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1. Treading on muddy waters here, but I think I get the drift of your question. There are three main principles to organize a musical form: Repetition, contrast and variation. Quite self-explanatory. 2. You could have an idea for the overall form first, and start out with the big picture and then fragment it into smaller subsections which have their own form (say you want to do an overall ternary ABA form, and decide you want a second level of organization where A and B have their own form) The reverse approach is possible (generating form by addition of smaller units into a bigger form that becomes the building block for a bigger structure). Perhaps going back and forth from global to local is the best way. Try the different strategies. As long as you stick to formal protopypes, regular themes of say 4+4 bars, or 8+8 you should be on your way to coherent organization. 3. Transitions are not always required. Start out with plain sectional forms and worry about transitions when you are ready to tackle more complex and less rigid forms. Sectional forms have clear-cut sections which are fairly autonomous (except when they are harmonically open) and follow a very limited number of archetypes (strophic, binary, ternary, rondo, theme with variations...) 4. The Schoenberg text recommended by Elliott Carter is a good one. 5. I had a dedicated course about musical form in the Conservatory, but the fundamentals were shown in other subjects since first year, so when I took musical form, it was just a matter of consolidating, organizing, systematizing and going deeper into already very internalized concepts. The core ideas are actually very simple and easy to grasp. You will need to analyze scores, listen to models and play them (playing is the best way to internalize harmony and form, by the way). Form and harmony are linked, especially in tonal music. You need some prior knowledge of harmony in order to understand some organizational principles of the music, mostly dealing with cadential points (the endings of the different sections).