Form

Form- Emergent feature of music when combining melody, harmony, harmony, texture, and time

  • Form is the byproduct of the elements of music

  • Form only emerges in actual music

    • Guidelines only mean something if you compose the music

levels of Form

Small scale form

  • Intrathematic: inside your themes

    • Motives, ideas, phrases, cadences, loosening techniques

Medium Scale Form

  • Interthematic: Between your themes

    • Main themes, subordinate themes, transitions, developmental sections

Large form level

  •  

    • Sonata, larger ternary, sonata without development, rondo, minuet/ trio

Theme- Unit consisting of a conventional set of initiating, medial and ending intrathematic functions; must close with a cadence

  1. Themes are not normally complete compositions

  2. Certain features of themes that people expect to hear

  3. Beginning, middle and end

    1. Before beginning, after the end

  4. Specific role a musical passage plays in formal organization of work

  5. To be a theme, it must have a cadence

    1. No cadence= Theme-like unit

Period- Two musical phrase with the final phrase ending with more of a conclusive cadence

  • Antecedent Phrase- Introduces basic musical idea and ends on a weak unresolved cadence

  • Consequent phrase- Starts with basic idea but ends on a strong resolved cadence like a PAC

Loose themes: Extension, expansion, compression, fusion

Tight Knit themes: Sentence, period, small ternary, small binary

Hybrid Themes:

  • Antecedent + Continuation

  • Antecedent + Cadential

  • Compound basic idea + Continuation

  • Compound Basic idea + Consequent

Compound Themes: Compound period, compound sentence

Sentence- 8 measure structure, comprising of two phrases, the presentation phase and the continuation phase

Presentation Phrase

  • Two measure basic idea

    • Prolongs tonic harmony

  • Repetition of Basic idea

    • Same harmony

    • dominant version

    • sequential version

  • Create stability

  • Establishing tonic

  • Characteristic melody

  • Texture

Continuation Phrase

  • Destabilize the presentation phase

    • Fragmentation: Taking apart/ using chunks of basic idea

    • Harmonic Acceleration: Decrease in time a single harmony is used

    • Increase in surface rhythmic activity: Shorter duration of notes or more notes

    • Sequential harmonic progressions

  • Ends with cadence

  • Liquidation: Momentum is reduced; reduction in melodic material

Basic Idea-

  • Sets the trajectory for your piece

  • Establishes the characteristic material

  • two real measures

  • Can be stretched or compressed

Basic Idea Limitations

  • Tonic prolongation

  • Chord tone melody with neighbor and passing tones

  • Melodic opening up- melodic idea raises

  • At least two different motives

Motives- Raw materials that go into building blocks of music

Repetition of The Basic Idea

Presentation phase

Types of repetition:

1. Exact repetition

  • Same general harmony

  • Not necessarily same melodic content

  • **restates the harmonic content

  1. Statement response repetition

  • Basic idea = the statement

  • Repetition = the response

  • The statement emphasizes tonic

  • The response emphasizes dominant

  • *** Restates harmonic content in the dominant

    Changing melody to fit another harmony:

  • Generally want to keep notes that are shared

  • Change note to the closest chord tone in new melody

  • Find closest chord tone in new harmony to original chord tone in original harmony

  1. Sequential repetition

  • Repeats basic idea with new harmony

  • Everything including melody is transposed by the same interval

  • Model/ sequence repetition

    • Basic idea= model

    • Repetition= sequence

  • Most common patterns: I-ii, I-vi

Continuation Phase

  • Destabilize the formal content established by the presentation phase

  • Provide mobility to the theme

Four processes of the continuation function include: 1) Fragmentation 2) acceleration of harmonic rhythm 3) Increase in surface rhythm activity 4) Sequential harmonic progressions

1. Fragmentation- Reducing the length of the constituent units of the phrase

  • Key to fragmentation is the length of musical units

  1. Harmonic Acceleration

  • Similar to fragmentation; not mutually exclusive

  • Harder to spot

  • Rate of change of the harmony that is being prolonged

  1. Increate in surface rhythm activity

  • Notes values get shorter

  • More notes

  1. Sequential Harmonic progressions

  • Destabilize the theme harmonically

  • Multiple tonal centers

Cadential Idea- The formal function that leads up to the moment of key confirmation

Cadential Arrival-

  • The moment a key is confirmed

  • The structural end of a theme

Deceptive Cadence

Codettas

  • Post-cadential function, following a perfect a perfect authentic cadence and ranging in length from a single chord to a four measure phrase

Cadential Progression: Tonic→ moves to pre. dominant → Ends on Dominant

                                                                                            → Tonic (authentic cadence)

Continuation → Cadential

  • Underneath harmony changed so cadential progression lasts the entire continuation phase

  • The entire continuation phase is supported by an expanded cadential progression using both continuation and progression functions be