Connexions module: m10842

Form in Music

Catherine Schmidt-Jones
This work is produced by The Connexions Project and licensed under the
Creative Commons Attribution License

Abstract
A basic introduction to recognizing form in music.

1 Form is the Basic Structure

Every piece of music has an overall plan or structure, the "big picture", so to speak. This is called the

form

of the music.
It is easy to recognize and grasp the form of some things, because they are small and simple, like a grain
of salt, or repetitive, like a wall made of bricks of the same size. Other forms are easy to understand because
they are so familiar; if you see dogs more often than you do sea cucumbers, it should be easier for you to
recognize the form of an unfamiliar dog than of an unfamiliar sea cucumber.

Other things, like a forest

ecosystem, or the structure of a government, are so complex that they have to be explored or studied before
their structure can be understood.
Musical forms oer a great range of complexity. Most listeners will quickly grasp the form of a short
and simple piece, or of one built from many short repetitions. It is also easier to recognize familiar musical
forms. The average American, for example, can distinguish easily between the verses and refrain of any pop
song, but will have trouble recognizing what is going on in a piece of music for Balinese gamelan. Classical
music traditions around the world tend to encourage longer, more complex forms which may be dicult to
recognize without the familiarity that comes from study or repeated hearings.
You can enjoy music without recognizing its form, of course. But understanding the form of a piece helps
a musician put together a more credible performance of it. Anyone interested in music theory or history, or
in arranging or composing music, must have a rm understanding of form. And being able to "see the big
picture" does help the listener enjoy the music even more.

2 Describing Form
Musicians traditionally have two ways to describe the form of a piece of music. One way involves labelling
each large section with a letter. The other way is to simply give a name to a form that is very common.

2.1 Labelling Form With Letters

Letters can be used to label the form of any piece of music, from the simplest to the most complex. Each
major section of the music is labelled with a letter; for example, the rst section is the A section. If the
second section (or third or fourth) is exactly the same as the rst, it is also labelled A. If it is very much like

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the A section, but with some important dierences, it can be labelled A' (pronounced "A prime"). The A'
section can also show up later in the piece, or yet another variation of A, A (pronounced "A double prime")
can show up, and so on.
The rst major section of the piece that is very dierent from A is labelled B, and other sections that
are like it can be labelled B, B', B, and so on. Sections that are not like A or B are labelled C, and so on.
How do you recognize the sections?

With familiar kinds of music, this is pretty easy.

(See Figure 1

(Some Familiar Forms) for some examples of forms that will be familiar to most listeners.) With unfamiliar
types of music, it can be more of a challenge. Whether the music is classical, modern, jazz, or pop, listen for
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repeated sections of music. Also, listen for big changes, in the rhythm , melody , harmony , texture , and
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timbre . A new section that is not a repetition will usually have noticeable dierences in more than one of
these areas. For an excellent discussion of form, with plenty of chances to practice hearing the beginnings
of new sections, please see Professor Brandt's Sound Reasoning

course. In particular, Musical Form

deals

with recognizing when something new is being introduced (A/B instead of A only), and Time's Eect on
the Material

deals with recognizing when a section reappears changed (A', B', or A).

1 "Rhythm" <http://cnx.org/content/m11646/latest/>
2 "Melody" <http://cnx.org/content/m11647/latest/>
3 "Harmony" <http://cnx.org/content/m11654/latest/>
4 "The Textures of Music" <http://cnx.org/content/m11645/latest/>
5 "Timbre: The Color of Music" <http://cnx.org/content/m11059/latest/>
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<http://cnx.org/content/col10214/latest/>
7 "Musical Form" <http://cnx.org/content/m11629/latest/>
8 "Time's Eect on the Material" <http://cnx.org/content/m11434/latest/>

Sound Reasoning

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Some Familiar Forms

Figure 1:

Most folk and popular music features simple forms that encourage participation.

Exercise 1

(Solution on p. 8.)

Practice identifying some easy musical forms. Pick some favorite songs and listen to each repeatedly
until you are satised that you have identied its full form using letters and primes. Compare the

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forms of the tunes to spot similarities and dierences.

Listen for:

Verses have the same melody but dierent words.

Refrains have the same melody and the same words.
Bridge Sections are new material that appears late in the song, usually appearing only once
or twice, often in place of a verse and usually leading into the refrain. (You may want to note
the dierences - and the similarity - in the use of the term

bridge by popular musicians and

jazz musicians; see below (Some Common Forms, p. 5)).

Instrumentals

are important sections that have no vocals. They can come at the beginning

or end, or in between other sections. Is there more than one? Do they have the same melody
as a verse or refrain? Are they similar to each other?
While discussing a piece of music in detail, musicians may also use letters to label smaller parts of the
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piece within larger sections, even down to labelling individual phrases . For example, the song "The Girl I
Left Behind" has many verses with no refrain, an A A' A- type form. However, a look (Figure 2: Phrase
Structure in "The Girl I Left Behind") at the tune of one verse shows that within that overall form is an A
A' B A phrase structure.

Phrase Structure in "The Girl I Left Behind"

Figure 2:

In detailed discussions of a piece of music, smaller sections, and even individual phrases, may

also be labelled with letters, in order to discuss the piece in greater detail.

The A A B A form of this

verse is very common, found in verses of everything from folk to jazz to pop music. Verses of blues songs
are more likely to have an A A' B form.

9 "Melody":

Section Melodic Phrases <http://cnx.org/content/m11647/latest/#s2>

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Exercise 2

(Solution on p. 8.)

Now try labeling the phrases of a verse or a refrain of some of the songs you listened to in Exercise 1.
Listen for phrases that use similar melodies. (Sometimes, but not always, they even use the same
words.) How many of your refrains and verses were basically A A B A? What were the others?

2.2 Naming Forms

Often a musical form becomes so popular with composers that it is given a name. For example, if a piece of
music is called a "theme and variations", it is expected to have an overall plan quite dierent from a piece
called a "rondo". (Specically, the theme and variations would follow an A A' A A '... plan, with each
section being a new variation on the theme in the rst section. A rondo follows an A B A C A ... plan, with
a familiar section returning in between sections of new music.)
Also, many genres of music tend to follow a preset form, like the "typical pop song form" in Figure 1
(Some Familiar Forms). A
number of instruments.

symphony,

for example, is usually a piece of music written for a fairly large

It is also associated with a particular form, so knowing that a piece of music is

called a symphony should lead you to expect certain things about it. For example, listeners familiar with the
symphonic form expect a piece called a symphony to have three or four (depending on when it was written)
main sections, called

movements.

They expect a moment of silence in between movements, and also expect

the movements to sound very dierent from each other; for example if the rst movement is fast and loud,
they might expect that the second movement would be slow and quiet. If they have heard many symphonies,
they also would not be at all surprised if the rst movement is in sonata form and the third movement is
based on a dance.
note: Although a large group of people who play classical music together is often called a sym-

phony, the more accurate term for the group is

orchestra.

The confusion occurs because many

orchestras call themselves "symphony orchestras" because they spend so much time playing symphonies (as opposed to, for example, an "opera orchestra" or a "pops orchestra").
Other kinds of music are also so likely to follow a particular overall plan that they have become associated
with a particular form. You can hear musicians talk about something being concerto form or sonata form,
for example (even if the piece is not technically a concerto or sonata).
example), besides having a set tempo

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and time signature

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Particular dances (a minuet, for

, will sometimes have a set form that suits the

dance steps. And many marches are similar enough in form that there are names for the expected sections
(rst strain, second strain, trio, break strain).
But it is important to remember that forms are not sets of rules that composers are required to follow.
Some symphonies don't have silence between movements, and some don't use the sonata form in any of their
movements. Plenty of marches have been written that don't have a trio section, and the development section
of a sonata movement can take unexpected turns.

And hybrid forms, like the sonata rondo, can become

popular with some composers. After all, in architecture, "house" form suggests to most Americans a front
and back door, a dining room o the kitchen, and bedrooms with closets, but an architect is free to leave out
the dining room, and put the main door at the side of the house and the closets in the bathrooms. Whether
a piece of music is a march, a sonata, or a theme and variations, the composer is always free to experiment
with the overall architecture of the piece.
Being able to spot that overall architecture as we listen - knowing, so to speak, which room we are in
right now - gives us important clues that help us understand and appreciate the music.

Some Common Forms

Through-composed - One section (usually not very long) that does not contain any large repetitions.
If a short piece includes repeated phrases, it may be classied by the structure of its phrases.

10 "Tempo" <http://cnx.org/content/m11648/latest/>
11 "Time Signature" <http://cnx.org/content/m10956/latest/>

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Strophic - Composed of verses.

The music is repeated sections with fairly small changes. May or may

not include a refrain (p. 4).

Variations

- One section repeated many times. Most commonly, the melody remains recognizable in
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each section, and the underlying harmonic structure

rhythm

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, tempo

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, texture

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, or timbre

remains basically the same, but big changes in

keep each section sounding fresh and interesting. Writing

a set of variations is considered an excellent exercise for students interested in composing, arranging,
and orchestration.

Jazz standard song form

- Jazz utilizes many dierent forms, but one very common form is closely
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related to the strophic and variation forms. A chord progression

in A A B A form (with the B section

called the bridge (p. 4)) is repeated many times. On the rst and last repetition, the melody is played
or sung, and soloists improvise during the other repetitions. The overall form of verse-like repetition,
with the melody played only the rst and nal times, and improvisations on the other repetitions, is
very common in jazz even when the A A B A song form is not being used.

Rondo

- One section returns repeatedly, with a section of new music before each return. (A B A C A

; sometimes A B A C A B A)

Dance forms

- Dance forms usually consist of repeated sections (so there is plenty of music to dance

to), with each section containing a set number of measures

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(often four, eight, sixteen, or thirty-two)

that ts the dance steps. Some very structured dance forms (Minuet, for example) are associated even
with particular phrase

Binary Form

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structures and harmonic progressions

within each section.

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- Two dierent main sections (A B). Commonly in Western

section will move away from the tonic

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, with a strong cadence

classical music, the A

in another key, and the B section will

move back and end strongly in the tonic.

Ternary Form - Three main sections, usually A B A or A B A'.

Cyclic Form - There are two very dierent uses of this term. One refers to long multimovement works
(a "song cycle", for example) that have an overarching theme and structure binding them together. It
may also refer to a single movement or piece of music with a form based on the constant repetition of a

ostinato) in one part of the music (for example,

single short section. This may be an exact repetition (

the bass line, or the rhythm section), while development, variation, or new melodies occur in other
parts. Or it may be a repetition that gradually changes and evolves. This intense-repetition type of
cyclic form is very common in folk musics around the world and often nds its way into classical and
popular musics, too.

Sonata form

- may also be called sonata-allegro or rst-movement form.

It is in fact often found

in the rst movement of a sonata, but it has been an extremely popular form with many well-known
composers, and so can be found anywhere from the rst movement of a quartet to the nal movement of
a symphony. In this relatively complex form (too complex to outline here), repetition and development
of melodic themes within a framework of expected key changes allow the composer to create a long
movement that is unied enough that it makes sense to the listener, but varied enough that it does
not get boring.

note: Please

help me improve these materials by lling out a short survey

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12 "Beginning Harmonic Analysis" <http://cnx.org/content/m11643/latest/>

13 "Rhythm" <http://cnx.org/content/m11646/latest/>
14 "Tempo" <http://cnx.org/content/m11648/latest/>
15 "The Textures of Music" <http://cnx.org/content/m11645/latest/>
16 "Timbre: The Color of Music" <http://cnx.org/content/m11059/latest/>
17 "Harmony": Chords <http://cnx.org/content/m11654/latest/#l0b>
18 "Time Signature": Section Beats and Measures <http://cnx.org/content/m10956/latest/#s1>
19 "Melody": Section Melodic Phrases <http://cnx.org/content/m11647/latest/#s2>
20 "Beginning Harmonic Analysis" <http://cnx.org/content/m11643/latest/>
21 "What Kind of Music is That?" <http://cnx.org/content/m11421/latest/>
22 "Major Keys and Scales" <http://cnx.org/content/m10851/latest/#p1a>
23 "Cadence in Music" <http://cnx.org/content/m12402/latest/>
24 https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/L5JZVN9

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. I am considering

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a number of possible changes and additions to my music materials at this site, but don't have the
time to do all of them. This is your chance to let me know what would be most helpful to you.

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Solutions to Exercises in this Module

Solution to Exercise 1 (p. 3)
Your answers will depend on the songs you choose. Check them with a teacher if you can. (Bring the music
so the teacher can listen to it while checking your answers.)

Solution to Exercise 2 (p. 4)

If one is available, have a music teacher check your answers.

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