the.com/rhapsody
A piece of music too excited to pick one theme and stick with it.
means An effusive, enthusiastic outpouring of feeling or praise — in music, a free-form piece that follows mood rather than structure.
from From Greek *rhapsōidia*, 'a stitching together of songs' — from *rhaptein* (to stitch or sew) plus *ōidē* (song, the root of 'ode'). It originally named the craft of rhapsodes, performers who stitched together epic verses (think chunks of Homer) into a single recitation. The 'stitched' sense faded, and by the time the word reached music and everyday speech, it had come to mean an emotional outpouring too carried away to hold a single thread — the patchwork quality remembered only as enthusiasm.
- origin
- Greek for stitching songs together
- form
- no fixed structure, unlike a sonata
- famous case
- Bohemian Rhapsody mocks opera and rock equally
- mood
- meant to sound improvised, rarely is