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chamber music

(Encyclopedia)chamber music, ensemble music for small groups of instruments, with only one player to each part. Its essence is individual treatment of parts and the exclusion of virtuosic elements. Originally playe...

music video

(Encyclopedia)music video, videotaped performance of a recorded popular song, usually accompanied by dance or a fragmentary story and sometimes employing concert footage. Typically three to five minutes long, music...

popular music

(Encyclopedia)popular music: see country and western music; folk song; gospel music; jazz; rap music; rock music. ...

Chinese music

(Encyclopedia)Chinese music, the classical music forms of China. Throughout the political and social turmoil following World War I, Western (classical and popular) and Japanese sources dominated Chinese music. At...

church music

(Encyclopedia)church music. 1 Music intended for performance as part of services of worship. With few exceptions, music is essential to the ritual of every religion; the singing of prayers and portions of Scripture...

electronic music

(Encyclopedia)electronic music or electro-acoustic music, term for compositions that utilize the capacities of electronic media for creating and altering sounds. Initially, a distinction must be made between the te...

music festivals

(Encyclopedia)music festivals, series of performances separate from the normal concert season and often, but not always, organized around an idea or theme. Music festivals usually are held annually in the summer, s...

Arabian music

(Encyclopedia)Arabian music, classical musical tradition of the Islamic peoples of Arabia, the Fertile Crescent, and North Africa. Little is known of Arabian music before the Hegira (a.d. 622), but afterward unde...

Byzantine music

(Encyclopedia)Byzantine music, the music of the Byzantine Empire composed to Greek texts as ceremonial, festival, or church music. Long thought to be only a further development of ancient Greek music, Byzantine mus...

aleatory music

(Encyclopedia)aleatory music āˈlēətôrˌē [key] [Lat. alea=dice game], music in which elements traditionally determined by the composer are determined either by a process of random selection chosen by the comp...