musical theme

1. 1.

   (music) melodic subject of a musical composition

   “the theme is announced in the first measures”

   “the accompanist picked up the idea and elaborated it”

   Synonymsthememelodic themeidea

   Broadertune

   Narrowermotifstatementvariation

   music

Questions about musical theme

What does musical theme mean?

musical theme means "(music) melodic subject of a musical composition".

What is another word for musical theme?

Close synonyms include theme, melodic theme, idea. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is musical theme a common word?

musical theme is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.