Bar form

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Barform has stood for the form of the medieval canzone strophe since the 19th century . Originally, in the parlance of the Mastersingers , bar was the name given to a master song with at least three stanzas. Due to a misunderstanding tradition by Johann Christoph Wagenseil , Richard Wagner did not refer to the term bar in his Meistersinger to the whole song, but to a single stanza, which triggered the change from the historically correct to the now common meaning as a stanza form .

In a further generalization, the term today denotes that structure of any musical context that can be described by the scheme A – A – B. The bar form understood in this way plays a prominent role in German melodies .

The shape and its variants

A barstrophe (form scheme AAB) consists of the

  • Aufgesang , consisting of
    • the cleat (A) (also decade called)
    • and the metrically and musically identical counter tunnel (also called building ).
  • Abgesang (B), which represents a further development without inevitable reference to the preceding. Not infrequently the Abgesang the stud is completely or partially repeated (at the end Reprisenbar ).

Many old and modern chorales (in the sense of hymns ) are based on the bar form with the scheme in the melody of a verse

A. A. B.

Example: Wake up, the voice calls us

The text is usually free of repetitions. Almost always A ≤ B ≤ AA applies to the number of cycles.

An example from the Romantic era is Aufschwung from Robert Schumann's Fantasy Pieces for Piano .

The bar form differs from the similarly built musical movement in that the studs and counter-studs are not only similar, but the same, and that the last phrase always ends on the tonic.

Counterbar form

The counter bar form carries the repeated part at the end:

A. B. B.

Reprintable form

The reprise bar form repeats the tunnel in whole or in part as a reprise :

A. A. B. A.

Example: A rose has sprung

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