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View Article4 A summary
Now that you have worked through several extracts from Mozart's sonatas in quite a lot of detail, I hope that you agree that making reductions enables you to understand better the way that the harmony...
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3.7 Analytical notation
An analysis set out on several levels, such as that given in Example 18a–d, is one way of demonstrating some linear progressions and hidden patterns underlying the musical surface. This is rather...
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3.6 A second reduction: analytical levels
Next I want you to make another foreground reduction, in order to demonstrate how the sorts of analytical observations found at this level always lead on to considerations of issues at deeper levels of...
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3.5 Making a foreground reduction
Now I want you to make your own reduction of the melody and bass lines of bars 1–8 of the Sonata in C major, K545. You may wish first to read through the previous section again, so that you are clear...
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3.4.1 Arpeggiation
In addition to passing notes, neighbour notes and suspensions, there is one more method by which a chord can be prolonged. This is where notes which belong only to the very surface level of the music...
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3.4 The concept of prolongation
These three basic ways in which dissonant notes occur in music all share one notable feature. They make a note or a harmony extend over a longer period of time than just its bare statement. Two notes...
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3.3.3 Suspensions
Here a dissonance is created by delaying a fall to the main harmony note, so that the treble and bass are ‘out of step’ with one another. The dissonance in this case must be prepared and resolved...
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3.3.2 Neighbour notes
Here a consonant note is elaborated by a dissonant pitch lying immediately next to the main note. Usually, the neighbour note is placed above the main note, and returns to it (an ‘upper neighbour...
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3.3.1 Passing notes
Here, a dissonant pitch (P) is introduced between two different consonant pitches. The commonest situation is where the consonant notes are a third apart, and the dissonant passing note is placed...
View Article3.3 Categories of dissonance in tonal music
In tonal music, dissonances only occur in specific, controlled contexts. These hold true not just for Mozart but for virtually all western music between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. This...
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3.2 Simple reductive processes
Activity 5Return to Example 1 and consider bars 3–4 of Mozart's theme. Here we have an ascending line through a third (B, C, D). Each of the three notes in this line is elaborated by an upper...
View Article3.1 Introduction to the elements of voice-leading analysis
Now is the time to begin our detailed look at the process by which we analyse the voice leading of a passage of music. I have already mentioned the idea of a basic ‘skeleton’ which is embellished to...
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2.2 Listening for lines within the harmony
Now for an example taken from another first movement. This time the extract comes from the development section of a slightly earlier work, the Piano Sonata in C, K309. Here again, I want to demonstrate...
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2.1 Two examples
To approach this question, I want you to listen first to two examples. The first is the opening phrase from the beautiful and deceptively simple finale of Mozart's Piano Sonata in B flat, K333. The...
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1.4 Some introductory listening
I want you to begin by listening to five complete movements from Mozart's piano sonatas. This preliminary listening will give you a flavour of the style you will be examining. This unit will be...
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1.3 The origins of voice-leading analysis
I want to begin by putting this method of analysing music into its historical context. Although the basic concepts of voice leading have a long history, the system of analysis you will be starting to...
View Article1.2 Analysing harmony
The aim of this unit is to analyse the character of Mozart's harmony at a chord-by-chord or bar-by-bar level. This is what is called analysing the foreground, or musical surface, of the music. You may...
View Article1.1 Overview of Mozart's sonatas
Mozart wrote nineteen compositions with the title ‘Sonata’ for the fortepiano, works spanning from his teenage years (the Sonata in C, K279, was written at the age of fifteen) to two years before his...
View ArticleLearning outcomes
By the end of this unit you should:be familiar with an analytical methodology known as ‘voice-leading analysis’;be acquainted with five complete movements from Mozart's piano sonatas, and with brief...
View ArticleIntroduction
This unit is from our archive. It is an adapted extract from the course Studies in Music 1750–2000: Interpretation and Analysis (AA314) that is no longer in presentation, although other courses in this...
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