Talk:Musical form

musical form interchangeable with musical genre?

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

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Proposed outline

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.

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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)

Definition

• An open invitation to participate in Talk:String_quartet#Form_or_group.3F. Cheers. --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 duet, trio, quartet, quintet, sextet, septet, octet, and nonet are used to describe groups of two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, and nine musicians, respectively. In 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.

This however is a bit confusing: an ensemble is at least three musicians, but yet duet is mentioned here as a form of chamber music, a music, which I assume is played by an ensemble. The question is then, where does something like a string quartet, symphony, concerto, or in reference to the above quote, a cello sonata, fall under: Musical form, or otherwise? I apologize if this is all very pedantic. I would like to hear other people's POV. Thanks, --bleh fu 03:14, Jan 15, 2005 (UTC)

• I spoke to a friend of mine who is far more in the know than I, and he related the following to me:
  • Musical form: sonata-allegro form, ternary form, rondo, through-composed versus strophic, fugue
  • Musical genre: cello sonata, symphony, concerto, string quartet
  • Musical ensemble: piano and cello duet, orchestra, orchestra with soloist, string quartet

Obviously there is some ambiguity with terms that can fall under more than one category, but there is none with each of the terms within these contexts. i.e., string quartet can refer to a piece of music with an instrumentation of 2 vln, vla, and vc, or can refer to the ensemble itself, but there should not be any ambiguity between these definitions. --bleh fu 08:00, Jan 15, 2005 (UTC)

This article is hard to understand

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)

apodigm

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)

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)

citing "The Retreat of Reason"

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)

Musical forms in various avantgarde/popular music works

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)

How to consolidate all these Form links into one solid index

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)

Popular music

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)

Additional citations

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)