Musical term
An example of
melodic inversion from the
fugue in D minor from
J. S. Bach's
The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1.
[1] Though they start on different pitches (A and E), the second highlighted melody is the upside-down version of the first highlighted melody. That is, when the first goes
up, the second goes
down the same number of
diatonic steps (with some
chromatic alteration); and when the first goes
down, the second goes
up the same number of steps.
In music theory, an inversion is a rearrangement of the top-to-bottom elements in an interval, a chord, a melody, or a group of contrapuntal lines of music.[2] In each of these cases, "inversion" has a distinct but related meaning. The concept of inversion also plays an important role in musical set theory.