Form in art also has a good deal to do with its emotional quality; it is much more than a merely structural or intellectual matter. Think of the little (or big) emotional click we get at the end of a limerick or any poem with a “punch line,” where the accumulated meanings of the words are summed up with the final rhyme. On a small scale, this is an effect to which form contributes. Similarly, when a melody heard before comes back at the end of a symphony, with new orchestration and new harmonies, the special feeling this gives us emerges from a flood of memory; we remember the melody in its earlier version. That effect, too, is created by form.

How easy is it, actually, to perceive form in music and to experience the feelings associated with form? Easy enough with a short tune, such as “The Star-Spangled Banner” — that’s what the analysis on page 26 was all about. The various phrases of this tune, with their repetitions, parallel features, contrasts, and climax, provide a microcosm of musical form in longer pieces. A large-scale composition such as a symphony is something like a greatly expanded tune, and its form is experienced in basically the same way.

To be sure, a symphony requires more from the listener — more time and more attention — than a tune does. Aware of the potential problem here, composers scale their musical effects accordingly. The larger the piece, the more strongly the composer is likely to help the memory along by emphasizing the repetitions and contrasts that determine the musical form.