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musical composition for performance by a number of different instruments; orchestration; instrumental composition; composition for an orchestra or military band.

A performer on a musical instrument; an instrumentalist.

A short piece of instrumental music played between the parts of a song or cantata, or the acts of a drama; especially, in church music, a short passage played by the organist between the stanzas of a hymn, or in German chorals after each line.

The expression of ideas by writing, or any other instrumentality.

es; property, revenue, or the like, considered as the condition of easy livelihood, or an instrumentality at command for effecting any purpose; disposable force or substance. Your means are very slender, and your waste is great. Shak.

Hence: Agency; instrumentality. The ordinary ministry of second causes. Atterbury. The wicked ministry of arms. Dryden.

Produced by natural organs, as those of the human throat, in distinction from instrumental music.

ht piece, or serenade. The name is now used for a certain graceful and expressive form of instrumental composition, as the nocturne for orchestra in Mendelsohn's "Midsummer-Night's Dream" music.

tions, afterward by the Romans to persons of distinction, and by the moderns to a band of instrumental musicians.

Instrumental; acting as instruments of nature or of art to a certain destined function or end. [R.] Those organic arts which enable men to discourse and write perspicuously. Milton.

, or peculiar part, of man's constitution by which he has knowledge through the medium or instrumentality of the bodily organs; the act of apperhending material objects or qualities through the senses; -- distinguished from conception. Sir W. Hamilton. Matter hath no life nor perception, and is not conscious of its own…

To cause to be preceded; to preface; to introduce; -- used with by or with before the instrumental object. [R.] It is usual to precede hostilities by a public declaration. Kent.

factors in the production of other goods, such as tools and raw material; -- called also instrumental goods, auxiliary goods, intermediate goods, or goods of the second and higher orders, and disting. from consumers' goods.

performance, or entertainment; a preliminary sketch. Programme music (Mus.), descriptive instrumental music which requires an argument or programme to explain the meaning of its several movements.

A quartet; -- applied chiefly to instrumental compositions.

A vocal or instrumental performance by one person; -- distinguished from concert; as, a song recital; an organ, piano, or violin recital.

A short intermediate symphony, or instrumental passage, in the course of a vocal piece; an interlude.

A short lyric tale set to music; a song or short instrumental piece in ballad style; a romanza.

A composition, vocal or instrumental, commonly of a lively, cheerful character, in which the first strain recurs after each of the other strains. "The Rondo-form was the earliest and most frequent definite mold for musical construction." Grove.

the capacity of receiving impressions from external objects; capable of perceiving by the instrumentality of the proper organs; liable to be affected physsically or mentally; impressible. Would your cambric were sensible as your finger. Shak.