Form in Twentieth-Century Music

1. Form in Twentieth-Century Music Organizing the New Language

2. Form All of the formal structures and procedures from the Common Practice are found in the twentieth century. Often these were used by conservative composers writing fairly tonal works. However, some composers like Schoenberg based the formal structure of their nontonal music on traditional forms. The problem is that many of the traditional forms, like sonata, depend upon the conflict of tonal areas to create drama.

3. Form Traditional contrapuntal forms -- actually more procedures than forms -- worked well because they depended less on tonality. Sectional and continuous variations also worked well. Binary form is usually only used in short pieces, movements, or segments of large works. It is basically the same except the tonal schemes are not used.

4. Form Because of its simple and flexible structure, the ternary principle -- statement, contrast, restatement -- is used extensively. Contrast can be achieved many ways. It can be applied to small or large compositions or segments of compositions. The balancing of the statement and restatement seen in tonal music is not necessary in nontonal music.

5. Form Rondo form, an expansion of the ternary principle, is also well-suited to nontonal music. It is more dependant on contrasting ideas than contrasting tonal centers. Arch form is similar to rondo except it involves a palindromic arrangement of the sections (ABCBA, ABACABA, etc.).

6. Form Sonata form, the most important form in the Classical and Romantic periods, depended upon a conflict between tonalities in the exposition that was resolved in the recapitulation. Nontonal as well as tonal sonatas were written in the twentieth century. Some believe that other elements replace the tonal conflict. But since tonal contrast was the main element -- monothematic sonatas and reverse recapitulations highlight that the themes were less important -- can it really be a sonata without tonality?

7. Form Sectional variations were written using both original themes and borrowed material. Some twelve-tone variations only used the row itself as a basis for variation; other twelve-tone compositions presented an actual theme to be remembered.

8. Form Continuous variations, the passacaglia which is based on a repeating bass line, and the chaconne which is based on a repeating harmonic progression, continue into the twentieth century. Use of the chaconne declined as a result of the lack of a common harmonic language. Canon, which fell out favor after Bach, became popular again in the twentieth century. With the emancipation of dissonance and the lack of traditional harmonic progressions, the main difficulties of writing canons were eliminated. Canon is a technique that can be used either as a part of, or for the entire composition.

9. Form Ludis Tonalis is a set of fugues written by Hindemith using The Well-Tempered Clavier as a model. It is a collection of twelve fugues, separated by eleven interludes, with a prelude and postlude book-ending the collection. Fugues are also often found as movements or portions of movements within larger works.

10. The Golden Mean The golden mean is a proportion that has been used in art and architecture to obtain aesthetically pleasing designs. Basically if the ratio between part A and part B is the same as part B to the whole (or vice versa), it is proportioned according to the golden mean. It can be represented as .618 -- around two-thirds. The Fibonacci sequence is an endless sequence of integers that will approximate the golden mean. Each number is the sum of the previous two: 1, 2, 3, 5, etc.

11. Other Procedures Since in many twentieth-century compositions themes are irrelevant or nonexistent, texture, register, dynamics, and especially timbre are more important factors in delineating form. Some composers rejected the traditional teleological or organic approach to musical composition. Stockhausen developed what he called moment form. Each part of the composition is an end to itself without any intentional relationship between what precedes or follows. The music begins as if picking up in the middle of some music and ends as if it is continuing on somewhere else.