Pronouncing Dictionary of Classical Music & Musicians

Pronouncing the titles of classical music and the names of composers and performers is a daunting task because so many of the words are foreign to us. Adding to the difficulty: names that look familiar are not pronounced as we think we would pronounce them.

This dictionary provides some help in the form of pronunciations by a phonetic system devised by E. Douglas Brown of the staff of WOI Radio at Iowa State University. Many of the pronunciations in the dictionary were derived from tape-recorded pronunciations made by foreign nationals who were speaking their respective native languages.

Originally prepared primarily for the announcing staff of WOI, the dictionary is useful for anyone who wants to "speak classical." See the Preface and Pronunciation Conventions for more information.

How to Use This Classical Dictionary

The classical music pronunciation dictionary includes a PDF for each letter of the alphabet. Although imperfect and far from complete, there are 30,000 entries, A to Z, providing everything you need to know about classical music. Simply click a letter to explore the extensive list of terms within.

   A            B            C            D            E
   F            G            H            I             J
   K            L            M           N           O
   P            Q            R            S            T
   U           V            W           X            Y
   Z

Updates: At present we are leaving the original dictionary as is but collecting errata and addenda on the two HTML pages below:

Corrections – Errata are listed here. Updated Aug. 29, 2008

Addenda – Names and titles not listed in the original dictionary. Updated Sept. 8, 2008

Copyright WOI Radio, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa; and Iowa Public Radio Classical (Second Edition, 2002).