From “sectional refrains” to repeated verses: the rise of the AABA form
Résumé
Most scholars agree on the AABA pattern having its roots in the basic phrase structure of what used to be the “main part” of interwar Tin Pan Alley songs. But what of this phrase-structure pattern’s influence on larger-scale structures? To put it differently: when the “main part” of a Tin Pan Alley song becomes the song itself, how do A and B sections fit into its overall formal design? Should the latter sections be viewed, as Kenneth LaFave suggests, as a refrain and a bridge (or “release”), respectively? Should one agree with Forte when he describes such a song as a stand-alone refrain made up of a double-period chorus, a bridge and then a single-period chorus? Unless, of course, John Covach and Jay Summach are right when they argue that the AABA form should be regarded as a full-blown formal type, along with the verse-chorus and strophic forms? Drawing on Richard Middleton’s “additive” and “sectional principles,” this chapter answers those questions while contending that, in the same way that the verse-chorus form grew out of those “tail refrains” that could be found at the end of each stanza in ancient strophic-form songs, the Tin Pan Alley’s unrepeated sectional refrain indeed gave birth to a particular formal type, namely, the verse-bridge form.