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Turning a melody upside down — where the original goes up, the inversion goes down by the same interval, and vice versa.
Inversion gives you a mirror image of your theme. Every ascending interval becomes a descending one. In fugue, the inverted subject can appear as a new entry. In development sections, inversion provides fresh material from existing themes. Test your themes to see if they invert well.
Bach's "The Art of Fugue" — many contrapuncti feature the main subject in inversion, sometimes combined with the original form.
Inversion is one of 1760 terms in the Gradus musical dictionary: the words, abbreviations and instrument names that appear in printed scores, plus the vocabulary composers use to talk about them.
Browse the full dictionary →