What Is Musical Form?

Have you ever heard music described as a language? It's actually an apt comparison because music has grammar and punctuation as well as structure, just like a written or spoken language does.

Additionally, just like a written language such as English, music is subject to various rules. You already know that it would be incorrect to place a period in the middle of a sentence. Similarly, it is generally only acceptable to place a cadential sequence at the termination of a musical phrase.

Also, like language, music may take on multiple forms. Each of these forms is governed by a set of rules.

Let's learn more about musical form and how it works.

What Is Musical Form?

When musicians and songwriters discuss "form," they are talking about the organization and structure of a piece of music.

Several musical forms have developed over the centuries. If you want to analyze a particular song's form, then it is essential to be familiar with these forms. This enables you to compare that particular song with the prototype of a musical form.

The form consists of a few levels of organization. Once you understand these levels, you will be well on your way to identifying the musical form of a song.

The most basic level of organization in musical form is the bar, which also may be referred to as a measure. Examining a bar will reveal how it is broken up in terms of unaccented and accented beats. Moreover, you'll be able to discern how a single bar or the combination of a handful of bars can be put together to form a rhythmic, harmonic, or melodic phrase.

Looking at a bar in a piece of music is a lot like examining a single word or sentence in a book.

The next level of organization in musical form is the passage. This typically involves examining several phrases together.

Think of your favorite pop song. One of its verses or the song's chorus also can be called a passage. Passages frequently are made up of approximately four lines, with each line being considered a phrase.

Accordingly, a passage is like a paragraph or a page within a book.

The next level of organization is the whole song, which also may be called a movement. The favorite pop song that you thought about a couple of minutes ago is probably made up of just a handful of passages. By contrast, a symphony may have three, four, or more movements. Each movement is made up of different passages, each of which is made up of at least one, and probably multiple, phrases.

Examining a movement is akin to reading an entire book.

How to Analyze Musical Form

When a composer, musician, or avid music enthusiast wants to analyze the musical form of a particular piece, they do so using the levels of organizations that were explored above.

Depending upon the structure of the form, the units used to analyze the piece could be small, such as bars and phrases, or large, like movements and entire songs or symphonies.

In musical form analysis, the units are assigned letters such as A, B, C, D, and so on.

Accordingly, a pop song might have a verse that is designated as "A" while the chorus is designated as "B." The chorus is given a different letter because it's different from the verse.

If a certain pop song is arranged as verse, chorus, verse, chorus, then it would be labeled as A, B, A, B.

See if you can identify this A, B, A, B structure in Bob Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind."

Now that you have some familiarity with the units used in musical form and how they are labeled, it's time to introduce some of the primary musical form types.

Common Musical Forms

Virtually all of the musical forms are sectional forms. This means that the music can be separated into sections and labeled using the lettering system that is described above.

Some of the most common sectional forms are:

• Strophic form
• Binary form
• Ternary form
• Rondo form
• Medley or Chain form
• Theme and Variation, or Variational, Form
• Sonata form

Let's take a closer look at each of these musical forms.

Strophic Form

This musical form also may go by the names chorus form or verse-repeating form. It has a sole phrase or passage that is repeated throughout the entire song. Because of its lack of variation, a strophic form song would be labeled A, A, A, A. "Amazing Grace" is one example of a strophic form song.

Binary Form

As its name suggests, a musical piece that has binary form is made up of two distinct sections that are more or less equal in importance and length. They may even be similar harmonically. A song in binary form could be labeled as A, B or A, A, B, B.

An excellent example of this is the traditional folk song "Greensleeves."

Ternary Form

Other songs have a ternary form that is broken up into three parts. The third part is used to repeat the main idea and passages of the first part.

In some instances, the three sections are quite long. They may even be entire pieces or movements.

With the third part essentially being a repetition of the first part, the ternary form is labeled as A, B, A.

One familiar example of the ternary form is the well-known lullaby, "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star."

Let's look at how it would be labeled. First, here are the lyrics:

Twinkle, twinkle, little star
How I wonder what you are
Up above the world so high
Like a diamond in the sky
Twinkle, twinkle, little star
How I wonder what you are

Notice how the first two lines are repeated to form the final two lines. Accordingly, "Twinkle, twinkle, little star, How I wonder what you are" is labeled as "A" in both instances while "Up above the world so high, Like a diamond in the sky" is labeled as "B."

Rondo Form

This musical form has many things in common with binary form and ternary form. However, it does add some extra elements.

For instance, a rondo form song typically begins with a main phrase or passage that is repeated between contrasting sections, which may be referred to as "episodes."

A song in rondo form might be labeled as A, B, A, C, A, D, A. In another example, a rondo could have additional elements. A sample label for such a song might be: A, B, A, C, A, D, A, E, A.

The piece's principal theme, which also may be called the refrain, is labeled as "A," and it alternates with one or more other themes in the piece. In this example, the portions labeled B, C, D, and E all serve as these additional themes.

Some of the most well-known examples of rondo form include:

• Beethoven's "Fur Elise"
• The third movement of Brahms' "Violin Concerto"
• The third movement of Mozart's "4th Horn Concerto"
• "La Raspa"
• "Rondo Alla Turca"
• "I Want to Hold Your Hand" by The Beatles

Medley or Chain Form

This form involves different phrases or passages coming one right after the other. Accordingly, a medley would be labeled as A, B, C, D. Some medley songs actually feature immediate repeating, in which case they would be labeled as AA, BB, CC, DD.

Medleys frequently show up at the beginning of a Broadway musical, movie, or ballet. Essentially, a medley combines three or more pieces into one longer piece. This means that the medley starts with one idea, which is labeled A, then moves on to a second idea that is labeled B and a third idea that is labeled C.

Theme and Variation Form

With this type of composition, a central theme is presented. Each subsequent section of the piece repeats that theme, but with some changes, or variations.

This sounds similar to medley form, but each section of this type of music is more closely related to the original theme than the subsequent parts of the medley.

If you were to label a theme and variation piece, you would use symbols such as: A, B, C, D or A, A1, A2, A3. The second example implies that the sections labeled A1 and so on are similar to the original theme.

Examples of variational form include Bach's "Canonic Variations on 'Vom Himmel Hoch da Komm ich her'" and "Berceuse," Op. 57 by Chopin.

Sonata Form

 

This form is different from the others because it generally does not have a lettered structure. That's because the sonata form is always made up of three primary parts.

These parts are the exposition, the development, and the recapitulation. This was an incredibly important form during the classical era. "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik" by Mozart and "Sonata in G Major" by Haydn are two famous examples of sonata form.

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