concerto
Americannoun
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concertos,
plural
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concerti
plural
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of concerto
1720–30; < Italian, derivative of concertare; see concert (v.)
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How does concerto compare to similar and commonly confused words? Explore the most common comparisons:
Explanation
A concerto is a classical music composition that highlights a solo instrument against the background of a full orchestra. Bach is one composer known for writing concertos. In a concerto, a piano, violin, flute, or other instrument plays solo parts that are backed up or highlighted by an orchestra. Most concertos have three sections or movements, and in the 19th century they were especially popular as a way to showcase virtuoso playing by the soloist. In Italian, concerto means "concert or harmony," from concertare, "to bring into agreement."
Vocabulary lists containing concerto
Music - Middle School
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
His account on Friday night of Mr. Salonen’s five-movement clarinet concerto “Kinēma” was an alchemic blend of technical acumen and tonal splendor in one of the composer’s most immediately enjoyable works.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 18, 2026
The opening night concert will see Korean piano sensation Yunchan Lim playing Ravel's piano concerto in G Major, and star tenor Thomas Atkins transporting the audience to France, via George Gershwin's An American In Paris.
From BBC ● Apr. 20, 2026
Leading the pessimist concerto, Bloomberg News claimed that a “diving stock market” and $100-a-barrel crude could augur a financial crisis as catastrophic as the 2008-09 crash.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 15, 2026
The concerto also featured solos on the Venezuelan cuatro by Héctor Molina, but his name was only announced last minute, due to current travel uncertainty.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 3, 2026
He was playing a piano concerto at Lincoln Center.
From "Confessions of a Murder Suspect" by James Patterson
Their vacation schedule brings them together in spring, summer, fall and winter — in that order, in the story — a plan that conveniently allows for Vivaldi’s well-known violin concerti to fill up the soundtrack.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 1, 2025
Up north in Bellingham, the annual festival gets underway with an orchestral program featuring the dynamic pianist George Li in the Prokofiev Piano Concerto No. 3, arguably the best of that composer’s concerti.
From Seattle Times ● May 31, 2019
The mighty assortment of recordings of the symphonies, concerti, chamber music operas and sacred works justify the cost.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 6, 2016
They would play something like a dozen pieces each: preludes and fugues, chorales, chorale preludes, sonatas, concerti, variations, and “free” works drawn from Bach’s five decades as a working organist.
From The New Yorker ● Dec. 3, 2014
He writes fugues for organs and sonatas for violin solo under the influence of Bach, concerti grossi under the influence of Haendel, variations under that of Mozart, sonatas under that of Brahms.
From Musical Portraits Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers by Paul Rosenfeld
At the retreat, no one was writing timeless concertos or the world’s greatest tragedies.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 29, 2026
A festival that celebrates one of the country's most popular composers Sir Malcolm Arnold will mark its 20th year by playing 20 of his concertos.
From BBC ● Oct. 18, 2025
Phil, Chin’s 2014 Clarinet Concerto and a pair of Brahms concertos.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 5, 2025
The composer Olga Neuwirth doesn’t tend to call her works anything as straightforward as symphonies or concertos.
From New York Times ● Apr. 21, 2024
Soft piano or violin concertos with orchestral accompaniments work well.
From "Music and the Child" by Natalie Sarrazin
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
