A museme is a minimal unit of musical meaning, analogous to a morpheme in linguistics, "the basic unit of musical expression which in the framework of one given musical system is not further divisible without destruction of meaning." A museme may:
The term was brought to popularity by Philip Tagg,[1][2] derived from the work of Charles Seeger.[3]: 189
Musematic repetition ("repetition of musemes"[3]: 269 ) is simple repetition "at the level of the short figure, often used to generate an entire structural framework."[3]: 189 and contrasted with discursive repetition, in which the repetition is not so precise.