Music for Listeners Test 3

Haydn and Chamber Music

  • The form is the most important organizing element in absolute music, which has no specific pictorial or literary program

  • Musical ideas or themes are used as building blocks in a composition: these themes are made up of short, melodic, or rhythmic fragments as motives

  • Themes can be expanded by varying the melody, rhythm, or harmony through thematic developments: this usually happens in large-scale works

  • The Classical era is the golden age of chamber music (ensemble music for two to about ten performers, with one player per part). The string quartet (two violins, viola, and cello) was the most important chamber music genre of the era.

  • Joseph Haydn’s Emperor Quartet features a famous set of variations on a hymn he wrote for the Austrian Emperor.

  • Theme: Melodic idea used as a basic building block in the construction of a piece

  • Thematic Development: Musical expansion of a theme by varying its melodic outline, harmony, or rhythm

  • Motive: Short melodic or rhythmic idea; the smallest fragment of a theme

  • Sequence: Restatement of an idea, or motive at a different pitch level

  • The second movement is usually the slow movement of the cycle

    • typically andante or adagio

Mozart, Chamber Music, and Larger Forms

  • The first movement of the classical multimovement cycle is usually in a fast tempo and in sonata-allegro form, with three main sections: exposition, development, and recapitulation.

  • The third movement is a triple-meter pair of dances, usually a minuet and trio.

  • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, a child prodigy who started to write music before the age of five, contributed to nearly all musical genres of the classical era, including the symphony, sonata, concerto, chamber music, sacred music, and opera.

  • One of Mozart’s best-known chamber works is Eine Kleine Nachtmusik (A Little Night Music), a serenade for strings.

  • Divertimento: classical ear instrumental genre for chamber ensemble or soloist. Related to serenade

  • Serenade: Classical instrumental genre that combines elements of chamber music and symphony

Haydn and Classical Concerto

  • The classical concerto form consists of three movements, alternating fast-slow-fast.

  • The first movement is the longest and most complex, combining elements of Baroque ritornello procedure and sonata-allegro form.

  • The last movement is fast and lively, often in rondo form, which is also a common form in the last movement of symphonies and other cyclic works.

  • Haydn’s lively Trumpet Concerto in E-flat major, written for the new keyed trumpet, is a notable example of genre.

  • Concerto could refer to a solo group and orchestra or a solo instrument and orchestra

  • Candeza: Virtuosic solo passage in the manner of an improvisation

  • Rondo: A B A C A

  • Sonata Rondo: A B A C A B A

Beethoven and the Classical Sonata

  • Classical sonatas were set either for one solo instrument (usually the piano) or for duos (violin, piano, for example)

  • Sonatas were sometimes designed for amateur performances in the home but were also used by composer-performers as show pieces.

  • The solo sonatas of Mozart and especially Ludwig van Beethoven are among the most significant in the keyboard literature

  • The Moonlight Sonata, perhaps Beethoven’s best-known piano work, evokes the new Romantic styles in its expressive manipulation of Classical conventions

  • Scherzo: Composition in A B A form, usually in a triple meter. Replaced the minuet and trio in the 19th century

Beethoven and the Symphony in Transition

  • Beethoven’s music is grounded in the Classical tradition but pushes its limits in a way that helped define the emerging Romantic sensibility

  • Beethoven’s nine symphonies exemplify his experiments with classical conventions. Best known is his fifth, built on the famous four-note motive that permeates all four movements

  • Sonata allegro- “Allegro con brio’

    • First movement: 3 shorts and a long

    • Second movement: Serene theme and variations with two melodic ideas

    • Third movement: scherzo

    • Fourth movement: Cyclical form, a theme or musical idea repeats in a later movement

Songs and their forms

  • Haydn: String Quartet in C Major - II. Poco Adagio

    • Form: a-a-b-c-c

  • Mozart: Eine kleine Nachtmusik (A Little Night Music), I. Allegro and III. Allegretto

    • Form: I: Sonata Allegro (Introduction, Development, Recapitulation), II: Two dances (minuet-trio)

  • Haydn: Trumpet Concerto in E-flat Major, III

    • Form: Sonata Rondo: A-B-A-B-A-C-A-B-A

  • Beethoven: Piano Sonata in C-sharp Minor (Moonlight). I.

    • Form: A-B-A’ (modified song form: strophic with two strophes separated by a developmental section)

  • Beethoven: Symphony No. 5 in C Minor, I. Allegro con brio

    • Form: Sonata Allegro (Introduction, Development, Recapitulation)