Reference
Glossary
Terms are defined narrowly enough that a reader can test whether the claimed operation actually occurs.
Terms
- Aggregate
- The complete bounded set of available materials.
- Row
- An aggregate whose order carries compositional significance.
- Field
- A bounded set whose members may recur flexibly and unequally.
- Prime statement
- The first materially consequential presentation.
- Partition
- Distribution of materials among voices, rooms, documents, or registers.
- Transposition
- Return of a relation in another register.
- Inversion
- Reversal of direction or priority, not mere negation.
- Retrograde
- Retrospective order moving from consequence toward prior material.
- Retrograde inversion
- Reversal of order and valence together; used cautiously as an interpretive analogue.
- Invariant
- A relation recognizable through transformation.
- Countervoice
- A distinct habit of attention that answers and is answerable.
- Tonic
- A stable center of hierarchy or return; the prose refuses a permanent one.
- Rest
- A prepared non-event with duration and consequence.
- Stretto
- Accelerated overlapping entry of established materials.
- Recapitulation
- Collective return that need not resolve difference.
- Cadence
- A stopping condition shaped by what has and has not been completed.
- NO EQUATION
- The ethical prohibition against converting parallel relation into identity.
- Protected recurrence
- A formulation or structure kept recognizable across the two language editions.
- Structural correspondence
- Paired units that perform the same formal work without sentence-level identity.
- Authority status
- The label distinguishing textual fact, authorial design, interpretation, and open question.
Terminological discipline
“Serial,” “row,” “inversion,” and “retrograde” are not praise words. They are claims about relation and order. The atlas uses ordinary terms such as “return,” “parallel,” or “transformation” when the stricter musical analogue cannot be established.