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Repetition (music)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Repetition is important in music, where sounds or sequences are often repeated.

It may be called restatement, such as the restatement of a theme. While it plays
a role in all music, with noise and musical tones lying along a spectrum from
irregular to periodic sounds,(Moravcsik, 114)(Rajagopal,) it is especially
prominent in specific styles. A literal repetition of a musical passage is often
indicated by the use of a repeat sign, or the instructions da capo or dal segno.

Repetition is a part and parcel of symmetry—and of establishing Repeat sign

motifs and hooks. You find a melodic or rhythmic figure that you
like, and you repeat it throughout the course of the melody or song.
This sort of repetition...helps to unify your melody; it's the melodic
equivalent of a steady drumbeat, and serves as an identifying factor
for listeners. However, too much of a good thing can get annoying. If
you repeat your figure too often, it will start to bore the listener.
Motivic repetition in Beethoven's
— (Miller, 106) Sonata in F Major, op. 10 no.
2.(Jonas 1982, p.3) Play

Memory affects the music-listening experience so

profoundly that it would be not be hyperbole to say
that without memory there would be no music. As
scores of theorists and philosophers have
noted...music is based on repetition. Music works
because we remember the tones we have just heard
and are relating them to the ones that are just now
being played. Those groups of tones—phrases
—might come up later in the piece in a variation or
transposition that tickles our memory system at the
same time as it activates our emotional
centers...Repetition, when done skillfully by a master
composer, is emotionally satisfying to our brains,
and makes the listening experience as pleasurable as
it is.

— (Levitin, 162-163)

Theodor Adorno criticized repetition and popular music as being psychotic and infantile. In
contrast, Richard Middleton (1990) argues that "while repetition is a feature of all music, of any
sort, a high level of repetition may be a specific mark of 'the popular'" and that this allows an,
"enabling" of "an inclusive rather than exclusive audience"(Middleton 1990, p. 139). "There is no

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universal norm or convention" for the amount or type of repetition, "all music
contains repetition - but in differing amounts and of an enormous variety of
types." This is influenced by "the political economy of production; the 'psychic
economy' of individuals; the musico-technological media of production and Repeat sign
reproduction (oral, written, electric); and the weight of the syntactic conventions with first and
of music-historical traditions" (Middleton 1990, p. 268). second
endings
Thus Middleton (also 1999) distinguishes between discursive and musematic
repetition. A museme is a minimal unit of meaning, analogous to morpheme in
linguistics, and musematic repetition is "at the level of the short figure, often
used to generate an entire structural framework." Discursive repetition is "at the
level of the phrase or section, which generally functions as part of a larger-scale
'argument'." He gives "paradigmatic case[s]": the riff and the phrase. Musematic
repetition includes circularity, synchronic relations, and openness. Discursive
repetition includes linearity, rational control, and self-sufficiency. Discursive Segno
repetition is most often nested (hierarchically) in larger repetitions and may be
thought of as sectional, while musematic repetition may be thought of as
additive. (p. 146-8) Put more simply, musematic repetition is simple repetition of precisely the
same musical figure, such as a repeated chorus. Discursive repetition is, "both repetitive and
non-repetitive," (Lott, p. 174), such as the repetition of the same rhythmic figure with different
notes.

During the Classical era, musical concerts were highly expected events, and because someone who
liked a piece of music could not listen to it again, musicians had to think of a way to make the
music sink in. Therefore, they would repeat parts of their song at times, making music like sonata
very repetitive, without being dull.(Bowen)

Repetition is important in musical form. The repetition of any section of ternary form results in
expanded ternary form and in binary form the repetition of the first section at the end of the second
results in rounded binary form.(Benward & Saker, 315) Schenker argued that musical technique's,
"most striking and distinctive characteristic" is repetition (Kivy, 327) while Boulez argues that a
high level of interest in repetition and variation (analogy and difference, recognition and the
unknown) is characteristic of all musicians, especially contemporary, and the dialectic
[conversation] between the two creates musical form.(Campbell, 154)

Types of repetition include "exact repetition" (aaa), "repetition after digression" (aba or aba'), and
"nonrepetition" (abcd). Copland and Slatkin offer "Au clair de la lune" and "Ach! du lieber
Augustin" Play as examples of aba, and "The Seeds of Love" as an example of the last.(Copland
& Slatkin, [unpaginated (https://books.google.com/books?id=xRI18t1I6xEC&
printsec=frontcover&dq=Copland,+Aaron+%26+Slatkin,+Leonard+
(2011).+What+to+Listen+for+in+Music&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj35Y-
ltYnRAhUqxoMKHT1sB8QQ6AEIGjAA#v=onepage&q=repetition&f=false)])

At the tone level, repetition creates a drone.

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See also
Repetitive music
Cycle (music)
Groove (popular music)
Imitation (music)
Melodic pattern "Au clair de la lune", repetition
Ostinato after digression.(Copland &
Paradigmatic analysis Slatkin) Play
"Ach! du lieber Augustin",
repetition after digression. Drone music
(Copland & Slatkin) Play Repeat sign
Reprise
Sequence (music)
Abbreviation (music)

References "The Seeds of Love" (English

folk song), nonrepetition.
Benward & Saker (2003). Music: In Theory and Practice,
(Copland & Slatkin) Play
Vol. I. Seventh Edition. ISBN 978-0-07-294262-0.
Bowen, Nathan. "Double Expositions and the use of
repetition in Classical Music". Nathan Bowen's Blog. Blog Archive. Retrieved 6 March 2011.
Campbell, Edward (2010). Boulez, Music and Philosophy. ISBN 978-0-521-86242-4. Cites
Boulez 2005b, 156 and 239.
Copland, Aaron & Slatkin, Leonard (2011). What to Listen for in Music. ISBN
978-1-101-51314-9.
Kivy, Peter (1993). The Fine Art of Repetition: Essays in the Philosophy of Music. ISBN
978-0-521-43598-7.
Levitin, Daniel J. (2007). This is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession.
ISBN 978-0-452-28852-2.
Lott, Eric (1993). Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class.
Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-509641-X. Cited in Middleton.
Margulis, Elizabeth Hellmuth (2013). "On Repeat: How Music Plays the Mind."
(http://global.oup.com/academic/product/on-repeat-9780199990825) Oxford University Press.
ISBN 978-0199990825.
Middleton, Richard (1990/2002). Studying Popular Music. Philadelphia: Open University
Press. ISBN 0-335-15275-9.
Middleton, Richard (1999). "Form". Key Terms in Popular Music and Culture, Horner, Bruce
and Swiss, Thomas, eds. Malden, Massachusetts. ISBN 0-631-21263-9.
Miller, Michael (2005). The Complete Idiot's Guide to Music Theory. ISBN
978-1-59257-437-7.
Moravcsik, Michael J. (2001). Musical Sound: An Introduction to the Physics of Music. ISBN
978-0-306-46710-3.

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Jonas, Oswald (1982). Introduction to the Theory of Heinrich Schenker (1934: Das Wesen des
musikalischen Kunstwerks: Eine Einführung in Die Lehre Heinrich Schenkers). Trans. John
Rothgeb. ISBN 0-582-28227-6.
Rajagopal, K. (2007). Engineering Physics. ISBN 978-81-203-3286-7.

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