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1597 T. Morley Plaine & Easie Introd. Musicke Annot. sig. * The last of the two minimes is marked with a pricke..for perfections sake, that the ternary number may be obserued.]

1728 E. Chambers Cycl. at Measure Ternary, or Triple Measure, is that wherein the Fall is double to the Rise; or where two Minims are play'd during a Fall, and but one in a Rise.

1875 F. A. G. Ouseley Treat. Musical Form vi. 41 (heading) Of the ternary form.

1875 F. A. G. Ouseley Treat. Musical Form vii. 44 If the minuet form is adopted for a complete and isolated composition, it should be lengthened considerably, and then both the minuet and trio may be written in the ternary form.

1876 J. Stainer & W. A. Barrett Dict. Musical Terms 432/1 Ternary form, rondo form. Ternary measure, triple time.

1896 W. H. Hadow Sonata Form iv. 29 In its use for purposes of the Folk-song the most primitive Ternary form consists of a melody in three clauses: one of assertion..one of contrast..one of re-assertion.

1908 Athenæum 18 July 78/1 Another interesting instance of modification is that of binary form, which by expansion became ternary.

1931 D. F. Tovey Compan. Beethoven's Pianoforte Sonatas 2 The vital distinction between ‘binary’ and ‘ternary’ is that between an aggregate whose members are inseparable and an aggregate containing one or more things already complete.

1938 Oxf. Compan. Music 334/2 Properly, any composition in which the ear seizes two clear divisions is binary, and any in which it seizes three is ternary... ‘Sonata Form’..is often called ‘Compound Binary’... Certain text-books..speak of it as ‘Ternary’.

1938 Oxf. Compan. Music 335/1 Rondo Form. This may be looked upon as an extension of simple ternary form.

1944 W. Apel Harvard Dict. Music 88/1 The principle of ternary structure appeared first in the French chansons of the 16th century... The idea of a contrasting middle section is quite clearly expressed in the shepherd's solo of Monteverdi's Orfeo... Ternary form became clearly established in the da-capo aria, c. 1700.

1980 New Grove Dict. Music XVIII. 694/1 Tripartite musical form designated symbolically as ABA. The two elements A and B are often thematically independent and each is generally a ‘closed’ structure tonally, so that the interdependence of the two sections characteristic of binary form is not necessarily evident in ternary.