Balearic PAU Music & Dance key terms

A lavish French courtly entertainment of the late 16th and 17th centuries combining dance, music, poetry and spectacle, danced by nobles and often featuring the king; it is a direct ancestor of professional ballet and of French opera.

A theatrical dance form developed at European courts and courts-turned-stages from the 17th century onward, using codified steps, mime and music to tell a story or express an abstract idea, with dancers trained in a specific technique.

The art of designing and arranging dance movement: selecting steps, spatial patterns, timing and phrasing, and fixing them in a repeatable form, either by notation, recording or memory, for performance.

Creating music or movement spontaneously in performance rather than reproducing a fixed text, often within agreed conventions such as a harmonic pattern, a rhythmic cycle or a set of steps.

Decorative additions to a melodic line, such as trills, mordents, turns, appoggiaturas or improvised divisions, used to embellish a written note or to display a performer's skill within a stylistic tradition.

A passage, usually near the end of a concerto movement, in which the soloist plays alone and often extemporises or performs a written-out virtuoso display, ending with a signal for the orchestra to return.

A large instrumental work contrasting a soloist or small group with an orchestra, typically in three movements, in which dialogue, imitation and virtuoso display between the two forces shape the form.

A large-scale instrumental structure common from the Classical period, built on an exposition presenting contrasting themes and keys, a development working that material through new keys, and a recapitulation resolving it in the tonic.

A form in which a stated melody, bass line or harmonic scheme is repeated several times, each repetition changing one or more elements such as rhythm, texture, register, mode or instrumentation while remaining recognisable.

A short melodic, rhythmic or harmonic pattern repeated persistently, usually in the bass or an inner part, while other layers change above it; it underpins forms such as the passacaglia and many dance and popular styles.

A repeating bass line over which variations are built, characteristic of 17th-century English and Italian instrumental music and of the passacaglia and chaconne traditions in Baroque keyboard and ensemble writing.

A Baroque accompaniment practice in which a keyboard or plucked instrument realises chords above a written bass line, supported by a bass instrument, with the figures or the harmony implied by the bass guiding the player.

A shorthand notation placing numbers and accidentals under a bass note to indicate the intervals to be played above it, allowing a continuo player to supply chords without a fully written-out accompaniment.

The vertical dimension of music: the simultaneous combination of pitches into intervals and chords, and the conventions by which those chords progress, create tension and resolve toward a tonal centre.

A system organising pitches around a central tonic, with a hierarchy of scale degrees and chords that create expectations of departure and return; it dominated Western art music roughly from 1650 to 1900.

A change from one key to another within a piece, achieved by introducing accidentals, pivot chords or a cadence in the new key; it creates contrast and long-range direction in tonal forms.

A melodic and harmonic formula that closes a phrase, such as the perfect, imperfect, plagal or interrupted cadence; its strength and type shape the punctuation of a musical sentence.

A coherent musical unit, often two to eight bars long, that forms a single gesture or idea and combines with other phrases into periods and sections, much like a clause in speech.

A short, distinctive musical idea, typically a few notes or a rhythmic cell, that is repeated, transformed or developed to generate larger structures and to give a piece unity and identity.

A recurring musical idea associated with a character, object, place or idea, used extensively in 19th-century opera and later in film music to identify and develop narrative elements through transformation.

Instrumental music that follows an extra-musical narrative, scene or idea, often announced by a title or written programme, in contrast to absolute music that refers only to its own musical relationships.

A single-movement orchestral work from the 19th century that depicts a story, landscape or idea through thematic transformation and orchestral colour, developed notably by Liszt and Strauss.

How musical lines are combined and layered: monophonic (one line), homophonic (melody with accompaniment), polyphonic (independent simultaneous lines) or heterophonic (simultaneous variants of one line).

The art of combining two or more independent melodic lines so that they sound well together, governed by rules of consonance, imitation and voice-leading, and central to Renaissance and Baroque polyphony.

A contrapuntal composition built from a short subject announced in one voice, answered in others at a different pitch, then developed through episodes and entries, reaching a climax before a final statement.

A texture in which a single melodic line is supported by accompanying chords moving largely in the same rhythm, as in most hymn settings and much popular song.

The quality of a sound that distinguishes one voice or instrument from another at the same pitch and loudness, determined by the instrument's spectrum, attack and resonance.

The craft of assigning musical material to instruments or voices and combining them, choosing registers, doubling, balance and colour to realise a composer's intentions for a given ensemble.

The degrees of loudness and softness in a performance, notated with symbols such as p, f, crescendo and diminuendo, and shaped by the performer's touch, breath or bowing.

How individual notes are attacked, sustained and released, indicated by marks such as staccato, legato, accent or slur, and crucial to phrasing and style in performance.

The speed of a piece or passage, indicated by terms such as allegro, andante or adagio or by a metronome mark giving beats per minute; it strongly affects character and dance function.

The organisation of beats into recurring groups, such as duple, triple or compound, indicated by a time signature and perceived through accents and patterns of strong and weak beats.

The deliberate displacement of accent so that a note falls on a normally weak beat or between beats, creating rhythmic tension and characteristic of many dance, jazz and popular styles.

In Spanish and flamenco music, the rhythmic cycle and its pattern of accents, often with a fixed number of beats, that frames improvisation, dance steps and guitar accompaniment.

A slow, stately dance in triple meter with an accent on the second beat, of Spanish-American origin and fashionable in Baroque suites, where its dignified character often contrasts with faster movements.

A collection of short instrumental movements, often dances such as allemande, courante, sarabande and gigue, grouped in a related key; later suites may be orchestral or drawn from stage works.

A tradition of song, guitar and dance from southern Spain, especially Andalusia, organised in palos with characteristic compás and emotional styles, and recognised by UNESCO as intangible cultural heritage.

Traditional dance forms of Mallorca, Menorca, Eivissa and Formentera, often accompanied by local instruments and sung or instrumental tunes, performed in festivals and community celebrations and distinct from mainland Spanish forms.

The ability to hear and identify musical elements such as intervals, chords, scales, rhythms and textures, and to connect what is heard with notation, terminology and stylistic context.

The network of businesses that produce, distribute, promote and monetise music, including labels, publishers, streaming platforms, live promoters and rights societies, shaping what audiences hear.

Distribution of recorded music over the internet on demand rather than through physical media, changing listening habits, royalty structures and the length and release strategies of popular songs.

The legal rights of composers, performers and producers over the reproduction, distribution and public use of their work, usually licensed through collecting societies and central to how music earns money.