accent

In music, the stress or emphasis on individual notes or passages. Accents may occur naturally in the music. For example, in 4/4 the main accent falls on the first beat, and a secondary accent, less strongly stressed, falls on the third beat. This is known as metrical accent. Adding loudness to a note is known as dynamic accent and is marked by symbols such as > or with letters such as sf (sforzando) or fz (forzando).