We're all familiar with the concept of *lyrical* rhymes. For example, the words **through**, **curfew** and **blue** all rhyme despite being spelled differently because the sound of their final syllable is the same.

But if you're analyzing instrumental, i.e. *non-verbal* music, does it make sense to say that two musical phrases rhyme? 

Consider the opening of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony:

[![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/QiQ69.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/QiQ69.png)

Could you say the second four-note phrase *rhymes* with the first? If we can agree that rhyme *is* a helpful musical term, what might the rules be? For instance, in the Beethoven example, if the second phrase ended with a leap up to a D rather than down to a D, would that still be a rhyme?

Or is **rhyme** too vague and ill-specified to be useful as a term of musical analysis?

BTW, I did try googling for this but got lots of hits related to songs for small children, rather than technical terminology for musical analysis.