Obbligato

In Western classical music, obbligato (Italian pronunciation: [obbliˈɡaːto], also spelled obligato[1]) usually describes a musical line that is in some way indispensable in performance. Its opposite is the marking ad libitum. It can also be used, more specifically, to indicate that a passage of music was to be played exactly as written, or only by the specified instrument, without changes or omissions. The word is borrowed from Italian (an adjective meaning mandatory; from Latin obligatus p.p. of obligare, to oblige); the spelling obligato is not acceptable in British English,[2] but it is often used as an alternative spelling in the US.[3] The word can stand on its own, in English, as a noun, or appear as a modifier in a noun phrase (e.g. organ obbligato).

The term has also come to refer to a countermelody.[4]

  1. ^ obligato in dictionary at Merriam-Webster website
  2. ^ "Obbligato" in The Oxford Dictionary of Music, Oxford University Press: Michael Kennedy (ed.), 1985
  3. ^ "Wordnik". Wordnik.com. Retrieved 14 April 2018.
  4. ^ Latham, Alison, ed. (2011). "obbligato". The Oxford Companion to Music (Revised 1st ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199579037.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)