Figure
A group of notes arising from the dissolution of main notes of a melody into smaller note values.
What it means
A figure in music is a small group of notes perceived as a connected unit. In the narrower sense it arises when the main notes of a melody are dissolved into shorter note values, that is, filled in with runs, turns, or arpeggios.
Musical use
Figures serve to bring movement and drive into a part. They can repeat sequence-like and thus mark a piece, such as the evenly flowing sixteenth-note figures in the preludes of Johann Sebastian Bach. In the Baroque the doctrine of figures also spoke of rhetorical figures, that is, melodic turns with a fixed expressive content such as the exclamatio or the passus duriusculus.
A figure should be distinguished from a motif, the smallest meaning-bearing unit of a melody with a recognisability of its own, and from figuration, which denotes the continuous filling out of a harmony with figures, for instance as accompaniment.
Performance practice
Practise a figure slowly and in groups first so that shape and fingering are secure, and then give it a direction: let it run toward a target note. Make sure every repetition sounds the same and the figure does not fall apart.