In its broadest sense, repetition of the melodic contour of one part by another, often at a different pitch. Usually, in a passage referred to as ‘imitative’, the repeated passages are close enough together for the second part to overlap with significant material in the first, although the term is sometimes used to describe echoing or dialogue-like repetitions among parts (such as those between woodwind and strings in Mozart’s Symphony in G minor k550, first movement, bars 153–64), or examples of Voice-exchange (e.g. between the upper voices of some 12th-century organa tripla and quadrupla). When the material of the succeeding voice follows exactly that of the preceding one for a considerable time, the term ‘canon’ (see Canon (i)) is used; when an entire piece is based on the imitation of a single, fairly concise theme in a strongly tonal context, the terms ‘fugue’ or ‘fugato’ may be used (but see Fugue, §1, for the criteria that must be met before this term is correctly applied). The term ‘imitation’ is now normally reserved for fairly casual instances of the device, particularly in works of an otherwise non-contrapuntal nature.
The procedure of imitation has a long history. It can be found in organa of the Notre Dame school (e.g. Perotinus's Sederunt), in conductus (e.g. Procurans odium) and in motets (S'on me regarde/Prenez en garde/Hé mi enfant) and occasionally it appears to be the central organizational procedure, as in the first Tanquam clausula in I-Fl Plut.29.1, f.47v). The technique was intrinsic to certain medieval forms, such as the Rota (e.g. Sumer is icumen in), the Italian Trecento Caccia and the related French Chace. In the early Renaissance the technique of imitation was only one of many contrapuntal devices, favoured by, for example, Ciconia and Hugo de Lantins, but it became increasingly important after the middle of the 15th century. The generation of Josquin, Compère and Isaac made imitation a basic part of their texture, particularly so-called Paired imitation. By the middle of the 16th century, in the works of Willaert, Clemens non Papa, Gombert and Morales, the technique of ‘through imitation’ (Ger. Durchimitation) had become the main structural principle of composition. Gombert’s Super flumina Babylonis and Palestrina’s Sicut cervus desiderat, for example, consist of successive ‘points of imitation’, each with its own words, the points after the first one usually being dovetailed into the preceding contrapuntal texture. Imitation was an important organizational element in 16th-century instrumental music as well, particularly in forms such as the Capriccio, Ricercare and Canzona that do not derive from dance or theatrical music. The device of imitation (as distinct from canon, fugue and fugato) has retained its currency in musical language as a means of introducing unity, particularly in non-tonal music of the 20th century, or variety in the restatement of a theme, or to produce an effect of psychological intensity.
In theoretical writing, imitation was first mentioned by Ramis de Pareia (Musica practica, 1482), who applied it to both strict and free repetitions of interval progressions. Pietro Aaron (De institutione harmonica, 1516) defined fugue and ‘imitatio’ in a single passage, as though they were interchangeable, but later (Lucidario, 1545) he declared that imitation was an intervallically inexact repetition. Zarlino (Le istitutioni harmoniche, 1558, iii) established imitation as the broader category of composition to which fugue belonged; only if the second entry occurred at perfect intervals (unison, 4th, 5th or octave) was the term ‘fugue’ to be used. Aaron, Zarlino and other 16th-century theorists also used the term ‘imitatio’ for the procedure now called parody (see Parody (i)), and for the aesthetic concept of ‘imitazione della natura’ borrowed from the visual arts (but having relatively little to do with musical imitation). In 1622 Lodovico Zacconi (Prattica di musica, seconda parte, iv) clearly defined imitation as it is now regarded, applying the term to situations in which the leading part is followed only in a general way, and Purcell’s edition of John Playford’s Introduction to the Skill of Music (1694) referred to imitation as ‘a diminutive sort of Fugueing … in some few notes as you find occasion’. Purcell’s definition was corroborated in the final distinction between fugue and imitation drawn by Rameau (Traité d’harmonie, 1722), who recommended that ‘imitation’ be the term for limited, casual and essentially decorative application of the device. Theoretical discussions in the 19th and 20th centuries deal with imitation largely in historical terms, as an important aspect of the compositional procedures of the Renaissance and the Baroque.
See also Counterpoint, esp. §§8 and 9.
SUZANNE G. CUSICK