Form characters

 

In western music history a lot of forms evolved with regular patterns and form schemes.

Examples are the  (late) classical) sonata form, the  ritornello form (Vivaldi), binary forms (in dance forms), rondo forms, etc.

If  we have an overal structure with a clear and persisting pattern we speak of form types. Then we can think of forms like sonata-form rondo form, sonata-rondo. Often musical form can be more fluid and in those cases we see a composing process that results in a certain form. Passacaglia and fugue are examples of this procedure.

Herman Erpf distinguishes three general and global form characters:

  1. Sequential forms, with a sequence of clearly separated sections
  2. Balanced forms, in which there are also clearly separated sections, but in which different sections are balanced. For example by creating balance by repetition at a distance (for example in sonata form: exposition - development - recapitulation)
  3. Developing forms, in which a process with a certain development takes place. This can be an increase in tension (passacaglia) or complexity (variation forms), or change in colour and patterns (minimal music). 

These form characters do not exclude each other, very often one of the three is dominating.