Music and Mathematics - Musical Form

Musical Form

Musical form is the plan by which a short piece of music is extended. The term "plan" is also used in architecture, to which musical form is often compared. Like the architect, the composer must take into account the function for which the work is intended and the means available, practicing economy and making use of repetition and order. The common types of form known as binary and ternary ("twofold" and "threefold") once again demonstrate the importance of small integral values to the intelligibility and appeal of music.

Read more about this topic:  Music And Mathematics

Famous quotes containing the words musical and/or form:

    If we cannot sing of faith and triumph, we will sing our despair. We will be that kind of bird. There are day owls, and there are night owls, and each is beautiful and even musical while about its business.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    Reminiscences, even extensive ones, do not always amount to an autobiography.... For autobiography has to do with time, with sequence and what makes up the continuous flow of life. Here, I am talking of a space, of moments and discontinuities. For even if months and years appear here, it is in the form they have in the moment of recollection. This strange form—it may be called fleeting or eternal—is in neither case the stuff that life is made of.
    Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)