TONAL.
mode (1) A SCALE or MELODY type, identified by the particular INTERVALLIC relationships among the NOTES in the mode. (2) In particular, one of the eight scale or melody types recognized by church musicians and theorists beginning in the Middle Ages, distinguished from one another by the arrangement of WHOLE TONES and SEMITONES around the FINAL, by the RANGE relative to the final, and by the position of the TENOR or RECITING TONE. (3) RHYTHMIC MODE. See also MODE, TIME, AND PROLATION.
mode, time, and prolation (Latin modus, tempus, prolatio) The three levels of rhythmic DIVISION in ARS NOVA NOTATION. Mode is the division of LONGS into BREVES; time the division of breves into SEMIBREVES; and prolation the division of semibreves into MINIMS.
modernists Twentieth-century composers who made a radical break from the musical language of their predecessors and contemporaries while maintaining strong links to the tradition.
modified strophic form Variant of STROPHIC FORM in which the music for the first stanza is varied for later stanzas, or in which there is a change of KEY, RHYTHM, character, or material.
modulation The TONAL music, a gradual change from one KEY to another within a section of a MOVEMENT.
monody (1) An accompanied solo song. (2) The musical TEXTURE of solo singing accompanied by one or more instruments.
monophonic Consisting of a single unaccompanied MELODIC line.
monophony Music or musical TEXTURE consisting of unaccompanied MELODY.
motet (from French mot, "word") POLYPHONIC vocal COMPOSITION; the specific meaning changes over time. The earliest motets add a text to an existing DISCANT CLAUSULA. Thirteenth-century motets feature one or more voices, each with its own sacred or secular text in Latin or French, above a TENOR drawn from CHANT or other MELODY. Most fourteenth- and some fifteenth-century motets feature ISORHYTHM and may include a CONTRATENOR. From the fifteenth century on, any polyphonic setting of a Latin text (other than a MASS) could be called a motet; from the sixteenth century on, the term was also applied to sacred compositions in other languages.
motive Short MELODIC or RHYTHMIC idea that recurs in the same or altered form.
motto mass POLYPHONIC MASS in which the MOVEMENTS are linked primarily by sharing the same opening MOTIVE or PHRASE.
movement Self-contained unit of music, complete in itself, that can stand alone or be joined with others in a larger work. Some types of COMPOSITION typically consist of several movements (such as the four movements common in the SYMPHONY).
music drama Nineteenth-century GENRE created by Richard Wagner in which drama and music become organically connected to express a kind of absolute oneness. See also GESAMTKUNSTWERK.
music video Type of short film popularized in the early 1980s that provides a visual accompaniment to a POP SONG.
musica ficta (Latin, "feigned music") (1) In early music, NOTES outside the standard GAMUT, which excluded all flatted and sharped notes except B< flat >. (2). In POLYPHONY of the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries, the practice of raising or lowering by a semitone the pitch of a written note, particularly at a CADENCE, for the sake of smoother HARMONY or motion of the parts.
musica mundana, musica humana, musica instrumentalis (Latin, "music of the universe," "human music," and "instrumental music") Three kinds of music identified by Boethius (ca. 480-ca. 524), respectively the "music" or numerical relationships governing the movement of stars, planets, and the seasons; the "music" that harmonizes the human body and soul and their parts; and audible music produced by voices or instruments.
musical GENRE of musical theater that features songs and dance numbers in styles drawn from POPULAR MUSIC in the context of a spoken play with a comic or romantic plot.
musical figure In BAROQUE music, a MELODIC pattern or CONTRAPUNTAL effect conventionally employed to convey the meaning of a text.
musique concrète (French, "concrete music") Term coined by composers working in Paris in the 1940s for music composed by assembling and manipulating recorded sounds, working "concretely" with sound itself rather than with music NOTATION.
musique mesurée (French, "measured music") Late-sixteenth-century French style of text-setting, especially in CHANSONS, in which stressed syllables are given longer NOTES than unstressed syllables (usually twice as long).
mutation In SOLMIZATION, the process of changing from one HEXACHORD to another.
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