Form and Its Function

What's your favorite form for poetry? Haiku? Sonnet? I bet you like the limerick. If I told you I had a limerick to share, you would expect a five-line poem with an aabba rhyming scheme and probably a dirty subject. If you wanted to compose a love poem, the sonnet is an obvious choice. We tend to like poetry with a set meter and rhyming convention because then we know what to expect. It's useful for both poet and listener/reader.

The same applies to music. There are forms with fancy names like ritornello, sonata-allegro, or fugue. Even popular music tends to follow a form with verses, refrains, an outro and such. As with poetry, knowing the form of a piece you're listening to gives you an idea of what to expect and sometimes an indication of the tone. The third movement of symphony will tend to have a dance-like or playful quality, for example. I find form in music to be much harder to track, though. It often involves hearing a theme once at the beginning, and recognizing that theme when it recurs as a variation. When you've heard three other themes in between, well, that's a lot to hold in your head even without getting distracted by thoughts like, "wasn't I supposed to call someone?" or "oh yeah, this reminds of that one time on that orchestra trip when..." I think I'm learning some tricks, like paying attention to key changes, but any others would be appreciated.

As with poetic forms, composers have long pushed the boundaries of musical forms. Beethoven expanded just about every part of the symphony. Mendelssohn placed the cadenza of his violin concerto before the coda, rather than after. People like Schoenberg invented totally new forms. Compare a Mahler symphony to a Mozart one, and you'd scarcely recognize any similarities. That's how art advances. As long as there is some semblance of the original form, I think the function is still served. It's like writing a poem with an abab rhyming scheme for 20 lines, then throwing in a different couplet. It's not what you expect, so it gets your attention.

What doesn't work for me is when people claim an established form and do something completely different. Last night, I watched Stanislav Pronin perform Lera Auerbach's "Par.Ti.Ta". Now, a partita is traditionally a suite of dances performed on a solo instrument. The movements in this were titled Adagio, Moderato, Andantino Scherzando, and so on. These are tempi, not dances. And they were anything but dancelike. Pronin said he'd asked Auerbach why it was spelled the way it was. The response was, "First of all, it looks cool." Auerbach seems to have solid credentials and a long publication history, so maybe it's me missing something here. But if I sold you a Com.Bo.5 and you got a sandwich with nothing else, you'd be a bit miffed. It doesn't matter how good the sandwich is; your expectations were not met. Even if it was two sandwiches, it's not what you think of as a combo. You want some kind of side and a drink, right?

So there you have it. There is organization and tradition in the forms of western art music that takes time to learn, but provides a richer, more active listening experience. You can even try listening to the form of popular songs. See who has the creativity to break away from the simpler forms. It's fun, as long as your mind doesn't drift off to your shopping list, or whether you just missed your turn....