A multi-movement form in Western classical music in which one or more featured soloists are accompanied by an orchestra.
One of the concerto’s movements often concludes with a cadenza, a free-rhythmic solo passage showcasing the soloist. In the concerto-kriti, the harp plays a cadenza at the end of Movement II.
Glossary Category: Western Terms
Western classical music terms
Common practice period
Refers to the era from roughly 1650-1900, during which tonal harmony became the dominant harmonic system of Western classical (art) music.
The 20th century saw the development of several alternate harmonic systems to tonal harmony.
Baroque counterpoint
A style of rigorous counterpoint developed during the Baroque era of Western classical music (17th-18th centuries).
J.S. Bach is its most renowned exponent, and this style is generally considered the pinnacle of contrapuntal writing.
Augmentation (and Canonic Augmentation)
In augmentation, a voice or instrument plays the theme at a slower pace — that is, the note values of the theme are augmented.
An example (in the video below) occurs in the Fugue-Kriti’s Pallavi (Movement I). Here, the veena and solo cello play the fugue subject at half the original tempo.
They are preceded by the violin, which enters 1½ beats earlier with a variation of the subject at the original tempo. This creates a canon — a structure made of staggered, overlapping layers of the same melody.
The combination is referred to as canonic augmentation.
Example: Canonic Augmentation