Talk:Musical form

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Does anybody really use the phrase "musical form" interchangably with "musical genre"? I can't recall ever coming across an instance of that use. However, I think that people do mean two different things by "musical form":

1. The structure of a movement as determined by arrangement of thematic material and key centres (binary form, sonata form, rondo and so on)
2. A classification determined by overall multi-movement structure, instrumentation and/or function (opera, ballet, sonata, concerto, symphonic poem and so on)

I think this would be a more sensible way of dividing up the article than is done at present. Does anybody agree, or am I being silly? --Camembert

Well,

Encyclopaedia Britannica

does; see its entry for "Musical form".

mikkalai 25 Nov 2003

I don't have the EB to hand, and I'm not really sure what you're saying it "does", but anyway, I was probably a bit too simplistic with my above post. I'm going to fiddle with the article a bit. --Camembert

Just google for "musical form", it will pop up. Anyway, I am just a layman; the article was missing, so I created a stub. Feel free to do anything with, but leave references to ballet and dance, necessary to my subwikiweb of articles Mikkalai 20:28, 26 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Ah right, found the EB thing. I think it agrees both with what you and I said originally, actually - we were just using words to mean slightly different things. Anyway, I've edited the article somewhat, and it seems better to me now, but it's a tricky thing, and I'm sure it can take further improvement. --Camembert

1. Intro
2. Single-movement forms: sectional vs developmental, developmental vs variational, extensional vs intentional
   1. Sectional forms, the larger unit (form) is built from various smaller clear-cut units (sections), combinational, sort of like stacking legos.
   2. Developmental
      forms, larger unit (form) is built from small bits of material given different presentations and combinations, usually progressive.
   3. Variational forms, larger unit (form) is built from sections treated to one type of presentation at a time, but varying succesively.
3. Multi-movement "forms"

Hyacinth 20:27, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC), User:Hyacinth/Outlines.

Hi! If you want to expand that outline you could explain to us what each of those "vs." things are. I am a musical layman. Jaberwocky6669 18:05, Aug 5, 2004 (UTC)

Ta-da. Hyacinth 05:47, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Ta-da as in, "Duh, you're really dumb." or "Hey! That's a really great idea!" Lol Jaberwocky6669 16:30, Aug 8, 2004 (UTC)

The second one, like I Dream of Genie, see article and outline above. Hyacinth 21:36, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)

• An open invitation to participate in
  bleh fu
  07:06, Jan 14, 2005 (UTC)
• To quote from Talk:String quartet:

Is the string quartet a form or a group? Should it be in one, the other, or both categories? The article currently states:

• "A piece of music for four players of stringed instruments may be in any form, but if it is simply a String Quartet (with or without a subtitle) it is usually in four movements, with a large-scale structure similar to that of a symphony. The outer movements are typically fast, the inner movements in classical quartet form are a slow movement and a dance movement of some sort (e.g., minuet, scherzo, furiant), in either order."

Musical form states that form is also:

• "a generic type of composition such as the symphony or concerto."

And later

• "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."

all of which implies that string quartet may be legitimately categorized as a Category:Musical form. Hyacinth 02:36, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)

See also: Category talk:Musical forms. Hyacinth 02:52, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Form should be defined as the organizing principle in music, or how musical ideas/notes/etc. are organized within a whole. I must admit fault here for not actually checking the article Musical form before making changes; this was something I assumed. Something like a string quartet is an entity that exhibits form, not one that exists as form. The above example should be rephrased: "String quartets in the Classical and Romantic as well as symphonies and concertos, usually belonged in the sonata genre consisting of four movements....." String quartets, symphonies, concertos in any time period, especially within the last hundred years, certainly have no obligation to follow sonata form, much less any specific form; for example, a theoretical string quartet consisting entirely of fugues. The statment defining form as "a generic type of composition such as the symphony or concerto" is misleading; string quartets, symphonies, and concertos are more accurately described as a type of instrumentation, orchestration, or arrangement, something not at all related to form except in loose correlations.

This statement "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" is confusing in that its language is not clearly differentiating between a form or structure of music or a form of chamber music, i.e., a form of instrumentation, or way of organizing instruments within an ensemble. The statement that "chamber music is typically similar to a sonata", again, is vague; it is describing a specific phenomena found in Classical and Romantic chamber music. --

bleh fu

06:59, Jan 14, 2005 (UTC)

There is a distinction between "should be" and "currently is". Since one goal of Wikipedia is to accurately describe reality, since people do describe instrumentation using the word form, then Wikipedia should describe this practice as it currently is. If you have a source that argues that things should be different, feel free to add that POV (point of view).

Regarding the categorization, what are the best alternatives to "Category:Musical forms" for instrumentations? "Category:Types of ensembles"? Hyacinth 23:18, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)

To quote String quartet:

• A string quartet is a musical ensemble of four string instruments or a piece written to be performed by such a group.

Also, to quote Musical ensemble:

A musical ensemble is, by definition, a group of three or more musicians who gather to perform music.

There are several denominations of ensembles according with their size and composition.

The terms

classical music, these arrangements are commonly referred to as chamber music. A common quartet is the string quartet, composed of two violins, a viola and a violoncello. The most usual string quintet is similar to the string quartet, but with the viola duplicated. In some cases, though, it is the violoncello that is duplicated. See: String trio, String sextet, string . A piano quintet is usually a string quartet plus a piano. Another fairly common grouping in classical music is the wind quintet, usually consisting of flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon and horn

.

I'd like to "de-mystify" this article so it's more friendly to the person who wants to know what musical form is. Begining the first section with the sentence "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)", and you've lost most musicians, let alone non-musicians who come to the encyclopedia wanting to learn something about musical form.J Lorraine 05:02, 11 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If the article can't use the terms such as development, variation, syntax, process, embody, engender, extension/intension, association, and hierarchy; a lot more of this article is going to have to be rewritten. Hyacinth (talk) 23:56, 14 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Of course that was eleven years ago. Surely by now all that gobbledy-gookhas been replaced with plain, understandable English?—Jerome Kohl (talk) 06:00, 15 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Musical form needs first relating to the general concept of FORM, "a shape; an arrangement of parts" (Concise Oxford Dictionary, 1995) or "the shape and structure of something as distinguished from its material" (Merriam-Webster, online 07 October 2012). Then the conventional wisdom about MUSICAL FORM needs to be problematised: why does musical "form" seem only to denote the episodic arrangement or shape of constituent elements over time and neglect the arrangement or shape of constituent elements in the extended present? Distinctions are in other words required between the episodic, extensional, diachronic or "horizontal" and the intensional, synchronic or "vertical" aspects of musical form. To exclude the latter and focus solely on the former is illogical since episodic form cannot exist if there is no variation or repetition of synchronic form on which it can be based. Calling one main aspect of musical form "form" and the other something else, as if it were not also form, is misleading and inaccurate. "Texture", a term sometimes used to refer to synchronic musical form, covers only one of its features. Synchronic form also involves movement, space, depth and volume, as well as the inclusion of musemes that are not all necessarily anaphonic. Tagg (2012: 383-385) suggests renaming the conventional episodic aspect of form "diataxis" and calling its synchronic aspect "syncrisis". That way neither type of form has a misleading monopoly on the term and unequivocal reference can be made to these essential aspects of musical form. [Tagg, Philip: Music's Meanings. New York & Huddersfield: Mass Media Music Scholars' Press, 2012]. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Etymophony (talk • contribs) 14:50, 5 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

To give a specific example of the incomprehensible jargon in this article, I must ask, what is the meaning of "apodigm"? This word is used in section 4, titled "More recent developments". I can't find apodigm in any dictionary or reference book. Perhaps someone with musical expertise could add apodigm to the wiktionary? 71.207.203.133 (talk) 12:14, 18 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I couldn't find it in any dictionary I have either. A google search turned up only a web hosting company named Apodigm and pages which had this same quote from Chester (including translations into French and Italian which left "apodigm" untraslated). I suspect he made the word up, and either we aren't clever enough or we don't know enough greek to know what he meant by it. 76.20.12.54 (talk) 22:32, 1 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

While I haven't read the book which is being cited, it appears (from reviews) to be about politically correct language in Britain, which seems rather incongruous as a source for this article. If no one objects, I am going to remove both the sentence and the citation. (The current sentence with citation reads: "In fact, pop music is much more complex in terms of musical form than all types of classical music (Browne, A. The Retreat of reason, 2006).") J Lorraine 07:31, 27 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

A broad perspective: several works by various avantgarde artists (also notable in the mainstream popular music) usually regarded as ambient, cosmic, new age, electronic music, such as Brian Eno, Tangerine Dream.... can't be cathegorized as "songs" or simply "instrumentals", becouse such music features complex structures and patterns that can be referred to as musical forms; examples: Eno's (Discreet music or the long cosmic compositions by TD. Dr. Who 03:11, 17 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This is regarding Categories related to Form in Music.

I'd like to see everything together, but also a separate subcategory for Form in the compositional sense (period, transition, cell, cadence...etc.). These subjects might get lost in the myriad "Dance Forms" (tarantella, sarabande...etc.).

Any ideas on how to do this efficiently? There's so much material scattered everywhere!

Can someone combine the "Musical form" and "Musical forms" categories automatically?

--Roivas 18:39, 10 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The numerous and repeatedly wikilinked references to Popular music give the appearance of an attempt to confer some merit on a genre which lacks it. This is bad stylistically and also (in some cases anyway) unfair, and the statements are poorly referenced. I'd suggest that the subsection on popular music currently near the lead - which section essentially says that pop music is too trivial to merit formal assignment - should be moved to the bottom to avoid distracting from the discussion of what is at root a method of classification of classical music. Discussion of contemporary popular music is of tangential relevance only to the subject o musical form, and most of the early music forms, and a good deal of the classical repertoire, were popular music in their day. So it's an arbitrary, poorly supported, poorly referenced and apparently gratuitous intrusion. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.132.136.214 (talk) 16:11, 25 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Why and where does this article need additional citations for verification? What references does it need and how should they be added? Hyacinth (talk) 04:07, 9 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This article is entirely about the Western European historical tradition. It would be greatly enhanced by adding information about musical forms of other cultures on other continents. In short, a little ethnomusicological influence... Esn (talk) 14:33, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

There's nothing stopping you from adding it. 108.60.216.202 (talk) 17:39, 2 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

There's nothing on Cyclic form in this article.

As to the term cyclical as used in this article, is it common or is it some editor's idea? The so called cyclical forms mentioned in this article (mass, ballet, opera, suite, etc.) are not really "musical forms" (as in sonata form, binary form, etc.). You might as well then include concerto and symphony among "musical forms". Contact Basemetal here 06:44, 21 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Twinkle Little Star. What's provided is AABB, but in general each couplet is a unit, not two units of form. So AB would be more correct. The second phrase of the first couplet is NOT the same as the first, at any rate -- so AA would be impossible even if one wished to be so granular as to deem each couplet two units of form. The song is usually considered ABA, including the repeat of the first couplet. Yes, B consists of two identical lines. But you don't let that determine that you're going to be phrase-granular, and then be just dead wrong about A. rasqual (talk) 16:59, 1 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The example is given of a "verse". In other words, we're only supposed to look at the words and see which lines rhyme to determine the form, and only four lines are included. Strictly speaking, within the bounds of that setup, the example given is actually AABB. However, it's a poor example, because 1) this is an article on musical form, not prose form, 2) most people when reading the four lines will probably sing along in their head using a melody that is actually in the form ABCC, and 3) most people in real life probably finish the song with a repetition of the first two lines (not included in this article, but you can hear it in the Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star article), making the rhyming form AABBAA, and the melodic form ABCCAB. That's confusing.

Can anyone supply a better example of AABB, since this one is confusing and potentially misleading? 38.86.48.38 (talk) 17:25, 2 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The "thought-form" artwork is pretty, but it seems to have nothing to do with the subject matter of the article. Does this picture belong here? 130.226.142.243 (talk) 10:04, 20 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. Yank it. A though form is not a musical form, even if it's a thought form about music. 38.86.48.38 (talk) 17:27, 2 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I would like to suggest that this section be removed, or completely retooled. For one, there's nothing at all that connects the title of the section to its content. What "The formalist trap" is is never explained, nor is it at all clear what the content of the section has to do with "escaping" it. It seems to me that the basic thrust of the section is "you can just like develop things instead of relying on a predetermined form." But it uses unnecessarily convoluted language to make that point, and frames it in terms of a strange and, it seems to me, largely irrelevant polemic. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:44:C500:88A0:3453:5C42:CA36:80B8 (talk) 06:15, 23 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Reviewing the edit history of this article, it appears that at some point seven or more years ago someone tried to reshape this article around the cited source by Middleton (which is specifically focussed on form in popular music). It was at some point long afterward that the present section heading was concocted. I don't have the patience to follow all of the editorial meandering, but it does seem clear that it gradually drifted into the morass that you so accurately describe. Personally, I am all for removing the section, though I am willing to listen to other opinions, if anyone can come up with an argument for reshaping it.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 07:11, 23 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I'm in a group that's working on this page as a class project, and we're thinking the same thing. Unless there are any objections, we'll remove it, potentially replacing it with a discussion of evolving formal practices, or the subversion thereof, or something.Ekkobekko (talk) 14:00, 23 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

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Hi, everyone! Newbie on a wiki-ed project here... Noticed that there is a book called "The Ninth Juror" in the further reading section. It is, um, not about music. Shall I go ahead and remove it? Ekkobekko (talk) 01:30, 15 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Absolutely! You do not have to ask in cases such as this (See:

WP:BOLD). I would remove it myself, but I don't want to deny you the pleasure! Oh, one thing: When adding a new topic to a talk page, it is customary to place it at the bottom of the page, to preserve chronological order. Welcome to Wikipedia!—Jerome Kohl (talk) 01:37, 15 September 2018 (UTC)[reply

]

It does not seem to me that the ketawang structure illustrated in the lead of the article describes a musical form. As the complete description of the image says, this is a "ketawang colotomic structure", and a colotomy is "a description of the rhythmic and metric patterns of gamelan music." Following the circumference of the circle indeed describes a repeating rhythmic pattern, forming a kind of ostinato played by four instruments. (The letters along the circumference denote instrument names.) Such an ostinato pattern cannot really be considered a "musical form", IMO. — Hucbald.SaintAmand (talk) 09:20, 1 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The "Levels of Organization" section is perplexing. It is mostly unsourced, and the terms "passage," "piece" and "cycle" -- where is this from? Is there a music theory source that uses these terms in this way? I can't find a source that does. It reads as if the author means "phrase" "movement" and "full work," but that is both Eurocentric, and leaves out other levels. Above the phrase, there should be the level of section, before we get to a full piece. This should be edited in brought in line with standard sources in music theory and maybe ethnomusicology. Caper2112 (talk) 16:01, 21 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

According to section headings, popular music is largely unrepresented. The heading "Common forms in Western classical music" is the only section describing the different sectional forms. It also omits to mention many of the common popular forms. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Musomox (talk • contribs) 18:28, 3 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I don't understand the purpose of the gong diagram at the top of the page... Adamilo (talk) 06:48, 2 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I don't either... See above, Talk:Musical form#Ketawang structure and musical form. — Hucbald.SaintAmand (talk) 07:56, 2 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

it refers to the structure of a musical composition 103.161.60.87 (talk) 13:08, 5 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]