SONATA ALLEGRO FORM | SONATA FORM| SONATA FORM EXPLAINED

SONATA ALLEGRO FORM | SONATA FORM| SONATA FORM EXPLAINED

Today we are going to get into the nitty-gritty of Sonata form and we are going to use a Mozart tune his K545 sonata number 16 in C major as our experimental guinea pig for this whole process. So this post is like-kind of part analysis part learning a new concept his sixteenth Sonata is super popular and is really surprised if you haven't heard it before. Honestly, it's one of the first sonatas that a student will learn when they're you know once they've graduated past the easier Sabbatini. It would be about a grade eight-level so it's not super easy it's like pretty solidly late intermediate level. Anyway let's get started there are a ton of piano sonatas out there they make up a big part of what we learn how to play on the piano everything from like classical music mainly but also lots of romantic music and even some modern pieces are sung on us too but the term to some of us is kind of like a blank value fuzzy term as opposed to like something that you hear go like I specifically, know what a Sonata is.

WHAT IS SONATA?

 So that's the first thing I want to talk about is what is a Sonata there are two answers to this so, first of all, a sonata is a multi-movement work for a solo instrument so you can have like pianos and Otto's cello sonatas flutes and autism and so forth. At least one of the movements in a sonata aren't something that we call Sonata form which brings us to number two there's Sonata form so this is different from the sonata as a genre categorization because it refers to just a specific structure for a piece and this structure includes an exposition a development and a recapitulation.

  let's look at these two answers in more detail when we say something like sonata number 16 in C major by Mozart we're referring to a type or genre of a song so notice has three to four movements and basically what that means is that a sonata is made up of a few different mini songs, think of it as an album like a regular pop album has around ten songs run about thirty minutes long and that adds up to about three minutes per song whereas sonata runs anywhere from 15 to 45 minutes and has three to four pieces with each of those pieces being somewhere between five and ten minutes

usually Mozart sixteenth Sonata that K 45:45 Sonata has three movements and Allegro movement on Dante and Rondo usually movement names are just based on like whatever speed that movement is played at. We're going to be focusing on the Allegro the movement now because that movement is written in Sonata form and that brings us to number two so when we're talking about sonata as a song the structure I want to start by making another pop music comparison so pop music generally has a structure that looks something  you got a verse-chorus-verse two chorus bridge of them another final course obviously it's super basic but you get the idea so in pop music, the course is the main idea of the song and its usually the part that repeats the most and it usually has the same lyrics too whereas the verses are usually softer with different lyrics but the tune is pretty similar from verse to verse and then the bridge is the part of the song that's completely different from all the other parts and it usually serves as like a big the build-up to like a loud final chorus. I'm not going to lie so not a structure is obviously very different from the pop structure but I feel like understanding sonata’s structure makes more sense once you understand the popular music is generally based on pre-existing structures it worked the same the way in the 1718 and 1806 and old form was like the pop form of back in the day.

 Sonata form has three parts it's got an exposition development and recapitulation say those five times fast we'll talk about these more in-depth as we analyze the Mozart Sonata.

THE EXPOSITION

the exposition is basically like where the main ideas are its kind of like the chorus a little bit the development takes those main ideas and kind of like twists them around and manipulates then it goes a little wild and then the recapitulation returns to the stuff from the exposition it's kind of like a big repeat with some minor changes. So like we just mentioned the exposition is where the main idea of the piece is heard its kind of again like the chorus and pop music it's that part that going to get repeated a whole bunch as well as twist it up and around later on in the song and development but its also not quite so simple as that.

 A basic Sonata exposition generally includes not just one theme but two themes kind of like two different parts and those themes are divided by a transition part between the two kinds of you to think of it like averse in pop music and the themes are then capped off by echo delta which is just like a little mini ending and just kind of a wrap up the exposition nicely and in sonatas. Once you've finished all four of those different parts you go back and you repeat the whole thing. The transition basically serves as a link between the first theme and the second theme is almost always going to be in a different key in a sonata usually in the dominant key or the fifth note from the original starting key so in this case, our original starting key is C and then if you walk five notes away from C you land on a G then you'll notice the end of this transition part we're actually ending on a G chord so Mozart accomplished this the transition from the key of C to the key of G by taking us on this long tour through many different scales and many different chords until we wind up in G basically just a little bit of modulation magic there.

 Now we're at our second theme in G major just as the first theme the tune here it's catchy and it's simple there are some similarities to the first theme as well besides that like you got the fast-moving left-hand patterns and stuff going on here to the second part of the second theme like over here you can start to see the notes are changing. They're basically arpeggios kind of like how the first theme had scale fragments now we got our pitch of fragments there's just another reason to practice your scales and arpeggios from there we do a little brief tour in the key of a minor which is a natural relative to our original key of C major and then we finally wind up on a G chord.

CODE ETTA

 Now we arrive at our code Etta or Minnie ending it's just three bars long and it just serves the purpose of really solidifying the key that we move to which is G major so it ends on a strong the perfect cadence over here and that kind of makes it sounds to the ear like we've reached the end of a paragraph not just the end of a sentence.

When we move on to repeat the entire exposition again the return is immediately noticeable because you're like warping from the key of G all the way back to the key of C. So it sounds pretty abrupt and Mozart like other Sonata composers they're really not trying to trick us with this repeat and make us not notice that it's repeating they're supposed to be super obvious and apparent and that leads us to you these are not a development the purpose of the second part of the sonata form.

 THE DEVELOPMENT

The development is really to take our two themes and mix them up and make them all crazy in the development. You'll see lots of key changing you'll see different rhythms sometimes entirely new parts too and developments they can sometimes get pretty dark and uneasy as kind of the whole point to them there's usually a lot of tension and oftentimes they're pretty dramatic. First thing Mozart does here is taking the tune from our code Etta which is like this little ditty right here and he makes it minor this is interspersed with some scale fragments over here which are kind of like the transition of the exposition. So then we're just wandering through a few different minor keys in this part like G minor D minor a minor and this leaves us feeling like we're floating like we're not anchored in any one key and beyond that, the keys he's touring us through are all minor keys which makes us feel obviously more uneasy than major keys.

THE RECAPITULATION

 Then we are at the final part the recapitulation now generally the recapitulation is not just a fun word to say recapitulation sorry anyway. Basically it's the same thing as the exposition but with a couple alterations and modifications first of all instead of the first and second themes being indifferent keys like you know-how in the exposition we went to the KIA c4 theme one and then we went to the key of G for theme two in recapitulation we generally keep them the same key so like C and Except Mozart broke the rules here because of you know that's what he did.  Instead of his theme one being in the key of C like if you know would ordinarily be he decided. 

You know what we're gonna do this in the key of This time our transition is a little bit longer because it has to move us from the key of F back to our home key of C for the second theme. You'll notice there's a completely different part like right in here that we didn't hear the first time just kind of thrown in there but then when we get down here this is exactly you know the same set of notes that we had in the first transition. so that serves as a link to our theme to you our second theme is identical to the one in the exposition with the only difference, of course, is that now we're in the key of C.

 instead of the key of G like we were at the beginning of the song, the Kadena is also identical and also in the key of C and we end this recapitulation on a very solidifying effect cadence then what you would have to do once you get there is go back and repeat the whole development and recapitulation part again.

 That concludes the post part information part analysis of a Mozart Sonata I hope you enjoyed this as always you can leave requests or any ideas you have for future posts in the little discussion the area below and I always read them so I appreciate when you take the time to send a comment and share if you found it interesting. Thank you so much for reading.