Form as Process: First, try to understand form as generally as you can, so that you can apply it to many different types of music. In general terms, musical form accounts for how a piece articulates meaning over time (i.e., the time it takes for the piece to sound). A classical form has pieces that easily ‘chunk’ into different sections or modules, and each of those modules will relate in different ways—that’s how the classical piece articulates formal meaning over time. When we talk about “form as process,” we refer to a piece in which a process (or a number of processes) take place. Consider Reich’s phase-shifting pieces, or Stockhausen’s Kreuzspiel. There aren’t any noticeable interruptions in the processes that occur across these pieces, but these processes are exactly how the pieces articulate their meaning over time (that is, no description of form could fail to acknowledge the processes that take place).

A piece that exemplifies re-prioritization places a parameter other than pitch (or pitch class) in charge. The most popular parameters are rhythm and timbre. Some re-prioritize rhythm or timbre in extreme ways (e.g., without any pitch at all), and others in less extreme ways.

Pre-composition refers to a stage in the creative process where limitations are set within a parameter or more of music. This takes place before the work is composed, before the content of the work is decided. Pre-composition designs the musical world that a piece will eventually inhabit. Constructing a twelve-tone row for a twelve-tone piece is a pre-compositional act. So are rotational arrays, or determining some kind of rhythmic ordering such as time-points or a duration series. We cannot talk about Ligeti’s Poeme Symphonique pour 100 Metronomes without discussing pre-composition. There’s absolutely no composition at all: just an idea that limits the piece to 100 metronomes starting together and sounding simultaneously.

Hope this is helpful. Dr. S