Search results
Learn more about ternary form and rondo form and how to identify structure in this UKS2 music guide from BBC Bitesize.
Form in music refers to the structural framework that determines how a piece of music is constructed and experienced. It’s the blueprint that composers use to organize musical elements like melody, harmony, rhythm, and texture into a coherent whole.
Musical form is the structure of a piece of music, or how the music is put together using smaller parts. We can take both short and long pieces of music and break them up into smaller sections. Doing this helps us to understand the music and search for patterns within it.
Apr 21, 2023 · Examples of musical forms in Western art music include the sonata form, binary form, theme and variations, fugue and so on. This article analyses the organisation systems of musical forms inherent within knowledge that is produced by music scholars.
- Overview
- Principles of musical form
Music exists in time; as an aesthetician, Susanne K. Langer, put it in Feeling and Form, “music is time made audible.” The proper perception of a musical work depends in the main on the ability to associate what is happening in the present with what has happened in the past and with what one expects will happen in the future. The frustration or fulfillment of such expectations and the resulting tensions and releases are basic to most musical works.
Musical form depends, therefore, on the disposition of certain structural units successively in time. The basic principles can be discerned from a brief consideration of melody, which may be defined as an organized succession of musical tones. This succession of tones consists of component parts, structural units, the principal of which is the phrase—a complete musical utterance, roughly corresponding to what can be sung or played in one breath or played with a single stroke of the bow. A melody, then, ordinarily consists of a succession of phrases, in which there may occur repetition (the same phrase repeated), contrast (a completely different phrase), or variation (the phrase altered, but in such a way that its identity remains perceptible). The relation between these component phrases is important for form. There may, for instance, be a complementary grouping of phrases as antecedent and consequent or “question and answer.” The phrases may or may not be equal in length. Some writers, pressing the analogy between music and language, also distinguish larger groupings of phrases: into periods, sentences, paragraphs, and the like. Most musical forms are thus not only additive but also hierarchical: phrases are conjoined to produce a melody, which in turn may be a constituent part of a larger work. A melodic entity that functions as an element in a larger whole is called a theme.
Coherence may be produced by the use of a motive or figure, i.e., short elements consisting ordinarily of two to four notes. But whereas the motive is usually characterized by a striking interval or rhythmic arrangement, the figure consists of entirely conventional elements (a scale segment, notes of a chord, etc.). Finally, coherence may also be achieved by the consistent use of a rhythmic pattern.
A few examples will serve to illustrate these points. The various phrases have been identified by slurs (phrase marks) and by lowercase letters (the exponential numbers designate variations), whereas larger groupings are designated by capital letters. In the hymn tune “Bethany,” by Lowell Mason, shown below, the eight phrases may be grouped in pairs to produce the scheme:
This four-phase arrangement with statement, repetition (here with variation at the cadence), contrast, and restatement is extremely common in the traditional and art music of the West.
Other schemes based on repetition and contrast abound. The famous “Largo” from Antonín Dvořák’s New World Symphony, Opus 95, goes like this:
Music exists in time; as an aesthetician, Susanne K. Langer, put it in Feeling and Form, “music is time made audible.” The proper perception of a musical work depends in the main on the ability to associate what is happening in the present with what has happened in the past and with what one expects will happen in the future. The frustration or fulfillment of such expectations and the resulting tensions and releases are basic to most musical works.
Musical form depends, therefore, on the disposition of certain structural units successively in time. The basic principles can be discerned from a brief consideration of melody, which may be defined as an organized succession of musical tones. This succession of tones consists of component parts, structural units, the principal of which is the phrase—a complete musical utterance, roughly corresponding to what can be sung or played in one breath or played with a single stroke of the bow. A melody, then, ordinarily consists of a succession of phrases, in which there may occur repetition (the same phrase repeated), contrast (a completely different phrase), or variation (the phrase altered, but in such a way that its identity remains perceptible). The relation between these component phrases is important for form. There may, for instance, be a complementary grouping of phrases as antecedent and consequent or “question and answer.” The phrases may or may not be equal in length. Some writers, pressing the analogy between music and language, also distinguish larger groupings of phrases: into periods, sentences, paragraphs, and the like. Most musical forms are thus not only additive but also hierarchical: phrases are conjoined to produce a melody, which in turn may be a constituent part of a larger work. A melodic entity that functions as an element in a larger whole is called a theme.
Coherence may be produced by the use of a motive or figure, i.e., short elements consisting ordinarily of two to four notes. But whereas the motive is usually characterized by a striking interval or rhythmic arrangement, the figure consists of entirely conventional elements (a scale segment, notes of a chord, etc.). Finally, coherence may also be achieved by the consistent use of a rhythmic pattern.
A few examples will serve to illustrate these points. The various phrases have been identified by slurs (phrase marks) and by lowercase letters (the exponential numbers designate variations), whereas larger groupings are designated by capital letters. In the hymn tune “Bethany,” by Lowell Mason, shown below, the eight phrases may be grouped in pairs to produce the scheme:
This four-phase arrangement with statement, repetition (here with variation at the cadence), contrast, and restatement is extremely common in the traditional and art music of the West.
Other schemes based on repetition and contrast abound. The famous “Largo” from Antonín Dvořák’s New World Symphony, Opus 95, goes like this:
Jul 16, 2023 · Musical form is the wider perspective of a piece of music. It describes the layout of a composition as divided into sections, akin to the layout of a city divided into neighborhoods. Musical works may be classified into two formal types: A and A/B. Compositions exist in a boundless variety of styles, instrumentation, length and content--all the ...
People also ask
What is musical form?
How do you describe the different parts of the music?
Why are musical form categories based on the real world?
What determines the form of a musical piece?
Musical Structures Lesson 1. Structure is a crucial element of music. It describes how the different sections in a piece of music are positioned together to form the composition. There are 3 key concepts you need to grasp: Contrast. Repetition. Continuity.
