All right.

Let us begin.

Let us--we'll turn down the music of Charles Ives.

We'll come back to the music of Charles Ives,

but let us begin with our discussion of musical

form--continuing our discussion of musical form.

Last time we talked really about three forms.

We talked about verse and chorus in popular music and we

had a wonderful presentation by Frederick Evans.

And I hope you came away with the following:

that in dealing with verse and chorus, basically,

you have the same material; you have the same musical

material coming back again and again and again.

With the chorus we actually have the same text coming back

again and again and again.

But with the verses although the music is the same,

the text keeps changing each time.

We get new strophes--or new verses--of text.

So keep that in mind: verse, chorus,

verse, chorus.

Sometimes this can start with the chorus.

Sometimes there's a harmonic change in here that we would

call the bridge, but essentially it's the

repetition of the same material over and over again in terms of

the music-- but in terms of the text,

you get new text each time for the verses.

We also talked about the simplest of all of these musical

forms: ternary form.

Right?

And that was simply this idea of statement,

contrast, statement--A, B, A.

Very straightforward, not too much we need do with

that.

Today we're going to go on and talk about theme and variations,

and with regard to all three of these I should say that all

three of these forms are very old.

I could go back into the Middle Ages and get a responsory of the

Middle Ages that is in A B A form.

I could go back into the Middle Ages and bring up an early

fifteenth-century English carol that's in verse and chorus form.

I could go back into the Middle Ages and find you instrumental

pieces that are in theme and variation form.

So these three are very old.

Now, the fourth one that we talked about,

sonata-allegro form, is adventitious.

It's something constructed in the eighteenth century--

adventitious to the eighteenth century--

so it's something put together in some measure by Joseph Haydn

and then passed on to his good friend,

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

So sonata-allegro form--this big, complex musical form--is a

little bit different than the other.

It's a lot younger.

It's a lot newer--beginning with the period of classical

music--Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven.

All right.

With that by way of an introduction,

let's go back to sonata-allegro form.

We said that was the largest, the most complex,

of these musical forms.

Why are we dealing with this?

Well, next--a week from Saturday--we will go to this

concert and we will sit there and we listen to pieces on this

concert.

The opening piece will be in sonata-allegro form.

It will be by Mozart.

Then we will have a piece by Johannes Brahms in theme and

variation form.

Then we will have a symphony by Beethoven in five

movements--it's an exception and we'll explain why when we get to

it--in five movements.

But within those movements we have a couple of instances of

sonata-allegro form, a couple of instances of theme

and variation form, and one instance of ternary

form.

So all of these forms will be necessary.

We will have to understand how these forms work in order for us

to really engage that particular concert.

For example, you'll be asked to write a

review of that concert.

And I was thinking this morning, well,

a kind of mediocre review would say,

"Well, in the middle of the first movement of the

Beethoven piece-- and we--once again,

we wouldn't call it a 'song'-- in the middle of the

Beethoven--first movement of the Beethoven symphony--

things seem to be disorganized."

What I'd like to hear there is "Well,

in the development section--in the development section--

of the first movement of the Beethoven symphony,

it seemed disorganized because the counterpoint was not clear,

because the imitative entries of the parts was not clearly

articulated."

And that would be a much more specific sort of response to the

music, a much more educated, if you will,

response to the music.

So that's where we're going with all this to get you to

think about precisely where you are and precisely what should be

happening, and then, is it really

happening the way it should be.

Now as said, sonata-allegro form is the most

difficult of these, and it takes a little extra

time to get familiar with it.

We're going to be reviewing this in section starting this

evening.

And don't forget we have this model of what sonata-allegro

form is.

I didn't want to put that up on the board again--did that last

time--but you've got it on page one hundred ninety-three of your

textbook.

If you want that complex diagram, one hundred

ninety-three of your textbook.

So get familiar with that.

And do, once again, bring your books to section

this time, 'cause we'll read them in section this time.

So we've got this complex form.

nd I've figured out over the years the way to sort of wrap

your arms around this or get into this, understand this.

And it involves the fact that music in the classical period is

what we would call rhetorical music.

It's doing something at every moment.

It is doing, as I see it,

one of four things.

It's presenting a theme so we'll have a--what we call a

thematic function.

It's moving from point A to point B.

Remember with the Beethoven >

--that's the opening theme, and then the second theme is

>.

Well, those are both themes.

That's stating something that we can sing, that we can

remember.

But Beethoven has to get from point A, the minor,

to point B, the more lyrical major, so he writes a

transition.

So the second functional type here is transitional music.

We want to be able to differentiate thematic music

from transitional music.

Then there are passages--and in sonata-allegro form it's in the

middle of the movement-- that are exclusively

developmental, where you take the material and

play with it.

You could make it--expand it and change it that way.

You could shorten it as Beethoven often does in working

with just particular motives.

It tends to sound very complex.

There's a lot going on in the development section.

It's the most polyphonic, the most contrapuntal--

counterpoint and polyphony--sort of synonymous--

the most complex in terms of the counterpoint and,

as we said before, it tends to move around a lot

because they pass-- the composers will pass through

different keys in the development section.

So we've got, so far, three of what we call

the four functional types-- or what I have called the four

functional types: thematic,

transitional, developmental.

And now we have to talk about the last one,

which is the simplest in some ways: cadential--

where the composer will just throw on a lot of heavy,

simple harmonic motion to slow the music down psychologically--

not the tempo actually--but psychologically sort of bring it

to a close, so we can say a closing

functional type.

Again to review: thematic, transitional,

developmental and cadential.

Those are our four functional types that will show up with any

movement of sonata-allegro form.

Question.

Student: What was the last one?

Prof: Cadential, with--was that it,

Dan?

It's Daniel.

Is that right?

Student: Yes.

Prof: Yeah.

Student: How do you spell that?

Prof: Well, just take cadence,

c-a-d-e-n-c-e, and turn it into cadential,

t-i-a-l.

I don't know if my spellchecker kicks that word back or not,

but we use that term in music a lot.

"This was a cadential gesture,"

suggesting that we're kind of getting to the end of something.

So, remember we had cadence being the end of a phrase.

Well, it's just the end of the section here.

Any other questions?

That was a good question.

All right.

So to get rolling with this, let's listen to some music now.

Enough talk from me.

Let's get--listen to some music, and I'm going to play

four excerpts here-- mostly here again from

Mozart--four excerpts-- and you see if you can identify

which of the functional types is in play here <<music

playing>>

Okay. We're going to stop there.

Let's review just for a moment.

How do you tell these functional types?

Well, what are you looking for here, or listening for?

With thematic, you want to be able to kind of

sing it or you recognize it as something that you could walk

out of here humming.

So something that's--that you can sort of take with you.

Transitional: this idea of a little bit

unsettled and lots of motion.

Cadential--as I say, that's probably the easiest

because >

, something like that, bringing it to an end.

And developmental is going to be rather complex--lots of

counterpoint going on.

So let's go back to the beginning.

>

Okay. So that's number one.

Here's extract number two >

and excerpt number three >

and number four.

>

All right. Let's go back now.

Let's hear "one" one more time and then we're

going to ask for a volunteer to take a stab at which of the four

functional types you think this is.

Okay.

Number one, one more time.

>

So what brave soul will take this one on?

Sorry. Carolyn, please.

Transitional.

That is correct.

Yes, that's correct.

Now what did you hear there?

It's hard to play the whole thing again, but what were you

thinking?

What came--what--why did you jump to that conclusion?

Student: >

Prof: Okay.

At the end of it, it did kind of slow down.

You had a sense of arrival there.

There was lots of motion.

There was lots of movement, and then at the end a sense of

arrival.

All right.

We've arrived at a new--and probably a theme is going to

come in at that point.

So that is, in fact, a transition.

>

What about that one?

Frederick, go ahead.

You had your hand up first.

Student: That was the cadential version because it

seemed-- a lot of monotony,

kind of, in the bass, and it's really leaning to the

descending, more the sequence of the melody