The answer is OPUS, four letters. Opus is simply Latin for work, which makes it the most general answer a clue this broad can want. Longer slots usually want a named form instead: ETUDE and RONDO at five squares, and SONATA at six, which British quick crosswords give for Musical piece time after time.
Opus means work, and the plural is a trap
In Latin, opus means work or labor, and English uses it for a single composition, especially one given a number in a composer’s catalog. The Latin plural is opera, which English tends to avoid because opera has come to name a dramatic musical genre of its own, so dictionaries also list opuses. The same word sits inside magnum opus, the phrase for an artist’s greatest work.
That generality is exactly why the grid likes it. OPUS can stand for a symphony, a song cycle or a set of piano pieces, so a constructor can clue it as a musical piece without committing to any form. When the slot is four squares and the clue gives no hint about instruments, voices or structure, OPUS is the first word to try.
Opus numbers were often a publisher’s idea
The numbers printed after Op. on sheet music look like a composer’s own running count, but often they are not. Numbering works in order dates from 17th-century Italy, especially Venice, and in the 18th century publishers usually assigned opus numbers when they issued groups of similar pieces, typically in sets of three, six or twelve. As a result the numbers were not usually in chronological order, and unpublished works usually had none.
Beethoven’s unnumbered pieces are cataloged under WoO, German shorthand for work without opus number. Mozart and Bach are usually identified by separate catalogs instead, the Köchel numbers for Mozart and the BWV for Bach. The system could get messy, too. Publishers and composers sometimes juggled numbers for business reasons, and Dvořák’s Op. 12 was assigned, one after another, to five different works, among them an opera, a concert overture and a string quartet.
Musical forms by square count
If four squares is wrong, match the slot to a form:
| Letters | Answer | What kind of piece |
|---|---|---|
| 3 | RAG | A composition in ragtime |
| 4 | OPUS | Any numbered work, the default |
| 4 | SOLO | A piece for one performer |
| 4 | REED | Piece read as part of a woodwind |
| 5 | ETUDE | A study built around one technique |
| 5 | RONDO | A main theme that keeps coming back |
| 5 | MOTET | A choral work on a sacred text |
| 6 | SONATA | Played rather than sung |
| 7 | PRELUDE | An opening piece |
| 8 | OVERTURE | The introduction to a longer work |
| 8 | SERENADE | Night music, originally played outdoors |
Sonata was named for not being sung
SONATA is Italian for sounded, from a verb meaning to sound, and it entered English in the 1690s as a name for a piece of instrumental music. Its opposite number is cantata, a piece that is sung. By the middle of the 18th century the word had narrowed to large works in three or four movements in related keys, especially for the piano.
The same Italian habit named the toccata, from a verb meaning to touch, a keyboard piece written to show off the performer’s touch and technique. Sounded, sung and touched: three pieces named for how they are produced rather than what they contain. MOTET took a different route: it most likely comes from an Old French diminutive of mot, word, and it names a choral piece on a sacred text.
Etude and rondo describe a job and a shape
ETUDE is French for study. It came into English in 1837 for a piece designed to exercise a technical difficulty, and the etudes of Chopin did much to popularize it. RONDO describes structure instead: one principal theme that returns at least once, with the name traced back through Italian and French to an Old French word for a little round.
The two often compete for the same five squares, and they share only the D in the fourth position, so almost any crossing settles it. If the clue mentions practice, study or an exercise, write ETUDE. If it mentions a recurring theme, try RONDO first.
