Musical Analysis Mozart

Christian Liu Xi-Le

Ms Pang Jin

Year 2 Musical Historical Overview

13 August 2015 The third movement of Mozart’s Piano Sonata in A, K. 331 is heavily influenced by the music of Turkish Janissary bands, hence its name “Alla Turca”, literally meaning “in the Turkish style”. The style is musically reflected in the different musical elements of the movement, and the three main features which contribute to its alla turca style that will be analyzed and discussed in this essay are rhythm, melody and timbre. The first musical element of this movement which incorporates the Turkish style is its rhythm. The simple duple metre of the piece, immediately obvious from the beginning, already alludes to the march style of the piece. Although

Themes throughout the piece are constantly developed through sequence, and this was common in the simple Janissary music, where short phrases would be sequenced. Mozart already develops the opening theme in a sequential pattern, and he does the same in the next phrase (see Example 2.1 bars 8-14) as well as the rest of the piece. Other than sequence, repetition is another compositional device Mozart used to mimick Turkish music. Phrases of Janissary bands were very often repeated, and Mozart takes this to the extreme, repeating every phrase bar the coda. Visibly, there is a repeat sign every one or two phrases in the score. Apart from compositional devices, the contour of this movement is another aspect of melody that mimics Turkish music, whose melodies have stepwise contour, often slurred by Turkish instruments. Mozart was not discreet about his allusion to said style; the largest melodic interval within any phrase was the rare perfect fifth, occurring two to three times within the entire three-and-a-half minute long piece, with the rest of the piece staying mainly conjuct. Finally, the unstable tonality of the piece is another melodic element mimicking the style of Janissary military music. The piece, despite being labelled a sonata in A Major, fluctuates in key between A minor, parallel major A major, and relative minor of A major, F# minor. One of Turkish music’s notable qualities are its intricate system of modal scales separate from Western tonality, as well as its constant shifts between tonalities. Thus, the wavering tonality of this piece is another element reminiscent of the Turkish style. Mozart used two compositional devices as well as two melodic elements hinting at the alla turca style, thus melody is defintely one of the main elements of music where this style is