| Term | Description |
|---|
| Concert | A concert is a live performance, usually of music, before an audience. |
| Concert band | A concert band, also called wind band, symphonic band, symphonic winds, wind orchestra, wind symphony, or wind ensemble, is a performing ensemble consisting of several members of the woodwind instrument family, brass instrument family and percussion instrument family. |
| Concert pitch | Since some instruments in an orchestra use different key signatures (because of transposition), "concert pitch" describes a particular pitch in absolute terms, regardless of notation. |
| Concertino | A concertino is the smaller group of instruments in a concerto grosso. |
| Concertmaster | The concertmaster/mistress, or concertmeister (from German Konzertmeister) is the leader of the first violin section of a symphony orchestra. |
| Concerto | The term concerto (plural concertos or concerti) usually refers to a musical work in which one solo instrument is accompanied by an orchestra. |
| Concerto grosso | The concerto grosso (Italian for big concert(o), plural concerti grossi) is a form of baroque music in which the musical material is passed between a small group of soloists (the concertino) and full orchestra (the ripieno). |
| Conclusion | In music, the conclusion is the ending of a composition and may take the form of a coda or outro. |
| Conducting | Conducting is the act of directing a musical performance by way of visible gestures. Orchestras, choirs, concert bands and other musical ensembles often have conductors. |
| Consecutive fifths | In music, consecutive fifths (also known as parallel fifths) involve the concurrence of successive intervals of a perfect fifth between two voices in parallel motion. |
| Consonance and dissonance | In music, a consonance (Latin consonare, "sounding together") is a harmony, chord, or interval considered stable, as opposed to a dissonance, which is considered unstable (or temporary, transitional). |
| Consort | A consort of instruments was a phrase used in England during the 16th and 17th centuries to indicate an instrumental ensemble. |
| Contemporary classical music | In the broadest sense, contemporary music is any music being written in the present day. Contemporary classical music can be understood as belonging to a period that started in the mid-1970s with the retreat of modernism. |
| Contralto | In music, a contralto is a singer with a vocal range somewhere between a tenor and a mezzo-soprano. |
| Contrary motion | In music theory, contrary motion is the general movement of two melodic lines in opposite directions. That is, when one of the lines moves up, the other line moves down. |
| Counter-fugue | A counter-fugue is a fugue in which the first answer is presented as the subject in inversion, and the inverted subject continues to feature prominently throughout the fugue, as for example in Bach's Art of Fugue, Contrapunctus IV. |
| Countermelody | In music, countermelody is a sequence of notes, perceived as a melody, written to be played simultaneously with a more prominent melody. |
| Counterpoint | In music, counterpoint is the relationship between two or more voices that are independent in contour and rhythm, and interdependent in harmony. |
| Countersubject | In music, a countersubject is a melodic or thematic idea which is played against a primary subject of a fugue, ricercar, invention, sinfonia, or other contrapuntal piece of music. |
| Countertenor | A countertenor is an adult male who sings in an alto, mezzo-soprano or (more rarely) soprano range. |
| Course | A course is a pair of adjacent strings tuned to unison or an octave and usually plucked together as if a single string, in musical instruments such as: 12-string guitar, lute, mandolin, saz and vihuela. |
| Crossover | Crossover is a term applied to musical works and performers that achieve popularity with mainstream audiences beyond the usual listenership of their particular genre. |
| Cuban rumba | In Cuba, rumba is a generic term covering a variety of musical rhythms and associated dances. |
| Cyclic form | Cyclic form is a technique of musical construction, involving multiple sections or movements, in which a theme, melody, or thematic material occurs in more than one movement as a unifying device. |
