Musical Form


Are forms archetypes?

This is a question that is very difficult to answer. On one hand it is obvious that the forms musicians talk about, such as a two-reprise form, or a sonata-allegro form, or a rondo form, are cultural artifacts that have a history in Western Europe which music historians can trace development through specific dates and pieces of specific composers. This also applies to popular music. When was the first appearance of a 16-bar blues, which is generally a two-reprise form with variations, employing dominant seventh chords based on tonic, sub-dominant and dominant degrees? What makes it "Blue" is the major and minor thirds played together., not just the flat-seventh chords. This is so much abstract verbage that may not mean anything even to a jazz musician that has been playing for decades, although I think that most of them do know what I am talking about, they may not think it is important to them.

The point of this is that weather it is the most exotic music from an aboriginal primitive culture, or a Rap song with a sampled repeated bass ( ostinato ) where the spoken word is a free part, there is some element of form that is independently and universally used that we understand at some fundamental level almost instantly. We may not like it or enjoy it. We may think it is trivial or used without any creativity, but we are readily able to understand it.


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