[MUSIC]

Now, you will have noticed that I've been speaking

only about first movements even though classical
sonatas always have multiple movements.
This is no accident.
There are slow movements, and more
unusually finales,
in sonata form.
But generally, other models were used for
these movements, and there is
no traditional model with as much built in
tension as the sonata form.
Slow movements came in a relatively wide
variety of forms but most often when
they were not sonata movements, they were
in something called four-part or
slow-movement form.
This is not nearly as vital to a general
understanding of the style, so I won't
dwell on it.
Suffice it to say that the four-part form
is much like a sonata movement without a
development.
And while this still leaves plenty of
opportunity
for beauty, it is an inherently less
dramatic structure,
as half-way through the movement, we
simply go
home, we don't have to find our way back.
Last movements, most often, were rondos in
which the main theme returns again and
again surrounded by contrasting episodes.
The standard form
of a rondo with "A" meaning the main theme,
is something like A-B-A-C-A-B-A.
This means that each time new material is
introduced, it
is immediately followed by a return of the
opening theme.
Now, these frequent repetitions of the
theme provide the composer with excellent
chances to embellish or embroider the
theme, often in a witty way.
But when the theme returns over and
over again, we don't have the same kind of
drama that we do in a sonata form,
where we spend the bulk of the movement
waiting for
the opening theme--and along with it, the
tonic--to return.
Whereas a great composer always makes a
sonata's development feel
like an adventure, and we listen, riveted,
to see how the
return will be managed, in a rondo, the
next appearance of
the A section always feels a bit like a
foregone conclusion.
So unsurprisingly, these last movements

very often have

a certain formality or even courtliness
about them.
There's more in them that we would be
inclined to
call old-fashioned than there is in the
first movements.
Once again, there are examples of second
and final movements
of sonatas in sonata form, but they are
not the rule.
And despite fantastic writing throughout
these
sonatas of Mozart and Haydn--writing of
surpassing sometimes almost religious
beauty and fantastic humor
sometimes--the drama of these pieces
almost invariably centers
on how the drama unfolding between the
tonic and
dominant will resolve itself, usually in
the first movement.
Now, there is a reason I've been beating
you over
the head with this business about first
movements in sonata form.
It's not
just that the form itself is so crucial
to understanding and experiencing
classical period music.
The other vital point is that in the time
of
Haydn and Mozart, the center of gravity of
not just
the sonata, but the string quartet, the
symphony, the piano
trio, is always in the first half of the
work.
Very often it's firmly placed at the front
of the work
in the first movement, but it is never at
the back.
Multi-movement classical period works
time and time again proceed from heavy to
light, or in some cases from dark to light.
The chamber and symphonic music of Haydn
and Mozart is among the greatest music
ever
written, but there is just a slight
tendency for their work's conclusions to
feel anticlimactic.
That statement is not really fair, because
ending
climatically was not a priority for these
composers.
They valued a sense
of proportion far more highly, a sense of
tension and then release or relief.
As an example, people in the 20th century
have often criticized Mozart for his G

minor
string quartet, which in its totality, is
one
of the most tragic works of the classical era.
It's been criticized because its final
movement, after
an operatic, almost morbid, introduction
is a lighthearted rondo.
Many people
feel that Mozart is almost apologizing for
the rest of the work in the last movement.
But that was the aesthetic of the time.
Obviously, this is a different situation,
but look at Don Giovanni.
For Mozart, concluding an opera at the
moment of greatest
drama with D minor and hellfire was simply
not possible.
Instead, we get D major and the comfort of
a moral.
Those are both minor-key examples,
but there is a shift away from intensity,
even over the
course of the works that begin in sunnier major keys.
And what I believe to be Mozart's greatest
piano sonata, the F major, K. 533, the first
movement is unprecedentally contrapuntal
and altogether boldly experimental.
The second movement, ones of the ones
which is
in sonata form, is one of his great slow
movements-which is saying something.
It's profoundly nostalgic, and
harmonically daring, at
times hovering uncertainly between major
and minor modes.
And yet, despite all of this, for the last
movement, he was content
to simply reappropriate a rondo that he
had previously published as a
free-standing work.
It's a movement of considerable charm but
decidedly less
significance of any kind than the first
two movements have.
Mozart, like Haydn, did not feel that his
works needed to build inexorably
towards a conclusion.
But Beethoven, from the very beginning of
his sonata-writing career, clearly
perceived this as, if not a shortcoming,
then at least a limitation.
And the story of the 32 Beethoven sonatas
is, to a great extent, the
story of him addressing this question in
a variety of imaginative and finally
astonishing ways.
As we will see in the subsequent weeks,
Beethoven

understood all aspect of the classical

model extremely well.
He internalized it, perfected it in his
early
works, and then bit by bit throughout his
life, chafed against its strictures,
rebelled against it
no matter how inspiring those strictures
could be.
And then ultimately, destroyed it.
By the time Beethoven is finished, he left
music a permanently altered art form.
The innovations he introduced were
probably the single most significant
factor
in shaping the remainder of the music of
the 19th century.
His personality and achievements were a
huge inspiration, but they were
also the most impossible problem for the
composers who followed him.
History and tradition were never ever able
to rein Beethoven in.
Given that this course has only five
lectures,
in a sense I'm sorry to have spent
one speaking so little about Beethoven.
But in addition to providing what I
believe
is necessary background, a bit of
knowledge of,
of the sonata form will it make possible
to listen to any of the 32 Beethoven
sonatas
and have an immediate sense of its shape
and
aims, whereas otherwise one would be
slightly swimming.
It's just like you can probably appreciate
a Shakespeare
play on some level no matter what your
background is.
But you will definitely
appreciate it more if you know something
of the world he lived in.
You will appreciate it more if you know
something of the world his characters
lived in.
And you will appreciate it more if you
have enough
command of the English language to not
just diagram a sentence
but to follow its rhythms, its cadence,
to know when
Shakespeare conforms to its norms and when
he's pulling at them.
Really, music is, above all other things,
a language.
And since
no one used that language more daringly

than Beethoven, the more of it you

speak, the more of it you feel, the more
you will find in his music.
Okay.
See you for the next lecture when, with
this background behind us,
we will begin to delve into the Beethoven
sonatas themselves, I promise.
Until next time.
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