# What is the point of Movements



## Jord

What is the point of having movements, when i compose or think about writing pieces i only think of writing a single movement composition, in the past did composers get paid to write pieces for certain events requiring more than one movement? i know in Baroque they wrote dances so there was many pieces in a suite (i think, please correct me if i'm wrong :lol so what is the point of movements?


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## KenOC

It's hard to think of many pieces of classical music with individual movements that are very long. Maybe there's an attention span issue involved (something that late romantic composers and a guy named Wagner obviously discounted). Beethoven was pushing it at 20 minutes in the slow movement of the Hammerklavier!

And I think yes, the classical period approach to breaking up things into movements came pretty directly from the baroque via the Galante style, and has stuck with us since. But in fact, it had been true in the renaissance and pre-renaissance as well.

One of the main (and knottiest) challenges since Haydn's time has been to somewhow make a longer work with several movements seem like a single conception.


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## aleazk

Personally, when I do several movements is because I have various ideas for the instrumentation I'm using, ideas that cannot be merged into one single movement, they need separate movements to be fully developed and they are not compatible to be merged also.


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## PetrB

Movements - say symphony 'format' are arbitrary set-ups which came from other arbitrary set-ups. Baroque suite, development of sonata-allegro, a found formula of slow / fast / slow, and there you have, arrived at, what many think is a form 'set in stone,' the symphony / concerto in three or four movements.

You can also think of those multiple movement works which are successful as a book or play, i.e. very well-related scenes or chapters. As much as there is formality to a symphony, there is still tremendous latitude, and peril, in what is in the sequence of movements to make it seem 'one whole.' Tempo and mood shift (different material in each movement) have a lot to do with sustaining audience interest.

This has movements but they are contiguous;
Steve Reich ~ Music for eighteen musicians





There is no one rule. A longer contiguous work, if containing a number of mood and tempo shifts, can begin to sound 'arbitrary' or aimless, too 'all over the place' though what is done, successful or not, is entirely in the hands of the composer.

'Movements' are not a law, but an accepted convention.


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## Jord

Okay i think i understand, so there isn't really much point in movements it's just a way of extending a piece? unless it's relating to a story of some kind? and i'm guessing movements are related in certain ways, are any ideas usually taken from one movement to another or developed?


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## Nivmizzet

Movements are like acts in operas, they separate the composition. 

For example, the first movement in sonata no. 8 op. 13 is an introduction and a powerful one at that. Then the 2nd movement is very different (I think of it like a break) and then the 3rd movement is the ending and ends pretty nice.


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## PetrB

Jord said:


> Okay i think i understand, so there isn't really much point in movements it's just a way of extending a piece? unless it's relating to a story of some kind? and i'm guessing movements are related in certain ways, are any ideas usually taken from one movement to another or developed?


It happens all ways:

Movements are 'key related' but not with any exact material carried from one to the next movement - a lot of 'what fits' is then a matter of the best intuitive choice on the composer's part.

Some works have a motif which appears, often mutated, in inversion, in part, etc. all the way through a work.

Others, like Mozart's G-minor symphony (no.40) has at the core of each movement a very present and audible use of the minor second - one interval as a sort of 'structural' connective element.

Other single movement works are 'through composed,' not repeating or constantly developing one idea, but generally transforming, 'never looking back.'

Still others are 'monothematic,' like most of the single-movement works of Michael Torke.
Torke ~ Green (Many of Torke's single movement works, though, are no longer than a movement of a classical symphony.)




In the contemporary area, the 'spectral' style composers are 'holding together' their pieces by treating timbre and orchestration as a structural element.

The longer repetitive works, like Steve Reich's 'Music for 18 musicians,' -- about fifty five contiguous minutes' play. or Morton Feldman's 'Piano and string quartet' -- running one hour and twenty minutes, each use some newer form of 'variation.' which in each is a continuous process throughout the works.
Reich ~ Music for 18 musicians




Feldman ~ Piano and string quartet


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## Hayze

What's the point of having chapters in a book?


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## Ramako

Hayze said:


> What's the point of having chapters in a book?


I think that movements in a symphony (or whatever) have a slightly different function. As PetrB says, they are formal entities, which are self-contained, and thus having a series of movements can help guide the listeners mind through a lengthy composition. They are a bit more like acts in a play (where the scene changes or something) I think. The point is to introduce linear motion over a large scale form (I think), and sub-divide, thus significantly simplifying the large-scale structure of a piece, and making it much more manageable. The task of unifying them is a subtle one. Cyclical forms, used frequently in the Romantic period, challenge the concept of movements therefore in a significant way, but still the connections between movements still tend to be relatively simple compared to the ones within movements, I would imagine.

Having said which, perhaps chapters in a book function that way. I would guess not, it doesn't seem so, but I have no idea. I compose music, not write books


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## KenOC

Without movements, we would likely get very uncomfortable very quickly...


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## StevenOBrien

> What is the point of Movements


To give annoying audience-goers an appropriate place to cough, of course!

If movements aren't for you, then don't use them. Personally, I'm a form-*lady of the evening* (Did that really need censoring? ), and I feel my music benefits greatly from splitting certain works into movements. I suppose it's like splitting a comment into sentences and paragraphs. It makes things more coherent for both the listener and the composer, as long as it's serving the music well. Some things, however, are better said in long meandering sentences.


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## etkearne

I love the concept of movements. It allows me to voice an overarching idea but with a good number of themes to explore. A single movement with too many contrasting themes sounds crowded and hard to grasp which theme is predominant (and no I don't mean which is in the Fourth of the scale). 

Each movement gives a blank state. For composers like myself who use groupings of "types of scales" in each movement, this is important. Say I use only Diatonic harmony in one movement but the slow movement I want to use Melodic Minor modes and the final fast movement I want to have in contrasting Lydian and Dorian (similar to the Major Minor relationship on the surface). I don't want to put that all in one 15 minute piece of music. I keep my movements generally 5:00 minutes or less unless it is a large orchestral work of which I have only written on so far - a piano concerto from awhile ago when I wasn't quite as good.


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## clavichorder

To create an ambitious expectation for scope and size that will stretch thin some potentially really interesting compositions and composers. Or conversely, to allow for a composer with inherently a lot of ambition and ideas to have as much time and space to say things as he/she feels they need.


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