APPENDICES
I.
MUSICAL FORM—ABSOLUTE MUSIC—PROGRAMME-MUSIC—BERLIOZ AND WAGNER
The word Form, as applied to instrumental music, is synonymous with Design. A movement is built up on a certain ground-plan, the outlines of which are constructed according to some given arrangement of keys, or melodies, or both, which secures symmetry for the work and facilitates its presentment as a whole to the intelligence of the hearer. A chief element in musical form is recurrence, the simplest illustration of which—three sections of which the third repeats the first (A, B, A)—is to be found in a vast number of folk-melodies.
The main source to which the instrumental music of classical art owes its primitive origin is the Folk-melody, whether of dance or of song. This Folk-melody was entirely naïve, and as free from the imitative or pictorial, as from the reflective, element. The dance-melody was conditioned by the rhythm of the dance. The song-melody, also rhythmical as distinct from declamatory, more or less reflected the sentiment of the text; verses of a joyous character naturally suggested joyous tunes, those of a plaintive character, plaintive tunes; but the ideas constituting the melody were essentially musical thoughts, and contained no attempt at pictorial illustration of the subject of the words; the melody formed from them was Absolute music.
In process of time these melodies came to be treated apart from their text or their dance, and new ones were invented whose primary object was not the dance or the song, but the gratification of the ear and intelligence by the pleasing succession of musical phrases. Instrumental movements were constructed, and these bore unmistakable impress of their descent, since the ideas and series of ideas forming them were rhythmical and symmetrical.
It is obviously impossible in the short space at our disposal even to touch upon the history of the process by which early instrumental pieces of a few bars have gradually developed into the elaborate movements of classical art, but, by sketching as slightly as possible two of the forms, one or other of which underlies the vast majority of the instrumental works of modern classical music, we hope to enable all our readers to follow the allusions to Form in our text, which must be understood to include other forms than these, but such as have in common with them the essential element of design or symmetry.
The Rondo-form has been used by composers of almost all periods, and has, in modern times, developed into two large varieties. The idea from which it originated is best realized by reference to the old rondeau dance-song, the design of which is simplicity itself. A short melody sung several times in chorus was alternated with others contributed by solo voices, which were sometimes called 'couplets,' and which are now generally termed 'episodes.' The form required two, and permitted any number, of episodes, each of which was bound to furnish a new melody. The performance terminated as it began, with the chorus. The form, therefore, may be thus represented: A, B, A, C, A, ad libitum.
The reader will find many examples of the early eighteenth-century instrumental Rondo in Couperin's 'Pièces de Clavecin,' published in Paris in 1713, and edited for republication by Brahms (Chrysander's 'Denkmäler der Tonkunst'). With these he may compare the great rondo-movement of Beethoven's Sonata in C major, Op. 53.
The so-called Sonata-form underlies the immense majority of the first movements composed by the great masters of the last century and a half—the first movements, not only of those works for pianoforte solo or pianoforte and another instrument which are called by the name sonata, but of trios, quartets, and so forth, and of symphonies, which are, in fact, sonatas for orchestra.
A movement in Sonata-form consists of three essential parts—the Statement or Exposition of themes, the 'thematic material'; their Development; their Repetition. To these was formerly appended a short Coda, which has gradually developed, and now frequently extends to the dimensions of a fourth part.