musette [Fr.]

(1) A small French bagpipe, very popular in aristocratic circles in the 17th and 18th centuries. In its most developed form, it consisted of a bellows-inflated windbag, two double-reed chanters with keys for semitones, and a set of four to six double-reed drones cylindrically arranged. Musettes were often lavishly finished: the bags covered with embroidered silks and velvet, the pipes made of ivory. The musette figured prominently in the pastoral ideology and pastoral entertainments of the times, and Boismortier, Hotteterre, and Rameau wrote music for it.

(2) A pseudopastoral dance piece of the 18th century, usually characterized by a drone in the bass imitating the instrument of the same name. Such pieces were danced in French ballet of the early 18th century. Keyboard suites sometimes include a musette, e.g., François Couperin’s Pièces de clavecin, ordre 15, and Bach’s English Suite no. 3 (where it is titled “Gavotte ou la musette”). Bartók wrote several pieces in this tradition, including “Bagpipe,” from the Mikrokosmos (bk. 5, no. 138), and “Dudas,” from the Petite Suite, and Schoenberg included a musette in his Suite for Piano op. 25.

Requiem [Lat.]

The Mass for the Dead (Missa pro defunctis), called Requiem after the first word of its introit (“Requiem aeternam dona eis Domine,” Grant to them eternal rest, O Lord). The term has also been used in the 20th century in works not strictly liturgical but written in honor of the dead, as in Britten’s War Requiem (1962) and Stravinsky’s Requiem Canticles (1965-66). German Requiems, such as the Musika-lische Exequien (1636) of Schütz or Brahms’s Ein Deutsches Requiem op. 45 (1868), employ German texts drawn from the Bible or from chorales.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPlhKP0nZII

pentachord

A collection of five pitches; the arrangement of intervals that defines the structure of a collection of five pitches. *Octave species are often defined as consisting of one pentachord plus one *tetrachord, and music of the Middle Ages and Renaissance has sometimes been analyzed in these terms. 

Evensong

In medieval England, the canonical hour of Vespers. At the Reformation, the name was carried over into the Book of Common Prayer (B.C.P.) formally to designate what subsequently came to be called Evening Prayer: “An ordre for Evensong throughout the yere” (B.C.P., 1549); “An ordre for Evening prayer throughout the yere” (B.C.P., 1552 and later). The informal use of the term Evensong has persisted nevertheless. 

bagatelle [Fr., trifle]

A short, unpretentious piece, often for piano and often presented in sets with contrasting tempos and moods. Marin Marais used the title in 1692 (Pièces en trio), and it appeared occasionally throughout the late 18th century. Beethoven’s three sets for piano (opp. 33, 119, and 126) became models for many later composers. Most (e.g., Sibelius, op. 97) added descriptive titles [see Character piece]. Anton Webern wrote Six Bagatelles for string quartet in 1913.

Hausmusik [Ger.]

Music for informal performance by amateurs in the home. The term dates from the 17th century. In the 20th, it has been associated with *Gerbrauchsmusik.

écossaise [Fr., Scottish]

A type of *contredanse that was very popular in France in the late 18th century. It was related to the *country dance of the British Isles, though its specific origin remains in dispute. The form that was cultivated elsewhere as well in the early 19th century, especially in Vienna, was in a lively 2/4. Examples were composed by Schubert (sets for piano D. 299, 421, 529, 697, etc.), Beethoven (WoO 83, 86), and Weber, among others.