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Form Activity

Musical works throughout the ages are written with structure as the foundation to the flow of the piece.  This structure is commonly referred to as musical form.  These forms are identified because of how they are similar from one piece to another.  Pieces that have similar form and style are often pulled together into a genre (like waltzes or ballads).  In Elsa's Procession to the Cathedral, Richard Wagner uses what is called ternary form, or 3 distinct sections (main theme, second theme, and a repeat of the first theme).  This is not unlike poetry studied in English class.  In this case, the form would be A B A.  In poetry it may look like this:

The dog jumped the fence,
He ran all day,
The dog jumped the fence.

Part I.  Listen to Elsa's Procession and identify where you hear these three different sections (hint:  there are subsections, which are smaller parts within the major themes:  listen for when the very beginning repeats itself again).  Write down, on a separate sheet of paper, when these occurred by writing down the minutes and the seconds.

Part II.  On the same sheet of paper, write a poem with the following form (ABA).

Part III.  Now write a poem using the same (ABA) lines, except now elaborate on it by using the following form (AbBaAb).

This last poem is very similar to the theme order used in Wagner's work.  The themes are very similar, and yet they differ enough to make subsections within the larger sections.