Repetition
Repetition is the occurrence of an
event which has occurred before.
In poetry, literature and rhetoric, there are several kinds of repetition where words or certain phrases are repeated for a stronger emphasis by the author.
;
Epizeuxis or
palilogia is the repetition of a single word, with no other words in between. : "Words, words, words." (
Hamlet)
Conduplicatio is the repetition of a word in various places throughout a paragraph. : "And the world said, disarm, disclose, or face serious consequences ... and therefore, we worked with the world, we worked to make sure that Saddam Hussein heard the message of the world." (George W. Bush);
Anadiplosis is the repetition of the last word of a preceding clause. : "This, it seemed to him, was the end, the end of a world as he had known it..." (
James Oliver Curwood)
Anaphora is the repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of every clause. : "We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender." (Winston Churchill);
Epistrophe is the repetition of a word or phrase at the end of every clause. : "What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny compared to what lies within us." (
Ralph Waldo Emerson)
Mesodiplosis is the repetition of a word or phrase at the middle of every clause. : "We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed..." (Second Epistle to the Corinthians);
Diaphora is the repetition of a name, first to signify the person or persons it describes, then to signify its meaning. : "For your gods are not gods but man-made idols." (
The Passion of Ss. Sergius and Bacchus)
Repetition is important in music, where sounds or sequences are often repeated. One often stated idea is that repetition should be in balance with the initial statements and
variations in a piece. It may be called
restatement, such as the restatement of a
theme. While it plays a role in all music, in fact most musical sounds are
periodic, it is especially prominent in
minimal music and, its influence, popular music.
Theodor Adorno criticized repetition and
popular music as being psychotic and infantile.
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" (p.139). "There is no 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 reproduction (oral, written, electric); and the weight of the syntactic conventions of music-historical traditions" (ibid, p.268).
Thus Middleton (also 1999) distinguishes between
discursive and musematic repetition. A
museme is a minimal unit of meaning, analgous 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 open-ness. Discursive repetition includes linearity, rational control, and self-sufficiency. Discursive 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.
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.
See also
Groove (popular music),
paradigmatic analysis and
cycle (music).
In
weight training, a repetition (or "rep") is the act of lifting and lowering a weight once, in a controlled manner. A "set" consists of several repetitions performed one after another with no break between them. Novice weight trainers are advised to perform 8 to 12 repetitions per set and 1 to 3 sets per exercise, with short breaks between each set.
The number of repetitions in a period of time is
frequency.
Repetition is part of a
method called the
Meisner technique created by
Sanford Meisner to develop acting skills, specifically the ability to react spontaneously upon impulse, especially those arising from the subtle subtext of the other actor during dialog.
Repetition in music:
*Richard Middleton (1999). "Form".
Key Terms in Popular Music and Culture, Horner, Bruce and Swiss, Thomas, eds. Malden, Massachusetts. ISBN 0631212639.
*Middleton, Richard (1990/2002).
Studying Popular Music. Philadelphia: Open University Press. ISBN 0335152759.
*Lott, Eric (1993).
Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class. Oxford University Press. ISBN 019509641X.
*
Periodic function
