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Mark Evan Bonds, Ph.D.
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22
VIENNA
Salzburg
Innsbruck
AUSTRIA
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Symphony No. 40 in G Minor, K. 550 (first movement)
Listen for the repeated return of various themes over the course of this movement. Notice, too, the
sharp contrast between the character of the themes. The opening is quietly agitated, but within less
than a minute, we hear themes that are louder and brighter and still others that are softer and calmer.
Form
Listen for the contrast between key areas early in this movement. The change in keys coincides with
a change in mode: the opening theme is in the minor mode, the next main theme is in major. Which
sounds darker? Which sounds brighter? Which mode predominates in this movement?
Harmony
How would you characterize the themes of this movement? What makes them different from each
other?
Melody
M
ozart’s Symphony no. 40 in G Minor is one of a group of three symphonies
that he wrote in 1788, probably for a concert he organized himself, although
no record of the event survives. The symphony has four movements; we are
listening to the first.
Even without words, there is real drama in this music. Indeed, if we think of its various
themes as characters, this movement features all the essential elements of a good drama:
memorable personalities (melodies), conflict (the juxtaposition and transformation of those
melodies), and resolution (the restoration of these melodies in their more or less original
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form). The events of this musical drama unfold in the same kind of logical sequence that we
see in a three-act play presented on the stage:
• We meet the main character and the supporting characters (“Act 1”).
• We witness their interaction and transformation: they fall in and/or out of love, they fight,
they search or struggle for something (“Act 2”).
• We experience some kind of resolution in the end: it may be a happy or an unhappy ending,
or something in between, but we recognize it as an ending because all the strands of the plot
are resolved (“Act 3”).
How does Mozart present this drama in purely musical terms? He organizes the first
movement of this symphony around a musical structure known as sonata form, a form that
was new in the Classical Era and that allowed for the presentation, development, and resolution of multiple themes within a single movement. From roughly 1750 to the present day,
composers have written literally thousands of movements in sonata form, for it provides a
versatile framework for creating a drama without words.
Sonata Form
The three acts of a drama outlined previously correspond to the three parts of sonata
form:
Act 1: The exposition introduces us to—exposes us to—all the movement’s thematic
ideas. By the end of the exposition, we have met all the musical “characters.”
Act 2: The development is the middle part of a sonata-form movement, in which the
thematic ideas are most intensively developed, both thematically and harmonically. Themes
are taken apart, combined in different ways, and tried in different keys.
Act 3: The recapitulation comes in the last third of the movement. The themes we heard
in the exposition are recapped. This is the resolution of all we have heard before.
Sonata form emerged around the middle of the eighteenth century as an expansion of a
form already well established, rounded binary form (see p. 000). Rounded binary form consists of two sections in which the opening idea and the tonic key return simultaneously about
a third of the way through the movement. (We saw this structure in the minuet of Haydn’s
Symphony no. 102, discussed in chapter 21.) In sonata form, two important new elements are
added:
1. The first section—the exposition—always modulates, presenting themes in a new, contrasting key area.
2. The theme(s) presented in the new key area in the exposition are repeated in the recapitulation in the tonic—that is, in the original key of the movement. This is what helps give
a sense of resolution to any sonata-form movement.
Sonata form thus consists of three sections—exposition, development, and recapitulation—
that are superimposed on a binary form. The exposition takes up the whole of the first binary
section. The development and recapitulation both fall within the second binary section.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
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The Classical Era
Almost by definition, the second binary section is longer than the first, because it develops the
themes and recapitulates them. Graphically, this form can be represented as follows:
Sonata Form
Exposition
Development
Recapitulation
Opening
theme(s) in tonic
Theme(s) in
new key area
Development of
themes from
the exposition
Return of opening
theme(s) in tonic
Return of theme(s)
from new key area,
but now in tonic
Tonic
New key area
Unstable key area(s)
Tonic again
Still tonic
Second binary section
First binary section
Tonic key area
New key area in exposition
Unstable key area(s) in development
In practice, no two sonata-form movements are entirely alike. Sonata form is a broad and
flexible scheme, and composers were extremely adept at manipulating it. There are, however,
several predictable features that a listener can recognize:
• There is always a modulation from a primary to a secondary key area in the exposition.
• The first binary section is always repeated; the second binary section may or may not be
repeated.
• There is always a departure from these harmonic areas in the development.
• The development moves through various keys and rarely settles on any one of them for
very long. This section features bits and pieces of one or more earlier themes, transformed
and combined in different ways.
• There is always a return to the primary key area in the recapitulation, and it almost always
coincides with the return to the opening idea in its original form. This is the onset of the
recapitulation, and it is often a dramatic moment in a sonata-form movement. After the
unpredictability and instability of the development, we are now finally back on familiar
ground (the opening idea, in the tonic).
• The sequence of themes in the recapitulation usually follows the sequence of themes as presented in the exposition.
• The recapitulation always stays in the tonic throughout.
The first movement of Mozart’s Symphony no. 40 in G Minor follows the conventions of
sonata form fairly closely:
• It opens with an exposition that modulates from the tonic of G Minor to the contrasting key
area of B major. The contrast of mode between the minor mode (the tonic) and the major
mode (the new key area) helps make the contrast between the two key areas more audible.
• The development is quite unstable harmonically, and it features an intense manipulation of
the movement’s opening theme.
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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
• The onset of the recapitulation provides a strong and dramatic sense of return: the music
comes back to the tonic, and the opening theme reappears more or less in its original
guise.
• Later in the recapitulation, what had been heard outside the tonic in the exposition is now
presented in the tonic: again, the contrast of mode (B major in the exposition, G minor in
the recapitulation) makes the resolution easier to hear. What we heard in B major in the
exposition now returns in G Minor, and the difference is striking.
The movement concludes with a brief coda. “Coda” is the Italian word for “tail,” and it
brings the movement to a close after the recapitulation. Codas stand outside of the sonataform structure itself and may or may not be present in a sonata-form movement.
Harmony: Minor to Major
To sustain a musical argument across such a long span of time, Mozart uses different
key areas to create variety. Harmony also plays an important role in the sonata-form structure,
as we have seen. The modulation in this movement from the tonic to the new key area is particularly clear because it also coincides with a change in mode. The first key area is G minor;
the mood is dark and brooding. The new key area is B major; here, the music sounds brighter
and more optimistic. But when the themes presented in this new key area return in the recapitulation, they are played in G Minor (the tonic), and now they, too, sound dark and brooding. It is as if all the melodies—all the “characters”—have finally come under the spell of the
tonic, thereby creating a sense of resolution and closure.
Contrasting Principal Melodies
The dramatic interest of this movement depends not just on forms and harmonies
but also on the compelling and contrasting nature of the principal melodies. The music
begins with an accompanimental figure in the low strings that sets both a mood (quietly
agitated) and a mode (minor). When the first theme enters in the violin soon after, we hear
many repetitions of a brief downward step. The melodic line sounds almost like a series of
short sighs.
Antecedent
Antecedent
Antecedent
Consequent
Antecedent
“Sighing” figure
Violin 1
œ œ œ œ œœ
œœ
œ œ œ #œ œ œ
œ
œ
œ
œ
œ
b
œ
œ
œ
œ
œ
œ
œ
œ
œ
œ
œ
œ
œ
œ
œ
œ
œ
œ
œ
œ
œ
œœŒ
Œ
Œ
Œ
&b C ӌ
p
0:00
0:01
0:03
0:06
0:08
etc.
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The Classical Era
The second principal theme, by contrast, consists of much longer notes, and the agitated
accompanimental figure is no longer present. The effect is a mood that is much calmer.
Antecedent
Violins
b
&b C
˙.
Clarinets & bassoons
nœ b˙ .
œœœœ
Violins
œ œ œ œ œ . œJ œ Œ
0:49
Longer notes
Consequent
&b
b ˙ . #œ nœ nœ bœ œ œ ˙
œ œ
0:54
Cadence on tonic of new key area (Bb)
Both themes are constructed around a series of antecedent (opening) and consequent
(closing) phrases. But the opening theme (first example, shown previously, Theme 1 in the
Listening Guide) stretches out over a much longer span of time, with multiple antecedent
phrases. Even though it establishes the tonic key, its restlessness gives it a sense of constant
forward motion. The first theme in the new key area, by contrast (second example, shown previously; Theme 3 in the Listening Guide), moves in a slower rhythm and is much more regular and compact.
Throughout this movement, Mozart dismantles and puts back together these two principal melodies, particularly the opening theme and portion of a transitional theme that connects
the two (Theme 2 in the Listening Guide). He varies them in multiple ways by presenting
them in different keys and by giving them to different instruments or combinations of instruments. In this way, even though Mozart adheres to the conventions of sonata form, he manipulates its content in surprising and unusual ways.
Now listen to this movement again, following the Listening Guide.
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CHAPTER 22
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
CULTURAL CONTEXT
The Drama of Sonata Form
If sonata form can be thought of as a drama in three acts, perhaps there are dramas that can be thought of in terms of sonata
form. The movie version of The Wizard of Oz, for example,
bears striking parallels. Think of the characters as themes and
the places where the action occurs as the key areas. The blackand-white scenes at the beginning and end of the movie function as the exposition and recapitulation, respectively. In the
opening section—before Dorothy is transported to Oz—we
meet all the main characters of the story, in two different
places: first at home, and then later as Dorothy is running away
from home. In the “development”—the bulk of the movie, in
color, which takes us through many different places, from
Munchkinland, along the Yellow Brick Road, to Oz itself—those
same characters are transformed: Miss Gulch becomes the
Wicked Witch of the West, the farmhands become the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodsman, and the Lion, and Professor Marvel
becomes the Wizard of Oz. When Dorothy returns to Kansas
(and the movie returns to black-and-white), all the characters of
the exposition (minus Miss Gulch) reappear in their original
guises. Even Professor Marvel, whom Dorothy had met away
from home, drops by her house to see how she is doing. He is
the same person, but now he is in a different place, in Dorothy‘s
home—in musical terms, her tonic key. It is a satisfying conclusion to the whole, in which the characters have all covered a
great deal of ground but all return home in the end. All this is
laid out in the table here.
䉱 Dorothy wakes up in her room toward the end of The Wizard of
Oz. The characters from the black-and-white “exposition” (Professor Marvel and the three farmhands) who were transformed in the
color “development” (into the Wizard of Oz, the Scarecrow, the
Tin Woodsman, and the Cowardly Lion) are now reunited in the
black-and-white “recapitulation” in their original form on
Dorothy‘s home ground (the tonic or “home key” of the film).
MGM/The Kobal Collection/Picture Desk
Sonata Form Section
Musical Drama
The Wizard of Oz
Exposition
The themes of the movement are “exposed”
to us.
Theme(s) presented in the tonic, the “home”
key.
➞ modulates to
A new theme or themes are presented in a
key area that is not the tonic, away from the
“home” key.
In the opening black-and-white section, we meet
all the major characters of the story.
Dorothy at home on her farm; we meet the
farmhands and the dreaded Miss Gulch.
➞ runs away from home
Away from home, Dorothy meets a new character,
Professor Marvel.
Development
Harmonically unstable. Themes are transformed so that they are different from how
we first heard them, yet recognizably the
same.
The film turns to color, and all the characters are
transformed: Miss Gulch has become the Wicked
Witch of the West; the farmhands are now the
Scarecrow, the Tin Woodsman, and the Lion; and
Professor Marvel has turned into the Wizard of Oz.
Recapitulation
Return to the “home” key of the tonic. All
themes heard in the exposition are now
presented in the tonic.
Dorothy returns to Kansas and the film returns to
black-and-white. The characters of the opening
scene (even Professor Marvel, whom Dorothy had
met away from home) all reappear in their original
form and visit at her bedside.
Tonic
➞ modulates to
Secondary key area
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CD XX •
Track XX
GO TO
for the Automated Listening Guide
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Symphony no. 40 in G Minor, K. 550 (first movement)
Time
0:00
Sonata Form Section
Exposition
Melody
1 ⫽ “Sighing” theme, repeated and then interrupted by 2
0:31
2 ⫽ Transitional theme, sudden shift in dynamics (loud) and mode (major)
0:49
3 ⫽ Calm theme, divided between strings and winds.
1:22
4 ⫽ Very similar to opening theme, but now in the new key area
and thus conveying a different mood.
1:55
Exposition Repeat
1 ⫽ “Sighing” theme.
2:26
2 ⫽ Transitional theme.
2:45
3 ⫽ Calm theme.
3:19
4 ⫽ Similar to opening theme, but in the new key area.
3:55
Development
1 ⫽ Opening theme, fragmented and harmonically unstable.
4:07
1 ⫽ Fragment of opening theme; highly contrapuntal passage,
combining 1 with the rapid upward-moving scale-like figure from
2. Winds, high strings, and low strings present different ideas
simultaneously.
4:33
1 ⫽ Opening theme fragmented and transformed still further.
Beginning of a long passage leading back to the recapitulation.
5:04
Recapitulation
1 ⫽ Return of the opening theme in the tonic key, with slight
alterations in the orchestration (notice the added bassoon part here).
5:34
2 ⫽ Transitional theme, but altered here in the recapitulation so as not to
modulate.
6:14
3 ⫽ Same as theme 3 in exposition, but now in tonic (G minor).
6.53
4 ⫽ Same as theme 4 in exposition, but now in the tonic (G minor).
7:17
Coda
1 ⫽ Sudden intensification, return of opening theme in tonic, with a full
cadence to end the movement.
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Harmony:
Key Area
Tonic (G minor)
Modulating to
New key area (B major)
Tonic (G minor)
Modulating to
New key area (B major)
I don’t hear the modulations within the sonata form.
Is that a problem?
As noted previously (p. 000), everyone hears differently, but digital
technology makes it easier to improve your ability to perceive changes
in key. For this particular movement, try listening up to the point just
before the recapitulation begins (at 5:04), then hit the button
that takes you back to the very beginning of the entire
movement and listen through the end of the exposition.
What you will have heard, in effect, is a recapitulation that
modulates and does not end in the tonic; the effect is quite
different from the actual recapitulation, which stays in the
tonic throughout.
Unstable: moves through many different key areas, avoids tonic
What are some other
examples of modulation?
Modulation—moving from one key to
another—is a very common device in
music. Here are some other examples that
may already be familiar to you, even if you’ve never thought about
them in these terms:
Tonic (G minor)
• Hymns with many stanzas. Organists will often modulate up a step for
the last stanza to give the music renewed freshness.
• The “Final Jeopardy” theme song of the well-known game show.
Listen carefully next time you watch this show. The theme is stated
once in the tonic; the second time around, it is presented in
a new key.
• Most popular songs. Almost every popular
song that lasts more than a couple of
minutes will modulate for the
sake of variety, usually somewhere near the middle of the song.
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The Classical Era
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–91)
THE COMPOSER AS CHAMELEON
ozart once observed that he could “write in any
style I choose.” This wasn’t bragging: it was
simply the truth. This extraordinary flexibility
was due to Mozart‘s innate genius and his education.
His father, Leopold Mozart, a composer of some
renown, quickly recognized the musical talent of his
young son and took him on a number of extended journeys throughout Europe: to Italy, France, Germany, the
Netherlands, and England. At each stop, the Mozarts
would meet the local composers, perform in public, and
absorb different styles of composition and performance.
M
The Mozart family, ca. 1780. Leopold Mozart (right) was an
accomplished violinist and a composer; Nannerl, the composer’s sister, excelled as a keyboard player. Mozart’s mother,
whose portrait hangs on the wall, had died a few years earlier.
䉱
MOZART’S TRAVELS
Berlin: 1 trip
1789
London
1764–65
England: 1 trip
1764–65
Berlin 1789
The Hague
1765–66
Frankfurt
1763,1790
Prague: 4 trips
1787 (2x)
1789
1791
Prague
1787
Paris
Paris: 3 trips
1763–64
1766
1778
N
Dijon
1766
Lyons
1766
Milan 1770,
1772–73
Verona 1769
Italy: 3 trips
1769–71
1771
1772–73
Vienna
Salzburg
(resides 1781–91)
(resides 1756–81)
Venice 1770
Bologna
Florence
Rome 1770
Naples
Johann Nepomuk della Croce, The Mozart Family (1780-81). Oil on
canvas. 140 x 168 c,. Mozart House, Salzburg, Austria–Erich
Lessing/Art Resource, NY
Mozart could be eccentric in his behavior, and he
refused to play along in the world of Viennese musical
politics. He seldom had anything good to say about
contemporary composers (Haydn was an exception),
and it must have been painful for him to see court
appointments go to lesser composers like Antonio
Salieri. Although fictionalized to some degree, Peter
Shaffer‘s play Amadeus (1980) brilliantly captures the
sense of mutual frustration between the competent
Salieri and the genius Mozart.
PLAYLIST: MOZART
Like many child stars today, Mozart had difficulty in
making the transition to adulthood. He found his native
Salzburg increasingly provincial, but a series of job
searches across Europe proved fruitless. Against his father‘s wishes, he left Salzburg in 1781 for Vienna without steady employment. He hoped to land a position at
the imperial court there but was again unsuccessful. In
the meantime, he supported himself and his new wife,
Constanze, by giving public performances on the piano,
selling his published compositions, and giving lessons
in piano and composition. He did fairly well for a time
but for reasons that remain obscure—the fickleness of
Viennese tastes, hard economic times, or perhaps compulsive gambling—he was in serious debt by the early
1790s and had to borrow money from friends. He died at
the age of 35, just when his popularity (and income)
seemed to be on the rise again.
Mass in C Minor, K. 427. Unfinished, but a magnificent
setting for soloists, chorus, and orchestra, with unusually demanding parts for the vocal soloists.
A Musical Joke (Ein musikalischer Spaß), K. 522. A
chamber work for string quartet and two horns, this
piece is full of intentional mistakes and pokes fun at
bad composers.
A Little Serenade (Eine kleine Nachtmusik), K. 525. A
suite for strings, among Mozart‘s most popular works.
String Quintet in G Minor, K. 516. Similar in mood to
the Symphony in G Minor (the same key), this work is
scored for string quartet plus an additional viola.
Requiem, K. 626. Mozart‘s last work, a funeral Mass commissioned by a mysterious stranger, a count (not Salieri!)
who later tried to pass it off as his own composition.
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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
CULTURAL CONTEXT
Mozart‘s Sister
Maria Anna (“Nannerl”) Mozart (1751–1829) was as much a child prodigy on
the keyboard as her younger brother. A notice in a German newspaper of the
time described her as “a young girl of eleven” who “played with the greatest
clarity and an effortlessness scarcely to be believed” the “most difficult
sonatas and concertos of the great masters on the harpsichord or on the
piano, all with the greatest taste.” Their father, Leopold, took both children
on concert tours across Europe, and gave her, not Wolfgang, top billing when
the family visited London in 1765.
But for reasons that remain unclear, Nannerl eventually stopped traveling with her father and brother. She did not accompany them on two extended
tours of Italy in the late 1760s and early 1770s. This may have been by her
own choice, her father‘s choice, or some combination of the two. In any case,
Leopold seems to have made a conscious decision to invest his primary
energies in the promotion of Wolfgang‘s career, affording him extensive
training in composition as well as performance. All that survives of Nannerl’s
compositions are a few brief exercises. Professional outlets for women composers were virtually nonexistent in that place and time.
On the other hand, women could and did enjoy successful careers as
performers, especially in Vienna. Wolfgang tried to persuade his sister to join
him there in 1781: “Believe me, you could earn a great deal of money in
Vienna . . . by playing at private concerts and by giving piano lessons. You
would be very much in demand—and you would be well paid.” Nannerl
chose not to pursue a career as a performer, however. Her father arranged
for her to marry a baron in 1784, and she bore three children by him—one of
whom she named Wolfgang—but she apparently did not perform in public
again. After her husband died in 1821, Nannerl returned to Salzburg and
gave piano lessons for the rest of her life.
䉱 A portrait of Maria Anna (“Nannerl”) Mozart.
Notice her unusually large hands, which
undoubtedly served her well as a pianist.
Dagli Orti (A)/Picture Desk, Inc./Kobal Collection
EXPAND YOUR PLAYLIST
Mozart’s Symphonies
Mozart, like Haydn, seems to have relished the challenge of writing for a large ensemble. Here are some of his better-known symphonies:
Symphony no. 1 in E Major, K. 16. A small-scale work, but nevertheless an impressive accomplishment for an eight-year-old
composer.
Symphony no. 25 in G Minor, K. 185. Known as the “Little”
G-Minor symphony, this work is featured prominently in Milos
Forman‘s film version of Peter Schafer‘s play Amadeus.
Symphony no. 38 in D Major, K. 504. Known as the “Prague” symphony because of its popularity there during Mozart‘s lifetime.
The first movement opens with an extended slow introduction,
and the symphony lacks a minuet movement, unlike Mozart‘s
other late symphonies.
Symphony no. 41 in C Major, K. 551. Nicknamed the “Jupiter”
symphony sometime after Mozart‘s death because of its size and
exuberant nature. The finale is a remarkable synthesis of fugue
and sonata form.
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