The factor of musical form completeness: On the question of historical evolution

Abstract

The study aims to substantiate that already in the early epochs (the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Baroque), there was a gradual birth of musical form functionality, one of the first signs of which was represented by composers’ awareness of the need to achieve the structural integrity and completeness of a work. The paper shows that the role of the main formative means was played by those compositional factors that were most actively developing in a particular epoch. The scientific novelty of the study lies in the specific identification of these compositional factors: the rhythmic one in the isorhythmic motets of the 14th century, the large-scale structural one in the textual and musical forms of the Renaissance, the functional harmonic one in Baroque works. As a result, it has been found that a change towards a decrease in the tenor’s measure at the last repetition of the melody of Gregorian chant turned out to be the factor of musical form completeness in Ph. de Vitry’s isorhythmic motets; in the motets, madrigals and polyphonic songs of the Renaissance, a large-scale enlargement of the final textual and musical segment of the form performed a similar function; as for the instrumental Baroque genres (preludes, toccatas, fantasias), such was the case with the increased harmonic stability of the last section (a tonic organ point, repetition of cadence turns).