Morphopoiesis: a general procedure for structuring form

Abstract. Composers have always needed tools to craft their music and theorists need a methodology to analyse compositions. This paper examines a theoretical framework for a general procedure for structuring musical form. It studies the organising principles of the internal attributes of a musical work that give a unit its specific identity, the functional relationships between it and other units, and the ordering and direction of those units. During recent decades, timbre as a basic form-bearing dimension has attracted the interest of an increasing number of composers and theorists. In the light of this interest, a formulation to define the structural procedures of form becomes indispensable as a result of the new content and the new questions which it raises.Different procedures for structuring form have been developed throughout the history of western music. They have always been related to the content, to the musical material used in each period. A brief retrospection is presented, from the Middle Ages to the present, of the evolution of form as a process. This historical survey concludes with a definition of the process of Morphopoiesi