The term stretto (plural: 'stretti') comes from the Italian past participle of stringere, and means ‘narrow’, ‘tight’, or 'close’. In music the Italian term stretto has two distinct meanings: (1) In a fugue, stretto is the imitation of the subject in close succession, so that the answer enters before the subject is completed.Apel, Willi, ed. (1969). Harvard Dictionary of Music, Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Camb… (More on Stretto)