page_title: Period (music)
section_title: Sub-Saharan music and music of the African diaspora
hierarchical_section_title: Period (music) / Sub-Saharan music and music of the African diaspora
caption_attribution_description: English: standard pattern in 4/4 and 12/8 forms
context_page_description: In music, a period is certain types of recurrence in small-scale formal structure. In twentieth-century music scholarship, the term is usually used as defined by the Oxford Companion to Music: "a period consists of two phrases, antecedent and consequent, each of which begins with the same basic motif." Earlier usage varied somewhat, but usually referred to similar notions of symmetry, recurrence, and closure. The concept of a musical period originates in comparisons between music structure and rhetoric at least as early as the 16th century.
caption: Period in a single bar. Standard pattern written in simple meter (4/4) and compound meter (12/8). About this soundPlay duple (help·info), About this soundPlay triple (help·info), and About this soundPlay both (help·info) for comparison.
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