throughcomposed

Throughcomposed, also spelled through-composed and in German durchkomponiert, denotes a musical setting in which each section of text is set to new music, with little or no exact repetition of earlier material. The defining feature is the absence of recurring musical sections that would characterize strophic forms.

In vocal music, through-composed practice is well suited to narrative or descriptive text, where each line or stanza advances a story or mood in a different musical idea. This contrasts with strophic form, where the same music recurs for multiple stanzas, and with modified strophic form, which alternates between repeated material and new material.

The term began to appear in 19th-century music theory, and the Romantic era popularized the approach in art songs. A frequently cited example is Schubert's Erlkönig (1815), a through-composed setting of Goethe's poem that follows the rapid changes in scene and tension. Other composers who used through-composed settings for songs include Robert Schumann, Hugo Wolf, and later composers such as Debussy and Scriabin, who applied the method to more impressionistic texts.

Although through-composed implies continuous musical development, it can still incorporate recurring motifs or connections across sections. The form is especially common in Lieder and other vocal works that tell a story, but it also appears in programmatic instrumental pieces where the music follows a narrative sequence.

In modern usage, the term is used descriptively rather than as a rigid formal category, and composers may combine through-composition with other forms according to textual and expressive needs.