A brief foray into the formal characteristics of contemporary popular music is used to launch this lecture on musical form. After a discussion of the "verse-chorus" form often used in popular music, Professor Wright proceeds to take students into the realm of classical music, focusing particularly on ternary form and sonata-allegro form. Throughout his detailed explanation of sonata-allegro form, he also elaborates upon some harmonic concepts describing, for example, the relationship between relative major and minor keys. This lecture draws its musical examples from 'N Sync, Mozart, and Beethoven.

Reading assignment:

Wright, Craig. Listening to Music, chapter 17, pp. 209-212 and 237-247

Credits:

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Special thanks to Naxos, LLC for providing recordings from the Notes - Naxos Music Library for use in connection with the Open Yale Courses publication of Craig Wright's Listening to Music course. For specific credits, see: Naxos Music Credits - Lecture 9 [PDF]