(grab the caption to drag it to a different location on the screen)
Alright, in these next four segments we're going to look at what is quite possibly the
most important development in the history of instrumental music.
That's a big statement.
But I'm saying that because this is a development that starts around the
seventeen fifties
and composers are still using it. So it's obviously big.
It's major time frame, it was a really hot thing,
was from 1700. . . 1750 or so until
probably like the 1900... turn of century, 1900.
But people are still using this particular construction and there are so,
so many pieces written in this particular arrangement
that you really
have to know
about it.
You can hear it at concerts all the time.
So what is this
big thing that we're talking about.
We're talking about
the sonata
cycle.
The sonata cycle, so what is that?
The sonata cycle is an arrangement of movements.
And it varies somewhat depending on which kind of piece we're talking about and we'll look at
that in more detail later but right now we're just going to look at the basic structure.
So in a sonata cycle
we have
four movements.
And remember a movement is an independent freestanding sort of piece of music
that belongs in a group like a chapter in a book.
So we have four of those.
So we are going to look at each of those
four movements
to see how they are generally constructed.
Now I say generally because, you know, they're composers.
Nobody wants to do exactly the same thing all the time so we will see
the earlier composers using this, stick
fairly close to the structure that we're talking about.
By the time we get to Beethoven and composers who are later
they're like, "Okay well I've done that already I've. . . I've practiced that."
It's like learning how to write an essay in English class, well later you
get to write fancier essays.
So you can diverge from the plan.
So we will see that later people sort of wander away from it but it's still
visibly the same structure. So it's really important that you get this
in your head. That's why we're going to spend so much time on it. So we'll start right now
with the first movement
of a sonata cycle.
And it's the only one
that has a very standard
form that almost always happens.
And that form is called the sonata
allegro.
We know that allegro means "fast" so you've got some information right there,
allegro.
Sonata means "sounding" so that tells us it's instrumental music. So this is not
something that's applied to vocal music. It's a purely instrumental approach.
So, sonata allegro.
What is in a sonata allegro?
Obviously a fast tempo.
But, composers don't even like to do that particularly all the time.
So you'll sometimes see in the first movement of a sonata cycle that
the first movement is actually something slow for a little while, so you have a very
dramatic
introduction that's slow and ponderous.
And then it's like "boom!"
And we're off with the allegro.
So you'll know when the allegro happens. It's very obvious in all these pieces.
The title is also going to be helpful. The composer will usually say,
for example, grave
dash
allegro (grave - allegro). So you know grave is slow so you know there's a slow part at the
beginning
and you can say okay that doesn't have anything to do with the sonata allegro part of this,
I can just enjoy the beauty of it,
and then when I get to the allegro, that's when I need to start paying attention to
the way the piece is actually structured.
So, now we're into the allegro.
It has
three parts. So it's sort of like A B A,
but not quite because the B is not something new, as we will see in just a
minute.
So, in the first part where we have the A that comes out, we're not going call it A
either because as I said the middle's not really B.
We call that first section
of sonata allegro the exposition.
This is the part where the composer is going to expose you,
exposition, to
the themes that are important in this piece of music.
So in the exposition there are
two themes.
And they're going to be contrasting. Remember we talked about contrast is an
important element of...
of melodic structure. We liked things to be different.
So we'll have
a theme one,
that will have some sort of character. In the case of the piece we're going to
listen to,
it has what we call a rocket theme,
[bum ba bum ba bum bum bum bum]
It's like it's soaring off into the sky.
So we actually call that a rocket theme. Anytime you hear it you can call it
that.
So it's got that
kind of theme.
And you will hear that theme completely played out.
Sometimes there's a little transitional material to get you to the second theme,
sometimes ts just jumps right in.
In this case our second theme,
because we want contrast obviously the first one was very disjunct,
and it was sort of staccato and it went upward,
so our second theme is going to be more legato; it's going to go down.
And so it's
[da da da dada da da da da dada].
Very much different from
our rocket them at the beginning.
Sometimes there's actually a third theme. It's called a closing theme, which would be very
short and would just sort of tie up the end of the exposition.
So, first theme,
second theme,
sometimes a closing theme.
These pieces - remember, we talked already about equal temperament and how we
like to put the title... in the title we include the key of the piece.
So in this particular piece that we're going to listen to, it's in G major.
So the first theme is going to be in that key,
G major.
But the second theme is usually going to be
in a different key, a related key.
So in this case is it's going to be in D. That's pretty typical if you
start in G.
A B C D is the fifth, we like to go to the fifth
chord of the cape scale.
So we have a modulation, remember that term,
to D.
So starting in G, second theme would be in D.
We've heard all of that.
That's the exposition.
But you get to hear it twice.
This information is so important
that it's always done twice so you make sure you've really got those two themes in
your head because they're very important as the rest of the piece
goes along.
Exactly the same thing.
They didn't re-write it, there's just a little mark there that says go back and play that again.
So you hear the whole section again.
That's
the exposition.
So now we've learned all our themes. We know what the composers
tools are, the toys that he's playing with.
So the next section is called
the development.
And what the composer is going to do here is to take those themes,
that we've already heard twice, so we really know them very well now,
and generally
break them into little pieces,
move them into different keys, so you hear a lot of modulation. You'll hear the two
themes sort of mixing together.
So it's
like okay I have my construction set and I constructed all these things very
beautifully in my exposition. Now I'm going to take all those
pieces, I'm going to take all the little parts apart and throw them around
and come up with something different.
And the piece that we're listening to, that development, is relatively short.
When we get to some longer symphonies, the development could even be three or four
minutes long by itself. Because it just gets so wrapped up in toying around with those
themes.
So as we listen to that you'll hear
that little bits of the rocket theme you'll hear that [da da da dada].
You'll hear bits of that.
And you'll hear that it goes through lots of different keys.
So that's the development. So we've had exposition, now we've had the development.
Then we're going to go back
to the exposition.
So that's where it sort of feels like A B A except that there's not really a B.
It's just...
fiddling with A.
So that part when A comes back, the exposition comes back again, we call
the recapitulation.
Recapitulation, so its coming back.
Sometimes it's very much like the first time through.
Not exactly like it because you've heard it twice already don't need to hear it exactly the same
way again.
So the composer will do something different with it to let you know that, yeah
we've heard that already we don't have to
just completely rehash it.
So we have our theme one again, again in the key of G in this case,
but this time when we get to the second theme,
the composers usually will put that in the same key as the first theme.
You as a listener probably will not hear that and that's ok.
Now, with the beauty of things like YouTube you can go back and find the original
one, listen to it, then go quickly to the second one, and go oh yeah, they're not in the same key.
So you can actually practice that,
but as you listen to the entire piece
you know just straight through, you probably won't hear that but you need to know that it
happens.
And then at the end there's usually a little tacked on piece called the coda or the
tail end, that's what "coda" means in Italian.
That will be
just some way to get to an ending.
So we sound like we have closure.
So we're going to listen to
the entire
sonata cycle of "Mozart's Serenade in G major, K.525."
When we talked about Mozart we know that the K numbers tell us
where this piece falls in his compositional output. This is number
525 so it's fairly late in his numbers because he only lived to
be 36
or 39, something like that.
So 525 pieces is a pretty good ways into his output.
So this is
what we would consider a mature work
by Mozart.
So it is written for five string players, so it's kind of interesting
ensemble. So you have
two violins, viola, cello, and a string bass gets to play this time so
that would be kind of fun. So we're going to start with this
first movement which is just called allegro, Mozart's very helpful, he told us
it's an allegro.
am we will start with theme one and I will stop as we get to each new theme so that
you will know exactly where its...
where it's happening. So now we're ready to listen to the first movement of
Mozart's Serenade; this is the Allegro. I'll stop as we go along so that you can...
we can talk about what's happening in terms of where we are in the
construction.
So, starting right away, theme one!
(music playing)
OK, that's our first theme, that's a minute long, so if you were thinking,
"Oh, I've already heard B,"
you just got... remember we talked about think bigger chunks. He gives us a very
solid, this is the end of something there, so that's very helpful.
Not all composers will do that but for our first example, it's useful to have that.
so we have dom, bom-bom, bom bom bom bom bom bom, and that sort of idea
running through out. Now let's hear the contrast of the second theme.
(music playing)
which I didn't sing properly for you
(music playing)
OK, so again, Mozart gives us a nice
what we call a cadence or a closing point there; it's
obvious that that is the end of something. So we have bom bom bom bom
then we have da-did-y-um pom-pom-pom-pom
Very different. Very legato in one case, very staccato in the
other.
Moving up, moving down! So it's obviously a contrast theme.
Alright we're going to go back now and list to the repeat of the exposition. I'm gonna let the whole
thing playthrough so you can remember
where the second thing comes in for yourself this time. I'm not gonna tell you
where it is.
(music playing)
OK, I'm sure you found that
perfectly easy to find the second theme that time. So, Mozart makes it very clear
in this piece, which is why it's such a good example for us to use.
So we have now spent three minutes
listening to theme one and theme two. So now we're up to the development.
Mozart's going to take bits of that and for about thirty seconds
just throw them around. So just see how he
deals with our fragments of the theme.
(music playing)
So, you can hear, he just takes little bits, throws them around, lots of different keys,
but then he also sort of says, "Hey, I'm done with that!" You can tell
that there's something else is going to happen now. He's sort of leading you back to
where we came from hand in hand most composers will also
do that for you. So now let's listen to what happens!
(music playing)
OK, familiar, right? That's because this is the theme one coming
back again. We're now in the recapitulation,
so we're just going to listen to the rest of the piece now.
Just think about that second theme, about it being in a different key, and if you
can't tell it's different from the first time, at least sort of be thinking about it and see if you can tell.
(music playing)
Gonna pause it there for just a moment.
hopefully you could tell that that time through theme two sounded
lower in pitch than the first time, and that tells you its in a different key so
even if you
couldn't say, oh those were a long way apart or very close together, maybe you could hear
that it was lower.
So, we got to this point, it sort of sounds like the end of what we had at
the exposition but now he needs to close it off, so here is our coda.
(music playing)
So, obviously has an ending.
We like our big classical endings.
In this particular case he pretty much stays on the same chord all the way
through.
When we talked about classical style we talked about that, about how we would
stay on the same chord for a very long...
whoops sorry... a very long period of time so that you would
really get a sense of what key you're in. So that's the sonata allegro!
Theme one - theme two - sometimes a closing theme,
repeat it all, that's the exposition. Middle section,
fiddles around with all that, that's the development, then we have it all come back at
the end,
and that is the recapitulation and usually with a coda on it.
So now let's move on to the second movement of this cycle!