Dictionary of Music - Birding America

348 restrest A silence or pause in the music, in any or allof the voice-parts. Such pauses are indicated bysigns that tell how long they are to last, correspondingto the time value of the various notes (quarterrest, eighth rest, and so on). For a table of thesesigns, see NOTES AND RESTS. In orchestral music,numerous measures of rest for a particular instrumentare indicated in a single measure with a numbershowing the number of bars of silence.resultant toneSee under TARTINI, GIUSEPPE.retard A direction to perform more and moreslowly; the same as RALLENTANDODANDO.and RITAR-retardation A suspension in which the dissonantnote resolves upward. See SUSPENSION.retrograde (re′trə grād). A term describing amelody or theme that is reversed, so that the lastnote becomes the first, the next to the last the second,and so on all the way through. Essentially adevice of imitation, retrograde was very popularfrom the fourteenth to seventeenth centuries and wasrevived in the twentieth century by neoclassic andserial composers. It is found particularly in canonsand fugues, the two principal forms of imitativecounterpoint (see also under CANON; IMITATION).—retrograde inversion A melody or theme that isboth reversed (from last note to first) and turnedupside down (going up in pitch where it went down,and vice versa). This device, too, has been revivedby twentieth-century serial composers (for an illustration,see the example accompanying SERIALMUSIC).returning toneTONE.Another term for NEIGHBORINGreverberation Also, reverb. A kind of continuingecho effect produced electronically, by elongatingthe duration of sound or by delaying sound throughtape echo. In essence such effects are created by controllingthe time lapse between the original soundand its reflection back from a natural or electronicbarrier. Reverberation is used in recording rockand other popular music, as well as in electronickeyboards such as the Casio and in synthesizers.rfrfzAlso, rfz. An abbreviation for RINFORZANDO.Also, rf. An abbreviation for RINFORZANDO.r.h. Also, R.H. An abbreviation for “right hand” orthe German, rechte Hand, used in keyboard music asa direction to play a note or passage with the righthand.rhapsody A title used by nineteenth- and twentieth-centurycomposers for a relatively short composition,free in form and expressing a particularmood. It is virtually the same as a fantasy (see FAN-TASIA, def. 5). There are rhapsodies based on a“national” idea—that is, suggesting a particular peopleor country through the melodic and rhythmicidioms of its music—such as Liszt’s HungarianRhapsodies for piano, each of which ends with amovement imitating a csárdás (a Hungarian dance).Similar examples are Emmanuel Chabrier’s orchestralrhapsody España, Georges Enesco’s RumanianRhapsodies and Ravel’s Rapsodie espagnole. Inother compositions the title seems to refer more tothe very free form of the music; among these areBrahms’s rhapsodies for piano and Gershwin’sRhapsody in Blue for piano and orchestra. Otherrhapsodies are based on a tune from folk music or byanother composer (Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on aTheme of Paganini, for example). Still others appearto be so named purely for their poetic quality(Brahms’s Alto Rhapsody, for alto solo, men’s chorus,and orchestra, based on part of a poem byGoethe).rhumbaSee RUMBA.rhythm The movement of musical tones withrespect to time, that is, how fast they move (tempo)and the patterns of long and short notes as well asof accents. The concept of rhythm thus takes inMETER (the patterns of time values), BEAT(accents), and TEMPO (rate of speed). Some authoritieshold that rhythm involves all musical move-