Musical Forms In The Classical And Romantic Era

Musical Forms In The Classical And Romantic Era

Bagatelle

A bagatelle is a short piece of music, typically for the piano, and usually of a light, mellow character. 

Ballet

Ballet as a music form progressed from simply a complement to dance, to a concrete compositional form that often had as much value as the dance that went along with it. The dance form, originating in France during the 17th century, began as a theatrical dance. It was not until the 19th century that ballet gained status as a “classical” form. In ballet, the terms ‘classical’ and ‘romantic’ are chronologically reversed from musical usage. Thus, the 19th century classical period in ballet coincided with the 19th century Romantic era in Music. Ballet music composers from the 17th–19th centuries, including the likes of Jean-Baptiste Lully and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, were predominantly in France and Russia. Yet with the increased international notoriety seen in Tchaikovsky’s lifetime, ballet music composition and ballet in general spread across the western world.

Etude

An étude is an instrumental musical composition, most commonly of considerable difficulty, usually designed to provide practice material for perfecting a particular technical skill.

Impromptu

An impromptu  is a free-form musical composition with the character of an ex tempore improvisation as if prompted by the spirit of the moment, usually for a solo instrument, such as piano.

Intermezzo

Intermezzo , in the most general sense, is a composition which fits between other musical or dramatic entities, such as acts of a play or movements of a larger musical work. In music history, the term has had several different usages, which fit into two general categories: the opera intermezzo and the instrumental intermezzo.

Opera Intermezzo

Instrumental Intermezzo

Lied

Lied is a German word literally meaning "song". It usually describes the setting of romantic German poems to music, especially during the nineteenth century, beginning with Carl Loewe, Heinrich Marschner, and Franz Schubert.The poetry forming the basis for lieder often centers upon pastoral themes, or themes of romantic love.

Typically, lieder are arranged for a single singer and pianoo, the Lied with orchestral accompaniment being a later development.

Mazurka

The mazurka is a Polish folk dance in triple meter, usually at a lively tempo, and with accent on the second or third beat.

March

A march, as a musical genre, is a piece of music with a strong regular rhythm which in origin was expressly written for marching to and most frequently performed by a military band.

Nocturne

A nocturne  is usually a musical composition that is inspired by, or evocative of, the night.

Polonaise

The polonaise  is a slow dance of Polish origin, in 3/4 time.

Quartet

A quartet is a method of instrumentation (or a medium), used to perform a musical composition, and consisting of four parts. 

Piano Quartet

String Quartet

Oboe Quartet

Quintet

A quintet is a group containing five members. It is commonly associated with musical groups, such as a string quintet, or a group of five singers, but can be applied to any situation where five similar or related objects are considered a single unit. In classical instrumental music, any additional instrument (such as a piano, clarinet, oboe, etc.) joined to the usual string quartet(two violins, a viola, and a cello), gives the resulting ensemble its name, such as "piano quintet", "clarinet quintet", etc. A piece of music written for such a group is similarly named.

String Quintet

Piano Quintet

Requiem

A Requiem , is a Mass celebrated for the repose of the soul or souls of one or more deceased persons.

Rhapsody

A rhapsody in music is a one movement work that is episodic yet integrated, free-flowing in structure, featuring a range of highly contrasted moods, colour and tonality.

Rondo

Rondo comes from the French word "rondeau," which means "round." In music, a rondo is a form that repeats the main theme over and over again. The rondo has developed into a musical form that is often used as the final movement in classical sonatas, symphonies and concertos. As the final movement, it can usually be described as the climatic point in the work, and the tempo is almost always very fast.

Scherzo

A scherzo is a piece of music, often a movement from a larger piece such as a symphony or a sonata. The scherzo's precise definition has varied over the years, but it often refers to a movement which replaces the minuet as the third movement in a four-movement work, such as a symphony, sonata, or string quartet. Scherzo also frequently refers to a fast-moving humorous composition which may or may not be part of a larger work.The word "scherzo" means "joke" in Italian. Sometimes the word "scherzando" ("joking") is used in musical notation to indicate that a passage should be executed in a playful manner.

Serenade

A serenade  is a musical composition, and/or performance, in someone's honor. Serenades are typically calm, light music.

Sinfonia Concertante

Sinfonia Concertante is a musical form that emerged during the Classical period of Western music. It is essentially a mixture of the symphony and the concerto genres: a concerto in that one or more soloists (in the classical period, usually more than one) are on prominent display, and a symphony in that the soloists are nonetheless discernibly a part of the total ensemble and not preeminent.

Symphony

A symphony is an extended musical composition in Western classical music, scored almost always for orchestra. A symphony usually contains at least one movement or episode composed according to the sonata principle. Many symphonies are tonal works in four movements with the first in sonata form, which is often described by music theorists as the structure of a "classical" symphony, although many symphonies by the acknowledged classical masters of the form, Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Ludwig van Beethoven do not conform to this model.

Waltz

A waltz,is dance music in triple time, written in time signature 3/4 beat.

Musical Forms In The Baroque Era

Musical Forms In The Baroque Era

Allemande

Allemande is one of the most popular instrumental dance forms in Baroque music.

Cantata

Cantata is a vocal composition with an instrumental accompaniment, typically in several movements, often involving a choir.

Concerto

Concerto is a musical composition usually composed in three parts or movements, in which (usually) one solo instrument (for instance, a piano, violin,cello or flue) is accompanied by an orchestra.

Early Baroque Concerto

The term "concerto" was initially used to denote works involving voices and instruments in which the instruments had independent parts—as opposed to the Renaissance common practice in which the instruments that accompanied voices only doubled the voice parts.

Late Baroque Concerto

The concerto began to take its modern shape in the late Baroque period. Starting from a form called Concerto grosso introduced by Arcangelo Corelli, it evolved into the form we understand today as performance of a soloist with/against an orchestra.

Classical Concerto

The concerti of the sons of Johann Sebastian Bach are perhaps the best links between those of the Baroque period and those of Mozart. Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach keyboard concerti contain some brilliant soloistic writing. Some of them have movements that run into one another without a break, and there are frequent cross-movement thematic references. 

Romantic Concerto

In the romantic era, the concerto largely narrowed to three genres: the violin concerto, the cello concerto and the piano concerto. Virtually no major composer wrote concertos for wind instruments.

Concerto Grosso

The concerto grosso (Italian for big concert(o), plural concerti grossi) is a form of Baroque music in which the musical material is passed between a small group of soloists (the concertino) and full orchestra (the ripieno). This is in contrast to the concerto which features a single solo instrument with the melody line, accompanied by the orchestra.

Fugue

A fugue is a compositional technique (in classical music) in two or more voices, built on a subject (theme) that is introduced at the beginning in imitation (repetition at different pitches) and recurs frequently in the course of the composition.

Gavotte


Gavotte originated as a French folk dance.It is notated in 4/4 or 2/2 time and is of moderate tempo. The distinctive rhythmic feature of the 18th-century French court gavotte is that phrases begin in the middle of the bar; that is, in either 4/4 or 2/2 time, the phrases begin on the third quarter note(crotchet) of the bar, creating a half-measure (half-bar) upbeat.

On the contrary, the music for the earlier court gavotte, first described by Thoinot Arbeau in 1589, invariably began on the downbeat of a duple measure, and the various folk gavottes found in mid-20th century Brittany were danced to music in 4/4, 2/4, 9/8, and 5/8 time.

Gigue

The gigue is a lively Baroque Dance originating from the British jig. It was imported into France in the mid-17th century and usually appears at the end of a suite. The gigue was probably never a court dance, but it was danced by nobility on social occasions and several court composers wrote gigues.

Minuet

A minuet, is a social dance of French origin for two people, usually in 3/4 time. 

Oratorio

An oratorio is a large musical composition including an orchestra, a choir, and soloists. Like an opera, an oratorio includes the use of a choir, soloists, an ensemble, various distinguishable characters, and arias. However, opera is musical theater, while oratorio is strictly a concert piece—though oratorios are sometimes staged as operas, and operas are sometimes presented in concert form. In an oratorio there is generally little or no interaction between the characters, and no props or elaborate costumes. A particularly important difference is in the typical subject matter of the text. Opera tends to deal with history and mythology, including age-old devices of romance, deception, and murder, whereas the plot of an oratorio often deals with sacred topics, making it appropriate for performance in the church. 

Partita

Partita was originally the name for a single-instrumental piece of music (16th and 17th centuries), but Johann Kuhnau,Thomaskantor,and later German composers (notably Johann Sebatian Bach) used it for collections of musical pieces, as a synonym for suite.

Passacaglia

The passacaglia  is a musical form that originated in early seventeenth-century Spain and is still used by contemporary composers. It is usually of a serious character and is often, but not always, based on a bass-ostinato and written in triple time.

Prelude

A prelude  is a short piece of music, the form of which may vary from piece to piece.The prelude can be thought of as a preface. It may stand on its own or introduce another work. While, during the Baroque era, for example, it may have served as an introduction to succeeding movements of a work that were usually longer and more complex, it may also have been a stand alone piece of work during the Romantic era. It generally features a small number of rhythmic and melodic motifs that recur through the piece. Stylistically, the prelude is improvisatory in nature. The prelude can also refer to an overture, particularly to those seen in an opera or an oratorio.

Sarabande

In music, the sarabande  is a dance in triple time. The second and third beats of each measure are often tied, giving the dance a distinctive rhythm of quarter notes and eighth notes in alternation.

Sinfonia

Sinfonia is the Italian word for symphony. In English it most commonly refers to a 17th- or 18th-century orchestral piece used as an introduction, interlude, or postlude to an opera, oratorio, cantata, or suite. It has also sometimes been used for other types of music.

Sonata

In the Baroque, the term "sonata" was applied to a variety of works for solo instrument such as keyboard or violin, and for groups of instruments.In the transition from the Baroque to the Classical period, the term sonata underwent a change in usage, coming to mean a chamber-music genre for either a solo instrument (usually a keyboard), or a solo melody instrument with piano.