Classical Forms
You are probably never going to write a sonata. These forms did not disappear, though, they moved: film composers build long cues around a theme that returns in a new key, game music alternates a recognisable refrain with contrasting episodes, and a long electronic track is a passacaglia with different gear.
- 5 forms
- one principle
- departure and return
Where you run into this
- Classical
- Film music
- Game music
- Prog
- Electronic
In short
Sonata form is the important one. The exposition states the material and the conflict: a first theme in the tonic, a transition that modulates and does the actual work, a second theme in the dominant, and a closing group that cadences hard enough to convince your ear the new key is real. The development takes that material apart. The recapitulation brings it back, this time with everything in the home key, which is the resolution.
The pleasure in these forms is recognition under changed conditions. You know the theme; hearing it somewhere else, altered, is what makes a twenty-minute movement hold together.
How it works
Rondo alternates a recurring section with contrasting episodes: ABACA. Theme and variations keeps one idea and changes everything around it. Passacaglia and chaconne repeat a bass line or a chord pattern indefinitely while the material above evolves, which is exactly what a long club track does.
Where you run into this
- A film cue where the main theme returns in a different key at the climax
- Game music that alternates a refrain with episodes because the player keeps walking
- A track built on one repeating bass line with layers added over eight minutes
Our own examples
A short theme played in the tonic and then in the dominant, so the central move of sonata form is a single click rather than a diagram. The same theme then returns as a variation set.
Keep going
Everything in melody and form
- Song Forms
- Classical Forms
- Reduction and Formal Function