Page 146 - ESSENTIAL LISTENING TO MUSIC

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Mozart’s Eine kleine Nachtmusik is a “classic” within the repertoire of classical music; its melodies have been used countless times in radio and TV commer- cials to market elegant, high-end products. The fame is well deserved, for rarely is sonata–allegro form presented as economically, and almost never as artfully.
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LiSTeN TO . . . Example 8.4 online.
LiSTeNTO...aseriesof podcasts on hearing sonata– allegro form, online.
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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Eine kleine Nachtmusik (1787) First movement, Allegro (fast)
Genre: Serenade
Form: Sonata–allegro
Example 8.4 > cheerful closing theme that ends with repeating
pitches
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what to listen for: Introduction (none). Exposition (0:00). Development (3:13). Recapitulation (3:48). Coda (5:26).
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read . . . a detailed Listening Guide of this selection online. listen to . . . this selection streaming online.
watch . . . an Active Listening Guide of this selection online. watch . . . a special animation of this selection online.
do . . . Listening Exercise 8.1, Mozart, Eine kleine Nachtmusik, I, online.
Theme and Variations
In the film Amadeus, Mozart is shown composing variations on a theme of an- other composer (Salieri), tossing them off effortlessly like a magician pulling handkerchiefs from his sleeve. The compulsion to endlessly reimagine a song, an object, or a grammatical phrase is called the “transformational imperative,” an urge expressed by the great minds of Mozart, Leonardo da Vinci, and Shake- speare, among others. In music, the object of variation is neither an image nor words, but usually a melody. Theme and variations form occurs when a mel- ody is altered, decorated, or adorned in some way by changing pitch, rhythm, harmony, or even mode (major or minor). The object is still recognizable but somehow doesn’t seem to sound the same. As we’ve seen in Chapter 3, we can visualize this musical process with the scheme in Table 8.3.
chapter eight classical forms
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