# How Strict are the "Forms" in Classical Music?



## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

For example, the pop song formula tends to be VCVCBCC, there are slight variations, but in most mainstream music, it's with little variation.

I'm interested in knowing how strict the Sonata form, and others, are in terms of the structure of a composition and how closely it was followed by various composers.

Bach created the Fugue, so I don't see him as following rules, but as a creator of the rules. 

I'm looking for some knowledge on Sonata form, and others, and what they actually were, and insight into how closely they were followed.

It doesn't really bother me if it is very strict or not, or if it was followed precisely by many of my favorites or not, I'm just curious how formulaic Classical Music is compared to mainstream music today. It's at least a much harder formula to crack without knowledge of what it is.


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## Guest (Aug 16, 2018)

Rules aren't really a _thing_. Sonata form was in fashion and people did their own thing with it without being too strict about it, I think. The so-called 'rules' of anything in music (like your example with form) are always fitted retrospectively to describe what composers _did_ in their music. That's why we have quite a few variants of sonata form and no two pieces in so-called 'sonata form' have the same structure or the same proportions of sections or number of sections.


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

shirime said:


> Rules aren't really a _thing_. Sonata form was in fashion and people did their own thing with it without being too strict about it, I think. The so-called 'rules' of anything in music (like your example with form) are always fitted retrospectively to describe what composers _did_ in their music. That's why we have quite a few variants of sonata form and no two pieces in so-called 'sonata form' have the same structure or the same proportions of sections or number of sections.


Thanks, that's what I was sensing, but since I am not exactly of what Sonata form is aside from containing introduction, development and exposition, I wanted to confirm.

I'd still like to know more from other posters.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

Rules were loosened more and more since the Baroque and Classical Eras with counterpoint, etc. The elements in the Sonata Form is very general, and allows a lot of freedom, it is never binding or limiting like what some people that hate music theory try to make it sound. It is in fact a powerful tool to heighten drama. People could follow the form and still write just as crappy music, or not follow the form and write good music. Debussy was one who didn't like following set forms. While there are some after him whose music met the form (rather than "following a form") and sound very different than Haydn who started the form.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

Captainnumber36 said:


> Bach created the Fugue, so I don't see him as following rules, but as a creator of the rules.


Actually, Bach is not considered to be the creator of the fugue: "The famous fugue composer Johann Sebastian Bach shaped his own works after those of Johann Jakob Froberger (1616-1667), Johann Pachelbel (1653-1706), Girolamo Frescobaldi (1583-1643), Dieterich Buxtehude (c. 1637-1707) and others." But I think he outdid them all in inventiveness and tried to teach others how to compose them to his own exacting standards. I believe that Bach viewed the exacting logic of writing a fugue as an expression of the Divine order of the universe, and one of the hardest forms to write well because all its lines have to be ordered and planned out. What composers have the patience or interest in writing something so challenging today? And of course, it's now considered old-fashioned to write a form of music that seems so antiquated in the oh-so-sophisticted contemporary world. While not the creator, Bach did so much with the form.


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

Larkenfield said:


> Actually, Bach is not considered to be the creator of the fugue: "The famous fugue composer Johann Sebastian Bach shaped his own works after those of Johann Jakob Froberger (1616-1667), Johann Pachelbel (1653-1706), Girolamo Frescobaldi (1583-1643), Dieterich Buxtehude (c. 1637-1707) and others." But I think he outdid them all in inventiveness and tried to teach others how to compose them to his own exacting standards.


Thanks for the correction.


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

Phil loves classical said:


> Rules were loosened more and more since the Baroque and Classical Eras with counterpoint, etc. The elements in the Sonata Form is very general, and allows a lot of freedom, it is never binding or limiting like what some people that hate music theory try to make it sound. It is in fact a powerful tool to heighten drama. People could follow the form and still write just as crappy music, or not follow the form and write good music. Debussy was one who didn't like following set forms. While there are some after him whose music met the form (rather than "following a form") and sound very different than Haydn who started the form.


Thanks for more detail, care to explicate Sonata form to me as deeply as you'd care to get?


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

Very general and not something to take to the bank:

- Slow introduction (optional)
- Exposition: Main theme or thematic group establishes the tonic key; secondary theme or group can depart from tonic but usually ends there.
- Exposition repeat: Just what it says. Verbatim. With or without a short transition passage between. To fix the themes in the mind of listener. (Sometimes omitted entirely, as in Beethoven's Ninth, Brahms Fourth.) 
- Development: Some of themes are broken apart and presented in more distant keys. Basically starts out in an obviously non-tonic key and travels into audibly more exotic key areas, but ends in a place that sounds relatively stable.
- Recapitulation: A non-verbatim version of the exposition, whose function is to remind people what the original themes weren, and by various tricks of harmonic legerdeman wind back to the dominant key, which acts as a threshhold to the tonic, arrived at and stamped back into the memory by the
- Coda: some version or other -- long or short -- of the musical equivalent of a descending curtain ending on an emphatc tonic chord.

All of ths was codefied in the early nineteenth century, long after the form in its myriad guises was developed.

Charles Rosen, in his book _Sonata Forms_ takes a relatively expansive view of what it constitutes and backs it up well.


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

MarkW said:


> Very general and not something to take to the bank:
> 
> - Slow introduction (optional)
> - Exposition: Main theme or thematic group establishes the tonic key; secondary theme or group can depart from tonic but usually ends there.
> ...


Thanks, good to know.


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

Sonata format has these components -- exposition, development, and recapitulation -- and sometimes uses as coda at the end, or a place where a bunch of skipped music on repeat catches up. Basically, this is a beginning (exposition of main thematic material,) a middle (development, which can go on as long as you want), and ending (recap.)

It is similar to the formula for screenwriting with the exception being fiction may need a lot of development to introduce characters. In literary terms think of exposition as opening the main plotline, development to add new material that may or may not be used again later, and the recap to tie it all together in the end.

In music, this is done in every movement of a sonata, concerto or symphony written in sonata format.

Bruckner's symphonies sometimes end with a blazing coda and Liszt's tone poems often have development of new ideas emanating from codas. There are lots of other experiments composers used to push the envelope of sonata format before 12 tone basically terminated it.

There is no sonata format in a strophe, a common format with four stanzas where the first, second and fourth are alike and the third may have other elements. This is the typical form for popular vocal music.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

*A Thumbnail History of Sonata Form*

In its early days (mid-18thc) sonata form was defined primarily by key structure and was just an expansion of binary form. Here is how sonata form developed:

1) Binary form (as in Baroque dance movements and suites):

//: I - V ://: x - I ://

The first part begins in the home key (tonic) and moves to the dominant key, the one a fifth higher. The second half begins away from the tonic and tends to wander through related keys (x- in the diagram) before returning to the tonic by the end. Both halves are repeated.

2) Rounded binary form: 
Like above except that with the return of the home key at the end of the second part, the material from the very beginning returns, that is, it is recapitulated.

3) Classical sonata form:
It began as an expansion of rounded binary form:

Expo ..........Devel ............Recap
//: I - V :// x ............... / I ......... //

The first part, still repeated, is called the exposition. The wandering passages beginning the second part (x) are expanded and sound more like an independent section, called the development. The last part tends to recapitulate all of the material of the first part in the home key - the recapitulation. Classical sonata form was still defined primarily by key. The exposition could contain any number of themes, but usually between one and four.

4) Textbook sonata form (this is what MarkW described above)
Textbook sonata form was codified around 1830 as a retrospective distillation of the patterns used in iconic opening movements by Beethoven and Mozart. While it still observes the basic key structure of the earlier forms, it is now conceived primarily in thematic rather than in harmonic terms. See MarkW's description above for the details.

5) Beethoven
From the middle-period on, Beethoven's development sections make up a much greater proportion of the structure than those of Haydn and Mozart. And in some of the best known works (like the Eroica and Appassionata), he often ended his opening movements with an expansive coda that is almost like a second development section, keeping tension at a high pitch until the very end.

6) Russian/E. European variant (Chopin, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Bartok and others)
In this variant, the recap of the first theme is compressed or telescoped into the end of the development, or else altogether absent. The recap begins with the second theme. Familiar examples included Chopin's 2nd and 3rd sonatas, Tchaikovsky's 4th and 6th symphonies, Rachmaninoff's Second Symphony and Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra. This variant usually contains an expansive coda as in Beethoven.


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## WildThing (Feb 21, 2017)

Captainnumber36 said:


> Thanks for more detail, care to explicate Sonata form to me as deeply as you'd care to get?


A couple of informative videos that have been posted by the creator on this site before:


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