Organising music’s structures: The classification of musical forms in Western art music

Abstract

This article analyses the classification of musical forms in Western art music. It examines how some sources in the music domain classify musical forms, and the categorisations and complexities inherent within these classifications. It analyses the table of contents from music domain textbooks, treating them as knowledge organisation systems, as well as analysing music domain descriptions of the knowledge organisation of forms. Form is found to be a complicated type of information, with an intriguing relationship to genre. The analysis of domain classifications reveals five key categorisations: texture, sectionalisation, size of structure, definable-ness and medium. Various complexities about form are elicited, such as form-as-process, complicated whole-part form relationships, an interesting spectrum of definable-ness, and the dependency of form on medium and texture. This article examines a rarely discussed type of information, form, and its approach could be usefully extended to other subjects.