Scale - Successive notes of a key or mode either ascending or descending.
Scherzo - Pertaining to the sonata form, a fast movement in triple time.
Scordatura - The retuning of a stringed instrument in order to play notes below the ordinary range of the instrument or to produce an usual tone color.
Septet - A set of seven musicians who perform a composition written for seven parts.
Sequence - A successive transposition and repetition of a phrase at different pitches.
Serenade - A lighthearted piece, written in several movements, usually as background music for a social function.
Sextet - A set of six musicians who perform a composition written for six parts.
Sharp - A symbol indicating the note is to be raised by one semitone.
Slide - A glissando or portamento. Also refers to the moving part of a trombone.
Slur - A curve over notes to indicate that a phrase is to be played legato.
Sonata - Music of a particular form consisting of four movements. Each of the movements differ in tempo, rhythm, and melody; but are held together by subject and style.
Sonata form - A complex piece of music. Usually the first movement of the piece serving as the exposition, a development, or recapitulation.
Sonatina - A short or brief sonata.
Song cycle - A sequence of songs, perhaps on a single theme, or with texts by one poet, or having continuos narrative.
Soprano - The highest female voice.
Staccato - Short detached notes, as opposed to legato.
Staff - Made up of five horizontal parallel lines and the spaces between them on which musical notation is written.
Stretto - Pertaining to the fugue, the overlapping of the same theme or motif by two or more voices a few beats apart.
String Quartet - A group of 4 instruments, two violins, a viola, and cello.
Suite - A loose collection of instrumental compositions.
Symphony - Three to four movement orchestral piece, generally in sonata form.
System - A combination of two or more staves on which all the notes are vertically aligned and performed simultaneously in differing registers and instruments.
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