Bridge (music)
In music, especially Western popular music, a bridge is a contrasting section that prepares for the return of the original material section. In a piece in which the original material or melody is referred to as the "A" section, the bridge may be the third eight-bar phrase in a 32-bar form (the B in AABA), or may be used more loosely in verse-chorus form, or, in a compound AABA form, used as a contrast to a full AABA section.
This article is about bridges in musical composition. For the component of a musical instrument, see Bridge (instrument). For the benefit concerts organized by Neil Young and his wife, see Bridge School Benefit. For the bridge in the 32-bar form, see 32-bar form § Middle eight.Etymology[edit]
The term comes from a German word for bridge, Steg, used by the Meistersingers of the 15th to the 18th century to describe a transitional section in medieval bar form.[3] The German term became widely known in 1920s Germany through musicologist Alfred Lorenz[4] and his exhaustive studies of Richard Wagner's adaptations of bar form in his popular 19th-century neo-medieval operas. The term entered the English lexicon in the 1930s—translated as bridge—via composers fleeing Nazi Germany who, working in Hollywood and on Broadway, used the term to describe similar transitional sections in the American popular music they were writing.