Grove Music Online

Cyclic form
Hugh Macdonald

https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.07001
Published in print: 20 January 2001
Published online: 2001

Music in which a later movement reintroduces thematic material of

an earlier movement is said to be in ‘cyclic form’. In its strict
meaning such music returns at its end to the point whence it set out
at the beginning, in the manner of the song There’s a hole in my
bucket, to produce an endlessly rotating cycle; but in practice the
simplest examples have been works like Haydn’s Symphony no.31 in
d (Hornsignal), Beethoven’s Serenade op.8, Brahms’s Third
Symphony and Elgar’s Second Symphony, whose finales all close
with the material of the beginning of the work. More generally the
term ‘cyclic’ describes those works where thematic links bind more
than one movement; it is not properly applied to mere thematic
resemblances. Examples may be found in many instrumental
sonatas, suites and canzonas of the early 17th century (see
Variations) and can be cited in a large number of sacred works, like
Bach’s b minor Mass and Mozart’s Mass in C k317. But they are rare
(except in Boccherini’s music) in the 18th century. Beethoven (An die
ferne Geliebte, Piano Sonata in A op.101), Schubert (Piano Trio in
E♭; Fantasie in C for violin and piano) and Berlioz (Symphonie
fantastique) laid the foundations on which Mendelssohn, Schumann,
Liszt and Franck elevated cyclic principles to great importance,
associated with the widespread application of thematic
Transformation and the desire for greater continuity between
separate movements, all methods of establishing a tighter cohesion
in multi-movement forms. Since the 19th century cyclic form has
been adopted as a regular stock-in-trade of musical structure.
See also
Transformation, thematic

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