a cappella

Music performed a cappella ( AH kə-PEL-ə, UK also AK ə-PEL-ə; Italian: [a kkapˈpɛlla]; lit. 'in [the style of] the chapel'), less commonly spelled a capella in English, is music performed by a singer or a singing group without any instrumental accompaniment. The term a cappella was originally intended to differentiate between Renaissance polyphonic and Baroque concertato musical styles. In the 19th century, a renewed interest in Renaissance polyphony, coupled with an ignorance of the fact that vocal parts were often doubled by instrumentalists, led to the term coming to mean unaccompanied vocal music. The term is also used, rarely, as a synonym for alla breve.¶

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “A cappella”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence.¶

a cappella is group or solo singing without instrumental sound, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition.¹¶

The source record links this tradition to 31 external registers, which can be verified through the citation.¹¶