Development is one of those words in music that has a lot of different meanings
so for my first video on the topic I want to go back to the Classical
composers and focus on how they structured a Development section.
It turns out that in the majority of Sonata Allegro form movements the Development sections
from composers like Mozart and Beethoven followed a flexible but pretty consistent structure.
So in this video I'll explain that structure and we'll use Mozart's
Clarinet Quintet in A major to show how it works.
Let's listen to the very opening of the whole piece.
In Analyzing Classical Form (my favorite music book ever) William Caplin explains that most,
not all but most, of the Development sections from Mozart and Beethoven
followed what's called a pre-core core structure.
The three parts are the pre-core, the core, and a standing on the dominant.
So let's go into each of those three parts.
We'll start in the middle with the core.
The core begins with a phrase or group of phrases called the model.
Usually the model is four to eight bars long,
we'll also see an example where it's only two bars long.
The model is then repeated in sequence which means the whole thing is shifted up or down
in pitch or adapted to different harmony, but basically structurally repeated the same way.
Eventually the sequence breaks and the ideas fragment, which means they go from larger ideas
down to smaller and smaller ideas and pick up the pace.
For example if the model was four bars long the
fragment might go down to two bars and then down to one bar.
Finally the core arrives on a half cadence or the dominant of the key of whatever is coming next.
Now let's check out what material Mozart uses for his Development.
In the first core we have this arpeggio figure
that rises in eighth notes and then comes back down more decorated with 16th notes.
This idea that he's using for the core came directly from the opening theme,
where at the time it felt like kind of an insignificant
fill but turned out to be the main motivic basis for the Development.
The model repeats twice but is sequenced to adapt to different harmony
and it follows a pattern of going down a third and then up a fourth.
In Mozart's Clarinet Quintet the model sequence technique
happens twice, so we actually have two cores.
The first one modulates from C major to F# minor the second one modulates from F# minor to A major.
The second core splits the same idea into two different parts at the same time,
so the clarinet takes over the rising and falling with eighth notes and the
strings take over the decorated sixteenth line, which in this case only ever heads downwards.
This time the harmonic rhythm is cut in half,
meaning we only get a new chord every two bars instead of every bar.
Also notice that the second core has a four bar pattern where the sixteenth figure is given to
viola, cello, violin one, violin two,
and then through the same cycle again of viola, cello, violin one, violin two.
So let's listen to both of those cores back to back.
Now let's talk about the pre-core.
The pre-core is less structured than the core and can kind of be whatever you want, and is usually
made up of one or two thematic units, meaning a period a sentence or some hybrid of both.
However these themes are often incomplete, meaning some piece of the formula is missing.
A lot of times that's the cadence, so we get this feeling of looseness and restlessness
and kind of just general middle of the piece energy from the pre-core.
In a lot of Mozart's pre-core sections he takes an idea from the opening theme of the piece
and just adapts it to a different key.
So in the case of the Clarinet Quintet let's listen to that opening theme again.
And now here's the opening of the Development section.
Hopefully you recognize that that's pretty much the same theme, it's just the first time
it was in A major, the second time it's in C major and now the clarinet has the melody.
But thematically it's pretty much the same material.
Also again notice how he ends the theme with that lick that he uses in core one,
just like he did in the opening section.
The only other interesting thing about the
pre-core is that modulation right at the very beginning.
The exposition has just ended in the key of E major, which is the dominant of our home key of A.
The development starts with just these two pitches on the E and G# which implies an E chord,
but then the G# moves to G natural and changes the chord from E major to E minor,
which then smoothly moves to G7 and lands on C.
The quick modulation is a simple but effective way
of signaling to us the listener that things are getting loose and fluid.
The third and last part of the pre-core core structure is the standing on the dominant.
The core ends on a half cadence or an arrival on the dominant chord, either way
the V chord of whatever key we have coming next.
The dominant has a very unresolved tense sound and standing on the dominant means
spending extra time there, really stretching it out and really kind of milking that tension.
In the Mozart example even the standing on the dominant section is actually made up of two parts.
The first part goes back to that same lick as core one but this time the phrases overlap so
when one idea is halfway through a different instrument picks it up and starts their version.
We get this very fast moving forward driving pace.
I mentioned before that the ideas from the sequence usually break down
and fragment before the standing on the dominant, but in this case
in the Mozart piece he's actually doing that fragmenting in the standing on the dominant.
The main important feature here is the cello,
which is just hammering down that pitch E or the dominant pitch of the scale.
The chords are going back and forth between E major and A minor
but that cello is just grounding us on a dominant pedal E E E.
In the second part we're still stuck on that E pedal but the texture simplifies
and the energy dissipates as we head towards an E7 chord,
and then we have this warm and welcome return of the opening theme in A major.
So now that we've talked about the pre-core, core, and standing on the dominant structure,
let's take a listen to the entire Development section
and this time really pay attention to how the ideas are organized.
I'll start it about five bars before the Development section begins.
Watching a YouTube video where someone explains what Mozart did can be helpful,
but if you really want to learn from a master like Mozart you need to get him as a private teacher
which is exactly what I tell you how to do in this video here, where you'll learn an intense
method for studying composition that will take your music to a whole new level.
Thanks for watching, I'll see you in the next one!