Trope (music)

A trope or tropus may be a variety of different things in medieval, 20th-, and 21st-century music.

The term trope derives from the Greek τρόπος (tropos), "a turn, a change" (Liddell and Scott 1889), related to the root of the verb τρέπειν (trepein), "to turn, to direct, to alter, to change" (Anon. 2009). The Latinised form of the word is tropus.