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Prelude Listening to Music Today
1 Melody: Musical Line
2 Rhythm and Meter: Musical Time
3 Harmony: Musical Space
4 The Organization of Musical Sounds
5 Musical Texture
6 Musical Form
7 Musical Expression: Tempo and Dynamics
8 Voices and Musical Instrument Families
9 Western Musical Instruments
10 Musical Ensembles
11 Style and Function of Music in Society
12 The Culture of the Middle Ages
13 Medieval Music
14 The Renaissance Spirit
15 Renaissance Sacred Music
16 Renaissance Secular Music
17 The Baroque Spirit
18 Vocal Music of the Baroque
19 Orchestral Music of the Baroque
20 Baroque Keyboard Music
21 The Classical Spirit
22 The Development of Classical Forms
23 The Classical Symphony
24 The Classical Concerto and Sonata
25 Classical Opera
26 The Spirit of Romanticism
27 The Romantic Miniature
28 Romantic Program Music
29 Romantic Opera
30 The Late Romantics
31 America's Emerging Musical Voice
32 The Impressionist Era
33 Main Currents in Early-Twentieth-Century Music
34 Early-Twentieth-Century Innovators
35 Nationalism and Music
36 Ragtime, Blues, and Jazz
37 New Directions
38 Contemporary Composers Look to World Music
39 Music for the Stage and Screen
40 The Many Voices of Rock
41 Some Current Trends

Chapter 6: Musical Form

Study Plan

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"The principal function of form is to advance our understanding. It is the organization of a piece that helps the listener to keep the idea in mind, to follow its development, its growth, its elaboration, its fate." —ARNOLD SCHOENBERG

Key Points

  • Form is the organizing principle in music; its basic elements are repetition, contrast, and variation.
  • Strophic form, common in songs, features repeated music for each stanza of text.
  • Binary form (A-B) and ternary form (A-B-A) are basic structures in music.
  • A theme is a melodic idea used as a building block in a large-scale work and can be broken into small, component fragments (motives). A sequence results when a motive is repeated at a different pitch level.
  • Many cultures use call-and-response (or responsorial) music, a repetitive style involving a soloist and a group. Some music is created spontaneously in performance, through improvisation.
  • An ostinato is the repetition of a short melodic, rhythmic, or harmonic pattern.
  • Large-scale compositions, such as symphonies and sonatas, are divided into sections, or movements.

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