Form in 20th Century Music

FORM. In the most general sense: shape (contour, the variation of some attribute of a thing in space or time), and structure (the disposition of parts, relations of part to part, and of part to whole). In music, shape is the result of changes in some attribute or parameter of sound, in time, while structure has to do with various relations between sounds and sound-configurations, at the same or at different moments in time. The word is often used in the more restricted sense of a fixed or standard scheme of relationships (e.g. “sonata-form”), but this definition of form is of little use in a study of music in the 20th century, which has tended to break away from such fixed patterns, yielding a fantastic variety of new forms. In order to deal with this variety, our basic definition of form must be as broad as possible, and a number of new terms will have to be developed.