Lessons in Music Form | Page 3

and possibly the strongest argument of all for the
necessity of form in music, is derived from reflection upon the
peculiarly vague and intangible nature of its art-material--tone, sound.
The words of a language (also sounds, it is true) have established
meanings, so familiar and definite that they recall and re-awaken
impressions of thought and action with a vividness but little short of the
actual experience. Tones, on the contrary, are not and cannot be

associated with any definite ideas or impressions; they are as
impalpable as they are transient, and, taken separately, leave no lasting
trace.
Therefore, whatever stability and palpability a musical composition is
to acquire, must be derived from its form, or design, and not from its
totally unsubstantial material. It must fall back upon the network traced
by the disposition of its points and lines upon the musical canvas; for
this it is that constitutes its real and palpable contents.
THE EVIDENCES OF FORM IN MUSIC.--The presence of form in
music is manifested, first of all, by the disposition of tones and chords
in symmetrical measures, and by the numerous methods of tone
arrangement which create and define the element of Rhythm,--the
distinction of short and long time-values, and of accented and
unaccented (that is, heavy and light) pulses.
This is not what is commonly supposed to constitute form in music, but
it is the fundamental condition out of which an orderly system of form
may be developed. As well might the carpenter or architect venture to
dispense with scale, compass and square in their constructive labors, as
that the composer should neglect beat, measure and rhythm, in his
effort to realize a well-developed and intelligible design in the whole,
or any part, of his composition. The beats and measures and phrases are
the barley-corn, inch and ell of the musical draughtsman, and without
these units of measurement and proportion, neither the vital condition
of Symmetry nor the equally important condition of well-regulated
Contrast could be clearly established.
The beat is the unit of measurement in music. The measure is a group
of beats,--two, three, four, or more, at the option of the composer. The
bounds of the measures are visibly represented (on the written or
printed page) by vertical lines, called bars; and are rendered orally
recognizable (to the hearer who does not see the page) by a more or
less delicate emphasis, imparted--by some means or other--to the first
pulse or beat of each measure, as accent, simply to mark where each
new group begins. Those who play or sing can imagine how vague, and
even chaotic, a page of music would look if these vertical bars were

omitted; and how much more difficult it would be to read than when
these (not only accustomed, but truly necessary) landmarks are present.
Precisely the same unintelligible impression must be, and is, conveyed
to the hearer when his landmarks, the accents, are not indicated with
sufficient emphasis or clearness to render him sensible of the beginning
of each new measure.
* * * * * *
The same primary system of measurement and association which is
employed in enlarging the beats to measures, is then applied to the
association of the measures themselves in the next larger units of
musical structure, the Motive, Phrase, Period, and so forth. Unlike the
measures, which are defined by the accents at their beginning, these
larger factors of form are defined chiefly at their end, by the impression
of occasional periodic interruption, exactly analogous to the pauses at
the end of poetic lines, or at the commas, semicolons and the like, in a
prose paragraph. These interruptions of the musical current, called
Cadences, are generally so well defined that even the more superficial
listener is made aware of a division of the musical pattern into its
sections and parts, each one of which closes as recognizably (though
not as irrevocably) as the very last sentence of the piece.
Cadences serve the same purpose in music, then, as do the punctuation
marks in rhetoric; and an idea of the senselessness and confusion of a
musical composition, if left devoid of cadences in sufficient number
and force, may be gleaned from an experimental test of the effect of a
page of prose, read with persistent disregard of its commas, colons, and
other marks of "cadence."
* * * * * *
Another evidence of Form in music, that is at once subtle and powerful,
rests upon what might be termed the linear quality of melody. The
famous old definition of a line as a "succession of points," tallies so
accurately with that of melody (as a "succession of single tones"), that
it is not only proper, but peculiarly forceful, to speak of melodies as
tone-lines. Our conception of a melody or tune, our ability