Chapter 5: Musical Form
Study Plan
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.
- Some music is created spontaneously in performance, through improvisation.
- 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 known as motives. A sequence results when a motive is repeated at a different pitch.
- Many cultures use call-and-response (or responsorial) music, a repetitive style involving a soloist and a group.
- An ostinato is the repetition of a short musical melodic, rhythmic, or harmonic pattern.
- Large-scale compositions, such as symphonies and sonatas, are divided into sections, or movements.
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