music Music is the arrangement of sound to create some combination of Musical form, form, harmony, melody, rhythm, or otherwise Musical expression, expressive content. Music is generally agreed to be a cultural universal that is present in all hum ...

, a subject is the material, usually a recognizable

melody A melody (), also tune, voice, or line, is a linear succession of musical tones that the listener perceives as a single entity. In its most literal sense, a melody is a combination of Pitch (music), pitch and rhythm, while more figurativel ...

, upon which part or all of a composition is based. In forms other than the

fugue In classical music, a fugue (, from Latin ''fuga'', meaning "flight" or "escape""Fugue, ''n''." ''The Concise Oxford English Dictionary'', eleventh edition, revised, ed. Catherine Soanes and Angus Stevenson (Oxford and New York: Oxford Universit ...

, this may be known as the theme.

Characteristics

A subject may be perceivable as a complete musical expression in itself, separate from the work in which it is found. In contrast to an idea or motif, a subject is usually a complete

phrase In grammar, a phrasecalled expression in some contextsis a group of words or singular word acting as a grammatical unit. For instance, the English language, English expression "the very happy squirrel" is a noun phrase which contains the adject ...

or period. The ''Encyclopédie Fasquelle'' defines a theme (subject) as " y element, motif, or small musical piece that has given rise to some variation becomes thereby a theme". Thematic changes and processes are often structurally important, and theorists such as Rudolph Reti have created analysis from a purely thematic perspective.

Fred Lerdahl Alfred Whitford (Fred) Lerdahl (born March 10, 1943) is an American music theorist and composer. Best known for his work on musical grammar, Music cognition, cognition, Rhythm, rhythmic theory, and pitch space, he and the linguist Ray Jackendoff d ...

describes thematic relations as "associational" and thus outside his cognitive-based generative theory's scope of analysis.

In different types of music

Music based on a single theme is called monothematic, while music based on several themes is called polythematic. Most

s are monothematic and most pieces in

sonata form The sonata form (also sonata-allegro form or first movement form) is a musical form, musical structure generally consisting of three main sections: an exposition, a development, and a recapitulation. It has been used widely since the middle of t ...

are polythematic. In the exposition of a fugue, the principal theme (usually called the subject) is announced successively in each

voice The human voice consists of sound made by a human being using the vocal tract, including talking, singing, laughing, crying, screaming, shouting, humming or yelling. The human voice frequency is specifically a part of human sound produ ...

– sometimes in a transposed form. In some compositions, a principal subject is announced and then a second

, sometimes called a countersubject or secondary theme, may occur. When one of the sections in the exposition of a sonata-form movement consists of several themes or other material, defined by function and (usually) their tonality, rather than by melodic characteristics alone, the term theme group (or subject group) is sometimes used. Music without subjects/themes, or without recognizable, repeating, and developing subjects/themes, is called athematic. Examples include the pre- twelve-tone or early atonal works of

Arnold Schoenberg Arnold Schoenberg or Schönberg (13 September 187413 July 1951) was an Austrian and American composer, music theorist, teacher and writer. He was among the first Modernism (music), modernists who transformed the practice of harmony in 20th-centu ...

Anton Webern Anton Webern (; 3 December 1883 – 15 September 1945) was an Austrian composer, conductor, and musicologist. His music was among the most radical of its milieu in its lyric poetry, lyrical, poetic concision and use of then novel atonality, aton ...

Alban Berg Alban Maria Johannes Berg ( ; ; 9 February 1885 – 24 December 1935) was an Austrian composer of the Second Viennese School. His compositional style combined Romantic lyricism with the twelve-tone technique. Although he left a relatively sma ...

, and Alois Hába. Schoenberg once said that, "intoxicated by the enthusiasm of having freed music from the shackles of tonality, I had thought to find further liberty of expression. In fact, I … believed that now music could renounce motivic features and remain coherent and comprehensible nevertheless". Examples by Schoenberg include '' Erwartung''. Examples in the works of later composers include '' Polyphonie X'' and '' Structures I'' by

Pierre Boulez Pierre Louis Joseph Boulez (; 26 March 19255 January 2016) was a French composer, conductor and writer, and the founder of several musical institutions. He was one of the dominant figures of post-war contemporary classical music. Born in Montb ...

, Sonata for Two Pianos by Karel Goeyvaerts, and '' Punkte'' by Karlheinz Stockhausen.

Countersubject

In a

, when the first voice has completed the subject, and the second voice is playing the answer, the first voice usually continues by playing a new theme that is called the 'countersubject'. The countersubject usually contrasts with the subject/answer phrase shape. In a fugue, a countersubject is "the continuation of counterpoint in the

that began with the subject", occurring against the answer. It is not usually regarded as an essential feature of fugue, however. The typical fugue opening resembles the following: Soprano voice: Answer Alto voice: Subject Countersubject Since a countersubject may be used both above and below the answer, countersubjects are usually

invertible In mathematics, the concept of an inverse element generalises the concepts of opposite () and reciprocal () of numbers. Given an operation denoted here , and an identity element denoted , if , one says that is a left inverse of , and that ...

, all perfect fifths inverting to perfect fourths which required resolution.

References

Sources * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Characteristics

In different types of music

Countersubject

See also

References

Further reading