Excerpt from The Theory and Practice of Musical Form: On the Basis of Ludwig Bussler's "Musikalische Formenlehre"
Form, in art, may be comprehensively defined as the external shape and order in which artistic conceptions are presented, in other words, as the outward expression of the subject-matter or import of the art-work. Accordingly, there may be as many forms as art-works, although numbers of these individual forms may and actually do agree in certain essential features. Now, the summary of the principal features in which a number of art-works agree, is called Art-form.
The necessity of form to the special art of music is, perhaps, not so immediately obvious as in the case of the other arts; yet it is certain that without an adherence to the laws of form a coherent, intelligible musical composition is as inconceivable - as for example - a picture, a sculpture, or a building, without plan or design. A piece of music (if indeed music it should be called) without a determinate tonality or key-relationship, without harmonic, melodic, rhythmic order and symmetry - in a word, without form, - is nothing else than a tonal chaos. Hence the absolute necessity to the would-be musical composer of the study of the laws of musical form, - a necessity from which no natural gifts, not even the possession of genius, can dispense him. "Form," - says Eckermann (Beitrage zur Poesie) - "is the result of the efforts, through thousands of years, of the most excellent masters, which every one cannot too soon appropriate to himself.
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