Art Song Formal Design
The composer's musical language and interpretation of the text often dictate the formal design of an art song. If all of the poem's verses are sung to the same music, the song is strophic. Arrangements of folk songs are often strophic, and "there are exceptional cases in which the musical repetition provides dramatic irony for the changing text, or where an almost hypnotic monotony is desired." Several of the songs in Schubert's Die schöne Müllerin are good examples of this. If the vocal melody remains the same but the accompaniment changes under it for each verse, the piece is called a "modified strophic" song.
In contrast, songs in which "each section of the text receives fresh music" are called through-composed. Some through-composed works have some repetition of musical material in them.
Many art songs use some version of the ABA form (also known as "song form"), with a beginning musical section, a contrasting middle section, and a return to the first section's music.
Read more about this topic: Art Song
Famous quotes containing the words art, song, formal and/or design:
“Lying just for the fun of it is either art or pathology.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“Marlowe went muttering to death
When he had done with song and lust.”
—Allen Tate (1899–1979)
“There must be a profound recognition that parents are the first teachers and that education begins before formal schooling and is deeply rooted in the values, traditions, and norms of family and culture.”
—Sara Lawrence Lightfoot (20th century)
“If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life ... for fear that I should get some of his good done to me,—some of its virus mingled with my blood.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)