Some simple musical forms explained
Musical genres or styles are generally known as the musical forms. But, in real situation it is a type of architectural structure on which music is built. Often students need to know these forms very well when studying Music Theory. Overview of few famous forms is given below :
Concerto: A concerto is a musical work with a composition usually in 3 parts or movements, in which one solo instrument is accompanied by an orchestra. There are many kinds of concerto like- classical concerto, romantic concerto, baroque concerto etc. The 3 instrument generally used in concerto are violin, piano and cello.
Symphony: It is a Greek word which means “agreement of sound”. It consists of four forms. First is an opening sonata or allegro, second a slow movement such as adagio, third a minuet with trio and fourth an allegro, sonata or minute. It is generally known for its complexity.
Sonata: It is a musical form that has been used since classical period. It is usually used in the first movement of multi movement pieces. During the classical period generally three movements are preferred first one is layout of allegro, middle movement is of either adagio or largo and a closing movement is such as dance minuet.
Sonatina: shorter and lighter version of sonata in 3 movements is known as Sonatina. It is most often applied to solo keyboard works, but a number of composers have written Sonatina for violin and piano.
Bourree: A musical dance form of France is known as Bourree. It generally starts with a quick double time. It starts on the last beat of bar creating a quarter bar anacrusis.
Fugue: a contrapuntal composition in two or three voices is known as fugue. Basically it has three sections – an exposition, a development, and a recapitulation which contains return of subject in fugue’s tonic key. Fugue begins with exposition and characteristically written according to certain predefined rules.
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