4. TALK THE TALK

Wouldn't it be great if the next time you visited your dentist and heard Bach playing in the waiting room, you were able to lean over to the comely person in the next seat and casually remark, "No one does counterpoint as well as Bach!" Much classier than "I'm in for a root canal - what about you?", huh?

So here's a handy list of words and terms you can sprinkle into your conversation as you're discussing classical music. Bonus points if you can identify the composers of songs, and even if you can't, you can always use all you've learned about each composer's unique style to say that a piece "is certainly reminiscent of the great Chopin" or whomever.

The way music sounds
Music composition

The way music sounds

  • Atonal. When a piece of music sounds dissonant to the ear, it's atonal. That doesn't necessarily mean that the song sounds bad. A lot of jazz music, for example, is atonal.

  • Crescendo. When music gets louder and louder, the volume growth is called a crescendo. A good crescendo doesn't sound like a sudden crash of music; it rises steadily and evenly.

  • Tempo. Tempo refers to the speed of the piece. If you listen to different recordings of Vivaldi's The Four Seasons, you might be surprised to find that they are played at different speeds. Tempo is a conductor's prerogative, although the composer usually specifies a range of tempos in which the music should be played.

  • Rubato. When a player uses rubato, he/she varies the tempo a bit by either speeding up or slowing down a little in one phrase and making up the time in a later one. This slight bending of the rules is the equivalent of poetical license while writing poetry.

  • Cadence. Occasionally it'll happen that the entire orchestra stops playing for a couple of seconds. They're not taking a break - at least, not one that they've decided to insert into the piece. They've come to the cadence (or pausing point of a piece/end of a movement).

  • Counterpoint. A combination of two or more different melodies that still sound good together is called the counterpoint. Like Row, Row, Row Your Boat sung by you and the Three Tenors, each person starting from a different point in the song.

Music composition

  • Cadenza. Some movements end with a cadenza, which is a solo. When the orchestra stops playing, a soloist keeps going and shows off for some time ranging from a few seconds to a few minutes.

  • Exposition. The first movement of a symphony piece is usually the exposition - where all the main themes are introduced (or exposed, if you will) for the first time.

  • Movements. These are the different sections in a whole classical piece. Most symphonies have four movements and most concertos have three. Movements of a piece often sound unlike each other, but they are related. When a piece is played, there is usually a pause between movements. If you're at a classical concert, don't ever be the first one to clap after the orchestra stops playing - it might not be the end of the whole song, but the end of a movement (and you shouldn't clap between movements). To be safe, wait until at least a dozen people are clapping before you putting your own hands together, or you just might end up looking very silly.

And now that you know a thing or two about classical music, perhaps one day when you just happen to be visiting Vienna, Austria, you'll drop by the famous cemetery in which many of the great composers are buried side by side. Just promise us you won't disturb them as they decompose! (Sorry, we couldn't resist.)