Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2021 July 19

= July 19 =

Musical lines and sets
The introduction to Retrograde (music) says that it is a kind of musical "line", but that term is wikilinked to Set (music). The article on sets does not mention the word "line" anywhere. Even more confusingly, Line (music) is a redirect to Part (music). So what is the difference between a line, a set and a part? Many thanks, --Viennese Waltz 06:28, 19 July 2021 (UTC)
 * The term line is given as a synonym in the article on melody, which to me sounds plausible. --Wrongfilter (talk) 06:48, 19 July 2021 (UTC)
 * And melodic line is a commonly used disambiguation of the term line. (If a singer forgets their lines, what did they forget?) It is even used further on in the article Retrograde (music): "Bach’s Musical Offering includes a two-voice canon in which the second voice performs the melodic line of first voice backwards:". I think both Melodic line and Musical line should redirect to Melody. --Lambiam 07:17, 19 July 2021 (UTC)
 * I would assume that a singer that forgot their lines was unable to remember the words. --Khajidha (talk) 13:52, 19 July 2021 (UTC)
 * As would I ;). However, I would not find it surprising to learn that spoken performing arts and musical performing arts share some common jargon terms with different meanings between the two. Firejuggler86 (talk) 19:34, 21 July 2021 (UTC)
 * I don't recall ever having heard a reference to a singer forgetting their line. I would expect to hear either "their words" or "their part". Note that an actor's lines are by default in the plural: you can refer to an actor forgetting their line, but that would be a marked case where the specific line forgotten, or the specific occasion on which a particular line was missed, was salient. --ColinFine (talk) 10:54, 23 July 2021 (UTC)
 * They also forget the tune.  See  for why. 92.8.221.69 (talk) 15:22, 23 July 2021 (UTC)