cadenza
Syllables: ca·den·za/kəˈdɛnzə/
cadenza noun: a part of a piece of music, such as a concerto, that is very decorative and is played by a single musician.
Noun
cadenza (plural cadenzas or cadenze)
- A part of a piece of music, such as a concerto, that is very decorative and is played by a single musician.
- Yes, laugh, as I want to laugh for instance in the concert hall when the orchestra trundles to a stop and the virtuoso at his piano, hunched like a demented vet before the bared teeth of this enormous black beast of sound, lifts up deliquescent hands and prepares to plunge into the cadenza.1993, John Banville, Ghosts
Verb
cadenza (third-person singular simple present cadenzas, present participle cadenzaing, simple past and past participle cadenzaed)
- To become agitated or excited.
Forms of cadenza
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | cadenzas |
| plural | cadenze |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | cadenzas |
| present participle | cadenzaing |
| past participle | cadenzaed |
| past | cadenzaed |
Origin of cadenza
Borrowed from Italian cadenza, from Latin cadentia. Doublet of cadence and chance.
Questions about cadenza
- What does cadenza mean?
- Cadenza means a part of a piece of music, such as a concerto, that is very decorative and is played by a single musician.
- What part of speech is cadenza?
- Cadenza can be a noun or a verb.
- How do you pronounce cadenza?
- Cadenza is pronounced /kəˈdɛnzə/.
- What is the plural of cadenza?
- The plural of cadenza is cadenzas.
Words near cadenza in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: cadenza (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-cadenza.wav.
Cite this entry: “cadenza.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cadenza. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.