Duet, Trio, Quartet, Quintet, Sextet, etc. Why is “trio” in here instead of tritet?
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Blame Vivaldi.
Most of music terms come from italian, that in turn comes from latin (mostly) and greek (a little bit).
Trio is (and used to be) the most common way to describe a group of three people (trio, followed by terzetto, but terzet is not a nice sounding word in english).
On the other hand there isn’t (and wasn’t) any way to say quartet, quintet etc in italian other than quartetto, quintetto etc.
Why is this the case in italian? Hard to tell, language is complex.
But english (and all western music) mostly inherited this jargon from the italian of the late 1600.
Blame Vivaldi.
Most of music terms come from italian, that in turn comes from latin (mostly) and greek (a little bit).
Trio is (and used to be) the most common way to describe a group of three people (trio, followed by terzetto, but terzet is not a nice sounding word in english).
On the other hand there isn’t (and wasn’t) any way to say quartet, quintet etc in italian other than quartetto, quintetto etc.
Why is this the case in italian? Hard to tell, language is complex.
But english (and all western music) mostly inherited this jargon from the italian of the late 1600.
Others have already pointed out that the words you gave are not exactly the correct sequence (as it would be duo, not duet), but another note:
A duet, but with three, would not be tritet, but triet. That extra t would be very random.
Others have already pointed out that the words you gave are not exactly the correct sequence (as it would be duo, not duet), but another note:
A duet, but with three, would not be tritet, but triet. That extra t would be very random.
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