Thesaurus

(n) : a contrapuntal piece of music wherein a particular melody is played in a number of voices. At the beginning of the piece, each voice is introduced in turn by playing the melody, after which it consists of a mix of counter-melodies, accompaniment passages, periods of rest, and returns to the main melody (often transformed in some way). Melody can be diminution and/or augmentation of the original melody; anything in literature, poetry, film, painting, etc., that resembles a fugue in structure or in its elaborate complexity and formality