Musical Form - Single Forms

Single Forms

Scholes suggested that European classical music had only six stand-alone forms: simple binary, simple ternary, compound binary, rondo, air with variations, and fugue. However, musicologist Alfred Mann emphasized that the fugue is primarily a method of composition that has sometimes taken on certain structural conventions.

Where a piece cannot readily be broken down into sectional units (though it might borrow some form from a poem, story or programme), it is said to be through-composed. Such is often the case with pieces named Fantasia, Prelude, rhapsody, etude or study, symphonic poem, Bagatelle, Impromptu, etc. Professor Charles Keil classified forms and formal detail as "sectional, developmental, or variational."