This study focuses on listeners' form perception as they encounter Western concert music. The general aim was to investigate college music students' form perception as they listen to five long-range concert works of different styles, all analyzed by the author as having an overall ternary ABA' arch-form. Five groups of college music students (N=126) listened respectively to five ternary arch-form compositions by Chopin, Mussorgsky, Tchaikovsky, Bartók and Schönberg. Each group was required to identify the musical form of one test-piece and convey responses both through written notes and self-invented notations. Significant differences were found between the five test-pieces in the percentage of participants who confirmed the ternary form analysis and participants who interpreted the form as binary. Also, significant differences were found in (i) five cue-parameters contributing to form detection: tempo, timbre, pitch, articulation and mood; (ii) in emotional and metaphoric responses evoked by the music; and (iii) in the use of colour in visual representations of musical form. A significant association between auditory/ternary perception and graphic/ternary designs was found in works by Chopin, Mussorgsky and Bartók. Results bear implications for the teaching and learning of structural listening in Western concert music.