A museme is a minimal unit of

music Music is generally defined as the art of arranging sound to create some combination of form, harmony, melody, rhythm or otherwise expressive content. Exact definitions of music vary considerably around the world, though it is an aspect ...

al meaning, analogous to a

morpheme A morpheme is the smallest meaningful Constituent (linguistics), constituent of a linguistic expression. The field of linguistics, linguistic study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology (linguistics), morphology. In English, morphemes are ...

linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...

, "the basic unit of musical expression which in the framework of one given musical system is not further divisible without destruction of meaning." A museme may: :be broken down into component parts which are not in themselves meaningful within the framework of the musical language...but are nevertheless basic elements (not units) of musical expression which, when altered, may be compared to the phonemes of speech in that they alter the museme (morpheme) of which they are part and may thereby also alter its meaning. The term was brought to popularity by

Philip Tagg Philip Tagg (born 1944 in Oundle, Northamptonshire, UK) is a British musicologist, writer and educator. He is co-founder of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM) and author of several influential books on popular mu ...

, derived from the work of

Charles Seeger Charles Louis Seeger Jr. (December 14, 1886 – February 7, 1979) was an American musicologist, composer, teacher, and folklorist. He was the father of the American folk singers Pete Seeger (1919–2014), Peggy Seeger (b. 1935), and Mike Seeger ( ...

. Musematic repetition ("repetition of musemes") is simple

repetition Repetition may refer to: * Repetition (rhetorical device), repeating a word within a short space of words *Repetition (bodybuilding), a single cycle of lifting and lowering a weight in strength training *Working title for the 1985 slasher film '' ...

"at the level of the short figure, often used to generate an entire structural framework." and contrasted with discursive repetition, in which the repetition is not so precise.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Museme Musical terminology

See also

References