Largo Slow tempo. Medieval The period of music history from about 500-1450. Most music that has come dow n to us from this era is music of the early Christian church. Modern The period in music history from about 1900 to the present. Movement A section of a longer musical piece.
Movements are complete musical statements separated by silence.
A typical symphony or piece of chamber music is made up of three or four movements. A piece for eight instruments or voices. Mendelssohn and Schubert both wrote famous octets. The term means work, and is used by composers or publishers to show the chronological order of a composer's pieces, e.g. Op. 1, Op. 2, etc. Sometimes, as in the case of Beethoven , early works were published late in the composer's life, and bear deceptively high opus numbers.