stretto

The Italian term stretto (plural: stretti) has two distinct meanings in music: In a fugue, stretto () is the imitation of the subject in close succession, so that the answer enters before the subject is completed. In non-fugal compositions, a stretto (also sometimes spelled stretta) is a passage, often at the end of an aria or movement, in faster tempo. Examples include the end of Franz Liszt's transcendental etude No.10, the end of the last movement of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony; measure 227 of Chopin's Ballade No. 3; measures 16-18 of his Prelude No. 4 in E minor; and measure 26 of his Etude Op. 10, No. 12, "The Revolutionary."

==Fugal stretto== thumb|420px|Example of stretto in the C-major fugue from Johann Sebastian Bach|J. S. Bach's The Well Tempered Clavier, Book I, BWV 846, mm. 20–23. (subject in blue).|alt=The term stretto comes from the Italian past participle of stringere, and means "narrow", "tight", or "close". It applies in a close succession of statements of the subject in a fugue, especially in the final section. In stretto, the subject is presented in one voice and then imitated in one or more other voices, with the imitation starting before the subject has finished. The subject is therefore superimposed upon itself contrapuntally. Stretto is typically employed near the end of a fugue, where the 'piling-up' of two or more temporally off-set statements of the subject signals the arrival of the fugue's conclusion in climactic fashion.