Word of the day: ostinato

The word of the day is ostinato:

1. a constantly recurring melodic fragment.

1876, from It. ostinato, lit. "obstinate, persistent."

(http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/ostinato)

"As so often in Welles’s work, the imagery is accented by the sound: amid the noise of writhing bodies, we hear an ostinato of crickets."

 - Alex Ross, "The Shadow: A hundred years of Orson Welles", 7 December 2015 The New Yorker (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/12/07/the-shadow)