Musical Form........Concertos.....Sonatas etc

[Andy Schofield]

Hi All
There often seem to be many who worry about 'musical form'......"is it true Sonata form?".........."that's not a Concerto, there's no cadenza" .....and so on. I'm not too sure that Schoenberg or Messien worried to much about form or indeed that they should have done. To me you write what you feel, using the skills and knowledge you've got, never mind what mathematical equation it adheres too.
What do you think?????

I've just added a Concerto on my site.....(with no third movt cadenza incidentally).....and would welcome any feedback.
Many thanks
Andy.S

[Richard Ratner]

It seems to me that there is some truth to what you say. However, one must remember why sonata-allegro form became so popular. When you start with this form, you have a formULA that allows you to think in a long timespan: exposition, development, and recapitulation guarantee a piece that will take some time, and will TELL A COHERENT STORY. That is why it is so useful - it allows a composer to worry about his material rather than if various ideas will follow each other logically to create a meaningful whole. The idea of TWO OPPOSING main themes, rather than 3 or 5 or 1, is basic. The idea of THEMATIC DEVELOPMENT is basic. The idea of tonal STABILITY vs. INSTABILITY is basic. Throwing this all out the window is fine, so long as one understands that one is obliged to then invent a form that will accomplish the same ends as sonata-allegro, assuming that one intends to create a lengthy piece that tells a coherent story from beginning to end.

[Ed Sharpe]

Form is rhythm on a larger scale.

[Jack Pickett]

I love form - I think it is the key and with mastery can make 10 minutes seem like 2. Handled badly it can make 2 minutes sound like 10.

As to a Sonata being a Sonata - well I am of the school of thought that a piece of music is whatever you want it to be...if for no other purpose than to annoy an academic. :)

[Leon Portelance]

I wrote a string quartet a while back. The first two movements were in Sonata form, the third (a slow movement) in ABA, then a Scherzo and, lastly, the fifth movement a grand Fugue finale. So I can't imagine not using form in music. I am also written a lot of songs and if you listen to 95 percent of the songs written, they have intros, verses, choruses and bridges. Through-Composing can be interesting, but it is kinda like a jam. If the lick doesn't work the first time, you don't get a second chance, because if you start repeating it, then you got form!

[Danny De Can]

You will have to define your own style sooner or later, but learning the basic structures is not a bad start. The classical composers also learned by trail-and-error and naturally came to these structures.

[Steve Chandler]

Patrick I believe you've hit the nail on the head with this. In my experience music is about entertaining the mind for a period of time. That can mean anything from personal edification to guilty pleasure. When the experience is unpleasant with no redeeming virtues most of us get upset about what we perceive as wasted time. I've been to concerts where the music offered nothing I found of interest. I won't speak for everyone, but I do find that my instincts are pretty close to most sophisticated music listeners. I enjoy music that offers something recognizable as a theme or musical moment. I enjoy music that offers something in the way of dramatic organization. I believe this is the intent of musical form, to inform a composer's choices about how to fill a block of time with music. For every piece by every composer these choices will be individual and distinct.

The musical forms of the past certainly have validity for composers today, but perhaps not in their strictest forms. Sonata form has been stretched and turned in so many different directions that I see it as a way to contrast two theme groups and not much more. Variations as a form is certainly self explanatory yet provides unique challenges (read that as opportunity) from an organizational and dramatic point of view. If you're composing a Rondo you'd better be sure to have at least one sprightly easily recognized theme that is also flexible with regard to treatment. Yet life for composers becomes more interesting when the knowledge of these forms (and others) simply informs their choices in the composition of a particular piece. For example variations now seems to mean the listener gets to wonder what the music they're listening too has to do with the original theme. Maybe this all started with Rachmaninoff's Variations on a Theme of Paganini and it's famous 18th variation. It's a beautiful moment in the piece, but the theme has been inverted and slowed down and as such is not easily recognizable. For Rachmaninoff, of course, it works beautifully and that piece will remain in the repertoire for centuries to come.

My point is never fear to step outside the box when it comes to formal considerations. Use historical forms as learning tools and with experience you'll find ways to make your music uniquely yours.

[Tomás San Miguel]

correct!

[Jared]

I think its important that music be organized in some way, but not a certain way. To put it another way, whether its a traditional form, and invented form, or hybrid of forms, there needs to be some form. I see no reason following a traditional form be required in anyway.

As for whether or not its a true this, that, or the other thing, that's less a question of the importance of form per se as it is of how strictly or loosely terms like "sonata" and "concerto" are defined. I wouldn't sweat it if a there was some variation away from the most prototypical understanding of the form or left out some particular feature, as long as it followed the basic pattern AND also had most of the defining characteristics intact -- though these terms would become meaningless if just anything could be considered a "sonata," "concerto," "fugue," or whatever, so something couldn't stray very far. Remember, these forms evolved over time, and many early examples lack characteristics later considered essential, an innovators have modified them.

Just an opinion from someone who has little specific knowledge.

[James May]

Short answer:
Agreed.

Though knowing form and being able to execute it based on established theory is great, music can't evolve if we don't challenge the norms.

BTW: The concerto is epic. REALLY good stuff.

[Eric Fretheim]

I once heard that Satie wrote 'Trois Morceaux en forme de poire' (Three pieces in the form of a pear.) because Saint-Saens complained that his music followed no form. Just to tweak him a little further, it includes seven pieces, rather than three.

I'm of two minds on this. I consider Sonata a very specific form, just like "Fugue", "Passacaglia" or the various Baroque dances. "Concerto" or "Symphony" though, might loosely have a classical 'definition' of a sonata for soloist(s) accompianied by full orchestra or a sonata for full orchestra alone, but so many concertos in the repetoire come from before the establishment of t he classical sonata form and so much of what was written in the late Romantic and in the Twentieth Century doesn't follow the form, that I don't think these can really be considered firm definitions any more, if they ever really were. Even in the Classical period you can find as many exceptions to the rule as you can find adherents. To me, any piece that is principally a work for a soloist accompanied by an orchestra can legitimately be called a 'concerto' once it passes fourteen or fifteen minutes. A symphony is should be longer than that, but doesn't have to be humongous. Sibelius's no. 7 is usually less than 25 minutes long. What separates them from other works is usually (but not always) that they don't follow some other form (like a dance suite or variations) and they are programless.

Whether having a cadenza or not is a necessity to be a 'real' concerto is debatable. Most earlier concertos simply had the final cadence of the soloist's part in the first movement marked 'cadenza' to let the soloist know he could take his time improvising the ornamentation on it. That's all the term really means. The improvisations grew over the years until at some point the composers decided to take possession of them. Some newer concertos dispose of cadenzas entirely, or play around with them. Andrei Eshpai for example writes concertos with vaguely 'standard' form, but having an unaccompanied, cadenza-like introductory solo in addition to the 'real' cadenza.

There's an oboe concerto with a very clever use of the cadenza. It has two, as intermezzos between the movements. The soloist simply keeps playing at the end of the prior movement as the orchestra rests or turns pages or such, then they join in at the next movement when he comes to it. I've been sitting here trying to think of whether it was Ralph Vaughan Williams or Richard Strauss. They both wrote their oboe concertos around the same time, at the end of WWII.