ground bass

Related to ground bass: ritornello

ground bass

A musical phrase played on the bass that repeats consistently throughout a piece of music (unlike the varied phrases that are played by the other instruments in the composition). While you play the ground bass, the piano will play the melody, and then the choir will come in.
See also: bass, ground
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.
See also:
  • play by ear
  • play it by ear
  • play something by ear
  • close of play
  • play off
  • double play
  • walk on stage and off again
  • play as
  • fair play to someone
  • state of play
References in periodicals archive
As in period 17, the 2+3+3 dance phrasing finds support in the melodic phrasing, tugging against the four-bar phrasing implications of harmony and ground bass. But at the same time that the dance acknowledges time perception articulated by the music, it creates its own independent manner of measuring and shaping time.
The passacaille in Lully's 'Armide': phrase structure in the choreography and the music
The thesis is not overstressed, it runs along as a sort of ground bass to emerge pretty triumphant at the end.
Reconstructing Beckett: Language for Being in Samuel Beckett's Fiction
Buxtehude's lilting Jesu, meines Lebens Leben, marked by a persistent but captivating ground bass, opens the program.
The Heart's Refuge
The composer's Seventh Symphony proved distasteful to some of the critics of his day, with its monotonous ground bass in the first movement and obsessive rhythms in the finale.
Ovation for a sheer Beethoven triumph
Appropriately, it is followed by a thrilling ciaccona (played with great impulse and wit) which is based on the ground bass known to all Monteverdi lovers as that which underpins the favourite vocal duet, Zefiro torna.
Kapsberger: Libro Primo d'Intavolatura di Lauto
Transparent though her dancing is, she risked being outshone by a dazzling quartet Deborah Bull and Leanne Benjamin with Stuart Cassidy and William Trevitt) moving across the stage to a ground bass of funky corps dancers.
Mr Worldly Wise