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Musical form (the whole or structure) is contrasted with content (the parts) or with surface (the detail), but there is no clear line between the two. In most cases, the form of a piece should produce a balance between statement and restatement , unity and variety, contrast and connection.
There is some overlap between musical form and musical genre. The latter term is more likely to be used when referring to particular styles of music (such as classical music or rock music) as determined by things such as harmonic language, typical rhythmRhythm is the variation of the duration of sounds over time. When governed by rule, it is called meter. It is inherent in any time-dependent medium, but it is most associated with music, dance, and most poetry. The study of rhythm, stress, and pitch in sps, types of musical instrumentA musical instrument is a device that has been constructed or modified with the purpose of making music. In principle, anything that somehow produces sound can serve as a musical instrument, but the expression is reserved generally to items that have that used and geographical origin. The phrase musical form is typically used when talking about a particular type or structure within those genres. For example, the twelve bar bluesTwelve bar blues is a typical blues chord progression, taking twelve 4/4 bars to the verse. A basic example of the progression would look like this, using T to indicate the tonic, S for the subdominant, and D for the dominant, and representing one chord p is a specific form often found in the genres of bluesBlues is a vocal and instrumental musical form which evolved from African American spirituals, shouts, work songs and chants and has its earliest stylistic roots in West Africa. Blues has been a major influence on later American and Western popular music, and rock and rollRock and roll also called rock is a form of popular music, usually featuring vocals (often with vocal harmony backing), electric guitars and a strong back beat; other instruments, such as the saxophone, are common in some styles. As a cultural phenomenon, music.
Forms and formal detail may be described as sectional or developmental, developmental or variational, syntactical or processual (Keil 1966), embodied or engendered, extensional or intensional (Chester 1970), and associational or hierarchical (Lerdahl 1983). Form may also be described according to symmetries or lack thereof and repetition. A common idea is formal "depth", necessary for complexity, in which foregrounded "detail" events occur against a more structural background. For example: Schenkerian analysisSchenkerian analysis is an approach to musical analysis devised by Heinrich Schenker. It reduces all tonal music to a simple progression based on the tonic triad which in its simplest form is: This reduction to a piece's basic essence or fundamental struc. Fred LerdahlFred Lerdahl Fritz Reiner Professor of Musical Composition at Columbia University, is a composer and musicologist, most well known for his work on music theory regarding pitch space and cognitive restraints on compositional systems or "musical grammar"s. (1992), among others, claims that popular music lacks the structural complexity for multiple structural layers, and thus much depth. However, Lerdahl's theories explicitly exclude "associational" details which are used to help articulate form in popular music. Allen ForteAllen Forte (born December 23, 1926) is a musicologist. He is best known for his controversial book The Structure of Atonal Music in which he introduced a complete theory of what is now called pitch class set analaysis or musical set theory. Though often's book The American Popular Ballad of the Golden Era 1924-1950 analyses popular music with traditional Schenkerian techniques, but this is only possible because pre-rock popular ballads are the genre most accessible similar to the Romantic music that those theories were designed to analyse. (Middleton 1999, p.144)
Extensional music is, "produced by starting with small components - rhythmic or melodic motifs, perhaps - and then 'developing' these through techniques of modification and combination." Intensional music "starts with a framework - a chord sequence, a melodic outline, a rhythmic pattern - and then extends itself by repeating the framework with perpetually varied inflections to the details filling it in." (Middleton, p.142)
Syntactic music is "centres" on notation and "the hierarchic organization of quasilinguistic elements and their putting together (com-position) in line with systems of norms, expectations, surprises, tensions and resolutions. The resulting aesthetic is one of 'embodied meaning.'" Non-notated music and performance "foreground process. They are much more concerned with gesture, physical feel, the immediate moment, improvisation; the resulting aesthetic is one of 'engendered feeling' and is unsuited to the application of 'syntactice' criteria" (Middleton 1990, p.115).
Middleton (p.145) also describes form, presumably after Gilles Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition (1968, translated 1994), through repetition and difference. Difference is the distance moved from a repeat and a repeat being the smallest difference. Difference is qualitative and quantitative, how far different and what type of difference.
In classical music, there are many labels applied to forms, abstract formal designs, as contrasted with the principals and procedures of combining materials: form. Typical structures used to shape a single movement include:
Sectional forms, the larger unit (form) is built from various smaller clear-cut units (sections), combinational, sort of like stacking legos (DeLone, 1975):These structures are defined by the distribution of different thematic material, melodies, key centres, and other materials used. While many of the above forms are partly defined by their tonal schemes these forms may be applied to music which has a differing or no tonal scheme (DeLone et. al. (Eds.), 1975, chap. 1). More than one formal method may be used, including in-between types, and music which is not composed with the above or any other model is called through composed.
Especially recently, more segmented approaches have been taken through the use of stratification, superimposition , juxtaposition, interpolation, and other interruption s and simultaneities. Examples include the postmodern " block" technique used by composers such as John Zorn, where rather than organic development one follows separate units in various combinations. These techniques may be used to create contrast to the point of disjointed chaotic textures, or, through repetition and return and transitional procedures such as dissolution, amalgamation, and gradation, may create connectedness and unity. Composers have also made more use of open forms such as produced by aleatoric devices and other chance procedures, improvisation, and some processes. (ibid)
Types of piece which may or may not incorporate one or more of the above structures as part of their overall makeup include:
Forms of chamber music are defined by instrumentation ( string quartet, piano quintet and so on). The structure of a chamber work is typically similar to a sonata.