Music Video Lesson: How Mozart Broke the Rules

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I'm Robert Estrin and today is how Mozart broke the rules.

He broke the rules? What am I talking about? Mozart the revered? Mozart broke the rules? Well, you know, it's a funny thing that we, in retrospect, analyze music from hundreds of years ago and come up with the forms that these great composers composed in.

And the quintessential form of all time is the Sonata Allegro form.

Sonatas are generally three or four movement works or two movement works and the first movement is almost always in the Sonata Allegro form. Why do they call it the Sonata Allegro? Because the first movement is usually the fast movement, the Allegro movement. And in a nutshell, it's a three -part form with an exposition with two themes. The first theme in the tonic key, the key of the piece. The second theme in the dominant, the key, five notes higher than the tonic.

Then the whole thing repeats. So I'm gonna, before I tell you the whole form, I'm gonna outline it here in this Mozart Sonata, the famous ones you can hear how he broke the rules in the famous K545 C major Sonata. So you have the first theme in C major naturally, which you'd expect.

And look how we modulated to G major. We ended in G major there and we continue to the second subject indeed in the dominant in G major.

And that's the end of the exposition and you come to the repeat and the entire exposition repeats, et cetera.

After the exposition, you come to what's called the development section. The development comes after the double bar, after the repeat, and it's a free development of both themes. The first theme...

...and the second theme.

And so it goes from key to key to key. After the development section comes the recapitulation. What's the recapitulation? It's back to the beginning. You have theme one...

...and theme two, except theme two this time doesn't modulate to the dominant. It stays in the tonic. So the piece ends in the same key it started.

But Mozart takes a turn that is unexpected.

Listen to what happens in the development section.

And now you wonder what's going on.

We're in the subdominant. We're in F major. How did this happen? And it continues in F major.

We're supposed to be in the tonic key, aren't we? The recapitulation is supposed to be a return of the beginning, but we're in F major. And look what happens now.

And now we're in the second subject in C major, which you'd expect, but it never has a restatement of the first subject, the opening theme, which is textbook of what a sonata is. And he just left it out. In fact, that statement of the main theme in the subdominant in F major...

...is simply part of the development section. And he never gives you the first subject on the recapitulation. The recapitulation just has a little bit of a statement in the subdominant in the development section. Then it goes right into the second subject in C major to the end.

So, yes, Mozart broke the rules.

And all great composers break the rules.

The rules are just observations after the fact. And it's all the deviations from what you expect that makes the music great. Lesser composers do exactly what you think they'll do. And it's boring. We're in Mozart, Beethoven, full of surprises, always taking that turn you didn't expect. And that is the secret to great music.

I'm wondering how you think about this and examples that you can bring to the table here at LivingPianos.com and YouTube to share with others how composers broke the rules. They didn't do what the form is supposed to be and how great that is.

Again, I'm Robert Estrin. You're watching LivingPianos .com. If you like these videos, consider subscribing, ring the bell, and subscribe to LivingPianos.com. You'll get newsletters and articles and videos. It's a treasure trove if you love the piano like I do. Thanks again for joining me. We'll see you next time.

Bye.

Find the original source of this video at this link: https://livingpianos.com/how-mozart-broke-the-rules/

Automatic video-to-text transcription by DaDaScribe.com

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