Loading…
Loading…
Waltz.
Printed as a title or section heading — Valse, Valse lente — at the start of the waltz and in force until the next heading; in songs it may label the dance character of a section (VALSE beside REFRAIN).
Valse implies triple metre with one strong beat per bar: a bass on the downbeat, chords on two and three, and in the Viennese manner a lilt that slightly anticipates the second beat. Chopin’s waltzes, Satie’s café songs and Ravel’s La Valse all carry the French title; add a tempo or character word (lente, brillante), because the genre spans everything from dreamy to dazzling.
Satie, Je te veux, voice, m. 6: “VALSE” is printed with “REFRAIN” where the waltz refrain begins, after a pp.
Valse is one of 1755 terms in the Gradus musical dictionary: the words, abbreviations and instrument names that appear in printed scores, plus the vocabulary composers use to talk about them.
Browse the full dictionary →