Editing Museme

{{Short description|Basic unit of musical expression}}
A '''museme''' is a minimal unit of [[music]]al meaning, analogous to a [[morpheme]] in [[linguistics]], "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.<ref name=Tagg1979/>{{rp|71}}

The term was brought to popularity by [[Philip Tagg]],<ref name=Tagg1979/><ref name=Tagg2013/> derived from the work of [[Charles Seeger]].<ref name=Middleton1990/>{{rp|189}}

'''Musematic repetition''' ("repetition of musemes"<ref name=Middleton1990/>{{rp|269}}) is simple [[Repetition (music)|repetition]] "at the level of the short figure, often used to generate an entire structural framework."<ref name=Middleton1990/>{{rp|189}} and contrasted with discursive repetition, in which the repetition is not so precise.

==See also== 
*[[Musical analysis]]

==References==
{{reflist|refs=
<ref name=Middleton1990>
{{cite book
  |last=Middleton|first=Richard|author-link=Richard Middleton (musicologist)
  |year=1990
  |title=Studying Popular Music
  |location=Philadelphia
  |publisher=Open University Press
  |isbn=0-335-15275-9
}}
</ref>
<ref name=Tagg1979>
{{cite book
  |last=Tagg
  |first=Philip
  |title=Kojak--50 seconds of television music: toward the analysis of affect in popular music
  |year=1979
  |publisher=Musikvetenskapliga Institutionen
  |series=Studies from the Department of Musicology
  |volume=2
  |isbn=9789172222359
  |url-access=registration
  |url=https://archive.org/details/kojak50secondsof0000tagg
  }}
</ref><ref name=Tagg2013>
{{cite book
  |last=Tagg|first=Philip
  |title=Music's Meanings: A Modern Musicology for Non-Musos
  |publisher=Mass Media's Scholar's Press
  |year=2012
  |isbn=9780970168450
}}
</ref>
}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Museme}}
[[Category:Musical terminology]]