E
E is a note of the scale (= Italian,
French: mi).
Elegy
An elegy (= French: élégie) is a lament,
either vocal or instrumental.
English horn
The English horn is more generally known
in England
as the cor anglais. It is the tenor oboe.
Enharmonicism
Different spellings of notes (e.g., Ab =
G#) can
be used for various purposes. A dominant seventh chord
can be respelled
as a Ger6 chord,
allowing for
different resolutions of the same sound type. Much
music, since at
least the 18th century, exploits enharmonic equivalence for
the purposes
of modulation.
Ensemble
The word ensemble is used in three senses.
It may
refer to the togetherness of a group of performers: if
ensemble is poor,
the players are not together. It may indicate part of an opera
that involves
a group of singers. It can also mean a group of performers.
Entr'acte
As the word suggests, an entr'acte is
music between the acts of a play or opera
Escape tone
(échappée) A metrically weak
dissonance approached by step and left by leap in the opposite
direction.
Such formations can also be understood as incomplete
neighboring tones.
(See Nonharmonic Tones)
Equal
temperament
A system of tuning currently accepted as
the standard.
In this system, the octave is divided into twelve half-steps
of equal size.
Thus, no one key is favored at the expense of others, and
accidentals and
modulations may be employed freely. It should be noted
that, except
for the octave, none of the intervals in equal temperament is
identical
with its counterpart in Just
or Pythagorean
tuning. However, our ears have become adjusted to these
compromises.
Equal temperament was not universally adopted throughout
Europe until the
mid-19th century. Other musical cultures employ
different tunings.
Etude
An étude is a study, intended originally
for
the technical practice of the player. Chopin,
Liszt
and later composers elevated the étude into a significant
piece
of music, no mere exercise.
The exposition in sonata-allegro form is
the first
section of the movement, in which the principal thematic
material is announced.
In the exposition of a fugue (a fugal exposition) the voices
(= parts)
enter one by one with the same subject: the exposition ends
when all the
voices have entered.
Expressionism
Term taken over from the visual arts and
used, more
or less metaphorically, for music written in a deeply
subjective and introspective
style. The composition of such music is roughly lined in
inspiration
with the German school of expressionist painters. These
painters
sought to go beyond the purely visual appearance and to depict
the artist's
subjective interpretation of reality, using distortion,
exaggeration, symbolism,
etc.
The composers most often identified as
'expressionists"
are Schoenberg and Berg, and to some extent Webern.
Schoenberg's
"Verklärte Nacht", "Pierrot Lunaire", and "Erwartung", along
with
Berg's operas "Wozzeck" and Lulu", are the masterpieces of
expressionist
music.