A phrase is the unit of breath in music. Just as we speak in sentences, music “speaks” in phrases. In classical music a phrase usually combines two or three motifs, while the sentences and periods that make up the form most often span 4, 8, or 16 bars.
The art of phrasing is one of the performer's most important skills. Every phrase has its inner dynamics: a rise to the climax, then a fall. Great pianists (Richter, Horowitz) and conductors (Karajan, Abbado) were known for feeling a phrase as a single arch, never chopping it into small pieces. In singing, a phrase is directly tied to breath: the vocalist must carry it through on a single inhalation.
Phrases combine into sentences and periods — larger syntactic units of musical form, much as sentences combine into paragraphs. The ear senses a phrase boundary through a cadence, a pause, or a logical fall of the melody. In notation, phrasing is suggested by slurs, breath commas, and dynamic “hairpins,” yet the final decision on where to “breathe” always belongs to the performer.
