Mozart Music Analysis

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, (1756-1791), was a creative composer of the Classical era. Wolfgang Mozart’s piano sonatas present a particularly neat picture. During the Classical Era, the type of piano which was the fortepiano was extremely different than today’s modern piano. That being said, the use of dynamics was crucial and affective in the classical period. I noticed that each of his sonatas has its own character, story line, dialogue, and meaning. In Mozart’s piano sonata in B flat major, K. 281- first movement, there is dialogue between the different dynamics and phrase structures that is heard in his sonata. With this sonata, Mozart unquestionably creates a change in mood and dialogue by adding a sense of dynamics, timbre, registers and musical phrasing to each thematic material of a musical section.

The piano sonata (K. 281), which was written in 1774, opens up with a tempo marking Allegro in B-flat major. The theme introduces an alluring act between the sixteenth triplets and 32nd notes. During Mozart’s time, playing the first eight bars on a fortepiano would have been a clear and translucent sound that would seem appropriate to create the beautiful elegance of the sonata. The first primary them is eight bars and is split up in between two phrases. The first phrase is short with triplets and has a diminutive cadence in m. 4.

In m. 5, Mozart uses his beginning motive idea again, but this time he sets the motive an octave lower with triplets. The second phrase of the eight bars also has a short cadence, but does not have a complete idea. He continues this phrase by expanding the motive development by adding non-harmonic tones that ends on the solfège do in m.10 and 12. To being the bridge of the exposition, Mozart uses a new ...

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...ar a clear distinction between the two dynamics on a fortepiano during a performance. In the recapitulation, Mozart changes the closing theme by setting the closing theme motive up a perfect fourth in m. 103. Then, he repeats the motive in m. 105 and lowers the pitch a prefect fourth from the original closing theme in the exposition.

Thus Mozart’s creative style was extraordinary. His writings show that he had a plan to tell a story from beginning to end. There was never a dull moment in any of Mozart’s sonata forms for piano. There was always an illustration of a particular setting that had dramatic emotions within each large section. Mozart does a great job of sticking to the guidelines of a sonata form. He managed to have different settings throughout each section that were distinguished by the melodic character and texture through instrumentation of the piano.