Mozart's Piano Sonata in A Major

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Mozart's Piano Sonata in A Major

The recognised style in the classical period in which this was written

was to write sonatas in Sonata form- the concept of a recapituation,

development and exposition. Indeed, the majority of Mozarts other

sonatas were written like this. However, this sonata has a different

but very distinct form. The first movement is a theme and a set of six

variations. Each variation aswell as the theme comprises of four four

bar phrases, as illustrated below. This form allowed Mozart to keep

simple, recurring themes throughout the movement and so gave the

listener a more immediate experience compared to the complexities of

counterpoint of sonata form.

Within this first movement Mozart uses several musical teqniques to

'popularise' the music; attempts to embellish the notes and provide an

extremely melodious and pleasurable end product. The music is

decorated with semi-tonal appoggiaturas in the right hand and

acciaccaturas in the left, livening up the melody. As Mozart had just

discovered the complex textural variation a piano could give, the

piece is littered with sforzando markings, e.g. in the last beat of

bar 28.

Each vatiation has features thatare unique to themselves or are only

hinted at at different parts of the piece, e.g. the alberti bass in

fifth movement to emphasise the pace of the piece of the offbeat

chromatic quavers, driving the movement forward in the last (sixth)

movement. All these features serve to bring the audience in to the

music, in the same way the stuffing operates in a succulent turkey.

The second movement consists of a minuette and trio. These are

entirely diffent in form to the first movement and operate in Teurnary

form (ABA). The minuetto is traditionally a dance which is very

unusual at this point in a piece and makes the sonata stand out even

more to it's audience. This movement is all about dynamics with lots

of 'sfp' and a smattering of dissonant notes, an example being in the

second beat of the eighth bar when a G natural in the right hand

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