Page 139 - ESSENTIAL LISTENING TO MUSIC

When concertgoers stepped into a hall in the late eighteenth century, how- ever, they expected all of the music to be new and up to date—why would any- one want to hear old music? But while the late-eighteenth-century audience didn’t know the pieces in advance, listeners did come with certain expectations with regard to the form as well as the mood of the music. For a symphony, for example, they might anticipate what you see in Table 8.1.
table 8.1 Four-Movement Symphony
Movement
1234
Form Sonata–allegro Large ternary, theme and
variations, or rondo
Minuet and trio in ternary form
Sonata– allegro, theme and variations, or rondo
Mood Serious and substantive despite fast
tempo
Lyrical and tender
Usually light and elegant, sometimes spirited
Bright, lighthearted, sometimes humorous
Tempo Fast Slow Lively Fast
Thus, during the Classical era composers used certain forms for certain movements within a symphony. The same expectations also held true for a sonata and a concerto. But how do composers make a “form” out of music— something you hear but can’t see? They do so, as mentioned in Chapter 3, through statement, repetition, contrast, and variation.
Ternary Form
In ternary form (ABA), the idea of statement–contrast–repetition is obvious. Think of it as kind of musical “home–away–home” if you wish. To demonstrate the point in the simplest possible terms, consider again the French folksong known to us as “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.”
A Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are.
B Up above the world so high, like a diamond in the sky.
A Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are.
Minuet and Trio in Ternary Form
Dance music is almost always symmetrical in form—same number of beats per bar and same number of bars per phrase; the mind must easily grasp the structure so that the body performs the steps. During the Baroque and Classical eras, most dances were written in simple forms, such as binary and ternary (see Chapter 3, “Form”). Ternary form provides the structure of the minuet, a stately dance in
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