Thread: Favourite Musical Forms?

Hooray! I'm back! You lucky, lucky people!

My time abroad was fantastic, thank you, especially as you lot weren't there.

But, generous man that I am, I don't want to focus on me - I'm far too humble - so I have a question for you: do you have a favourite musical form?

Besotted with ballads? Mad about mazurkas? Serious about scherzos?

Personally, I adore theme and variations. Strangely enough, I don't usually register the form a piece is in otherwise - I couldn't give any kind of ranking for sonata form over a rondo, for example; they're just different - it doesn't matter. But I just love a set of variations.

I'm not entirely sure why - perhaps it's because I'm so mentally deficient that I need an obvious, clearly stated theme to latch onto, with coherently structured development in order to be musically satisfied. Or maybe it's just because variations allow a piece to open with a supreme melody and its harmony in distilled form, with the sheer extent of its different guises throughout the piece always giving surprise at what a brilliant composer can do.

So, what about you?

Being away for such a long time with time to think about great idea for a thread that's all you could come out with? HO HO HO

Hmm! You ask about forms and provide examples of mazurkas and scherzos. Both scherzos and mazurkas are mostly in ABA form so it's like they are the same form but diffrent in character. So I suppose you mean the form in the light of it's usual character?

Scherzos will be my least favourite, that's for sure. Often just a spoilers of great symphonies interrupting great stuff with some cartoon-like tunes. The only scherzos I like are those that renounce meaning of "scherzo".

As for favourite, I'll take either Ballade or Polonaise. The first mainly by Chopin as his Ballades are essence of pianism, poetry and formally achieved some of greatest balances in dramatic tension - the tradition of Chopin ballades didn't find many followers (Ballades by Brahms can't even touch his) but there are some good examples like Ballade in G minor by Juliusz Zarębski. The Polonaise because I love it's dignified and noble rhythm. I'm also fond of reflective, emotional elegies.

I love orchestral music. It's all about the Concertos and Sonatas for me.

Originally Posted by Polednice

Personally, I adore theme and variations. Strangely enough, I don't usually register the form a piece is in otherwise - I couldn't give any kind of ranking for sonata form over a rondo, for example; they're just different - it doesn't matter. But I just love a set of variations.

I'm not entirely sure why - perhaps it's because I'm so mentally deficient that I need an obvious, clearly stated theme to latch onto, with coherently structured development in order to be musically satisfied. Or maybe it's just because variations allow a piece to open with a supreme melody and its harmony in distilled form, with the sheer extent of its different guises throughout the piece always giving surprise at what a brilliant composer can do

.

I don't think I really have a favorite form. But, I agree that a really good set of variations can be unusually compelling. For me, the obvious examples would be Beethoven's 3rd (4th movement), Brahms' "Haydn" Variations & Fourth Symphony (4th movement), and Dvorak's Eight Symphony (4th movement).

On the other hand, I seem to recall being rather uninspired by some other sets of variations (it seems like the Baroque period comes to mind for me) where I could see cleverness, but not really anything moving. I don't mean Bach, by the way. I'm still trying to familiarize myself with the Goldberg Variations, but it's taking some time.

Robert Schumann – Etudes After Paganini Caprices, Op. 3 (1832)


Johannes Brahms – Variations on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 35 (1862-63), for solo piano


Franz Liszt – Études d'exécution transcendante d'après Paganini for solo piano (1838)


Sergei Rachmaninoff – Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 43 for piano and orchestra (1934)


Witold Lutosławski – Variations on a Theme by Paganini (1940-41)


Boris Blacher – Variations on a Theme by Paganini (1947), for orchestra



(and I know there is a lot more)

I'll have to be square and say sonata allegro "form" and the larger structures (symphonies, string quartets, sonatas, etc.) associated with it.

My next favorite would be the baroque suite form where an opening half often modulates to another key and repeats, then the second half messes around for a while before returning home, and then it too repeats. I'm not sure what this form is really called, but you see it in Scarlatti sonatas and most of the movements of suites and partitas. The fugue is a nice form too, but a little too dense for most occasions.

My least favorite form would be the tone poem, which technically isn't a form at all. Tone poems are barely a notch above a movie soundtrack to me. That's not really knocking tone poems. I love them and movie soundtracks too, just not as much as the above forms.

Sonata, easily. Music I might otherwise find boring keeps my attention if it's in sonata form because I like to analyze the form as I listen. And I like when composers make alterations to it, like using key areas other than just tonic and dominant (or tonic and relative major, if it's in a minor key) in the exposition, or putting new themes in the coda. (And that's why Beethoven's awesome. Well, one reason.) And developments are exciting.

And I like rondos because they often make me laugh. Every time the rondo tune comes back.

I used to think variation forms were kind of shallow or lazy, a kind of cop-out form for when composers didn't feel like writing more new material, but that was very silly of me, and I don't know where I got the idea. Some really sublime movements are in variation forms. (My favorite example: Beethoven Op. 109 sonata, mvt. 3)

By genre, I listen to all, including vocal. None that I particularly dislike. Many of my favourite works happen to be in the genre of opera, concerto and chamber music that use all sorts of musical forms. Whether highly developed Classical sonata forms or simple binary forms from earlier periods, I'm not fussed. I let music the music speak for itself. I seem to like many pieces that happen to use particular forms but that has to do with the composer and his music, rather than the form per se.

Originally Posted by CaptainAzure

I love orchestral music. It's all about the Concertos and Sonatas for me.

Hey Captain, your Avatar was the king of the piano concerto genre, and sonata and rondo forms. Long live the king!

My favorite is Sonata form. I love how it is so flexible and has managed to last and stay fresh well into the 20th and even the 21st century in some cases. The different examples of Sonata form from every composer of every era since its been around are so diverse. I love wondering what's going to happen in the development section too.

Originally Posted by HarpsichordConcerto

Hey Captain, your Avatar was the king of the piano concerto genre, and sonata and rondo forms. Long live the king!

Eeeeeeeeeeeexactly

Concertos for unusual instruments and orchestra. Such as harmonica, vibraphone, alphorn, erhu and balalaika.

I listen to pretty much everything, but I've found I like forms which translate to different eras so I don't have to get out a music dictionary before I hear them. That's probably because I listen a lot in my car, and I don't like having to grab the liner notes to figure out what's going on.

So I'm most drawn to sonata-allegro form pieces. I also like masses, because the text is the same in each piece, so I don't have to bury my head in a libretto as I'm driving.

What I listen to least is tone poems. It's the head-in-the-liner-notes problem again. "What's that squeak? Is it a baby crying, or is it a bird calling from a bush?" I always get lost in the details.

I'll chime in with Nocturnes. Chopin's, Faure's, Satie's, Field's, whoever's, they all tend to grab me. Not too sure if it's technically a form or not. If it is, it's not much more strict than "A-B-A and arpeggios (if you want)".

I find a lot of forms seem to really over-lap with each other, like passacaglias and chaconnes for example and I find this confusing...I believe the original definition of sonata was something like 'sounds without words' and the original definition of an aria was something like 'sounds with words'. Therefore my favorite musical forms would be these original definitions of sonatas and arias.