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Early form
A A B A
This is a standard form or shape used in music, particularly in the modern era. Many pop songs are composed to this shape and it is a standard form for many jazz pieces with the B section often described as the middle eight. It is also a standard shape for a melody of a song. In this example from an English art song the melody is in this shape and is cued for the listener.
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Binary or A B form
The music is made up of two different sections labelled A and B. Each section may be repeated. This was one of the earliest forms and is present in all kinds of folk dance music. Listen to a Scottish reel played on the accordion with the sections cued with a voice to help you and then all the music repeated without cues and with accompaniment.
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Other instruments
Other instruments of a similar style were popular, particularly the virginal, a keyboard instrument popular in the Elizabethan drawing rooms of the time. A virginal was played in a similar way to a harpsichord, but the strings ran parallel to the keyboard. This allowed the instrument to be smaller and to fit into the rooms of the period. Listen to this simple melody, ‘Tower Hill’, which is very short and in a very simple form, A, A with variation, B, B with variation.
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