What is this? An Italian lesson? Well, maybe just a little. Da Capo is Italian and means "From the beginning." In music, it means going back to the beginning and repeating the previous material.
So this is, in essence, a REBOOT diary, repeating the lesson of the very first diary written in the Thursday Classical Music series. Next week, we begin the Beethoven symphonies, starting with the famous Fifth Symphony (Da da da DAHHH!), and I thought rather than leave people totally clueless about what we were talking about, I'd take one more bite at the big nasty apple called Sonata-allegro form.
Now, usually, they teach what Sonata-allegro is in a music class by using Beethoven's Symphony #5 as the example. For reasons of personal aesthetics, I refuse to do that. Instead, we'll use three other fun examples, by Prokofiev, Grieg, and Stravinsky, to make the same point. And, in the process of explaining this, we'll also go meta-meta and talk about I Love Lucy, cheap romantic comedies, and dramatic narrative theory.
Tell me which Lucy episode has this in it:
ETHEL: Oh, Lucy! Are you sure you want to do this? What will Fred and Ricky say?
LUCY: Oh, relax, Ethel! What they don't know won't hurt them. Besides, what could possibly go wrong?
The answer: All of them. After that comes the commercial, then whatever, then "Lucy, you gotta lotta splainin' to do!"
Give me a chance, and I'll show you the similarities between I Love Lucy, cheap romantic comedies, and Sonata-allegro form.
But first some more Italian lessons.
A sonata is just about anything at all. A symphony is a sonata is a quartet is a concerto, the main difference between them being who is performing. A symphony, for example is performed by an orchestra, while a quartet is performed by four string players in wobbly chairs. These things usually have about four separate, distinct movements, like a four course meal.
Since the tempo of the music, especially classical music, is usually labeled at the top in Italian for the musicians, the first movement is often labeled Allegro, which is Italian for fast. So when we talk about Sonata-allegro form, we're talking about a specific type of musical form, almost always used for the first movements of symphonies, quartets, etc. And for a whole boatload of other musical items as well that aren't symphonies, quartets, etc., like overtures and tone poems. Etc. It's a specific musical form, and it is so all over the place that you can't avoid it.
A great (paraphrased) quote by modern composer Penderecki:
In fact, Penderecki has stated, without any hint of irony, that sonata allegro form is the only way forward for contemporary composers, and were it not for the presence of a few (now scrupulously marshalled) harmonic clusters in the later works, it would almost sound as if modernism had never happened. The music firmly posits itself in a tradition stretching from Brahms through Bruckner, Mahler, Wagner and Sibelius to Shostakovich, and now to Penderecki. So what happened?
Penderecki? The guy who composed Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima? This Penderecki??
Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima
Threnody was one of the most important pieces of avant-garde classical music of the last half of the twentieth century. You may remember hearing parts of it in The Shining and The Children of Men. I'm pretty sure that clip above isn't Sonata-allegro. And yet Penderecki is on the Sonata-allegro form bandwagon. In the tradition of Mozart and Beethoven. Sonata-allegro: It's not just your old man's music! We'll hear three simpler examples of the form today
I enjoy breaking down Sonata-allegro movements for you. Sometimes it seems that's all I ever do, here. But you don't need me for that. Most of you, by now, remember my dumb outline-form graphic that I made to explain Sonata-allegro form. I'm going to skip that and try explaining it another way.
Boy meets girl. Boy loses girl. Boy gets girl back.
That's Sonata-allegro form. It just happens to also be the format of a gazillion crappy romantic comedies. Do you think they are so similar by accident? It's not just laziness by the screenwriters. There's a formula to these movies, things that are expected, and no matter how many times they have seen it before, if you leave these familiar things out, people don't feel like they got their money's worth.
For instance, every romantic comedy has a scene like this:
BEST FRIEND: You fool! Don't you realize she's only leaving on that plane because she loves you!
BOY: [Slaps head.] Oh my God! You're right! And when I slapped my head just now, I realized, I really DO love her and I'm ready to commit! Taxi! Taxi! Get me to the airport in time to stop her from leaving!
One might wonder how many of these stories have been ruined by the invention of the cell phone.
So now we have the race to the airport. We always have the race to the airport. Or it could be a train station and he takes a hot air balloon, but the principle remains the same, right? Of course, the race to the airport is an obligatory comedy skit of its own. Everybody in the audience knows it will have a happy ending because they've seen the same kind of movie a million times and that's how it always ends, but they willingly suspend that certain knowledge.
In fact, depending on how much you like romantic comedies (or dramas), this could be the best part of the flick for you. Or not. When I watched Notting Hill, I was already getting sick of the characters, so when Hugh Grant finally hailed "the taxi," I groaned and walked out. After all, there is good use of form and bad use of form.
We've just gone meta, haven't we? We have risen above any specific romantic comedy and talked about an element in the basic form common to them all. Did anybody ever point out to you what a stock tool the hailing of the taxi is, like I just did? Nope. But you already kind of knew it, because you've grown up with and become accustomed to such things. There are a lot of things that you already know the form for because of basic cultural exposure.
But a Yamato Indian who spent his whole life in the Amazon rain forest wouldn't know any of this, would he?
These Amazon rain forest natives do not understand romantic comedies.
Imagine trying to explain a romantic comedy to such a person. For instance, you might have to explain what an airport is, what a taxi is. Even what romantic love is, which is a western concept that arose in medieval times. Quite a difficult task. Okay, but let's suppose for a moment he knows enough about how stuff work, like taxis and airports and engagement rings and marriage licenses, etc, but he's never seen a romantic comedy before. It would be a much more entertaining experience for him, but probably baffling. He doesn't know the form. He doesn't have that innate cultural knowledge that the whole film is based on Boy meets Girl; Boy loses Girl; Boy gets Girl back; hilarity ensues. Maybe if he watches it many times, and some of other romantic comedies, it will all click.
We're like that Yamato Indian. Imagine what it was like to live in Vienna, two hundred years ago. You couldn't walk to the pastry shop without passing destitute violinists on every street corner playing a Sonata-allegro movement on beat-up violins. To somebody living back then, Sonata-allegro form was as obvious as Boy meets Girl or "Lucy, you gotta lotta 'splainin!"
I had a girlfriend whose whole family was orchestra musicians. She told me that when she was a kid, for summer camp, she went to Conducting Camp. What's that? I'd never heard of it. Well, she got to conduct Beethoven's Fifth, the Allegro movement. How cool! All I got to do at summer camp when I was a kid was build a teepee and collect rocks. I was so jealous.
I told her one time that I liked Mozart, but Mozart didn't come naturally to me. That when I heard a Mozart piece that was new to me, I had to listen to it a few times to get it. She was very surprised; that made no sense to her! Mozart was intuitively obvious. But then, she grew up immersed in it, and I didn't. I could eventually hear the music if exposed to it enough times.
Boy meets girl, etc. is a classic form. We've already gone meta on romantic comedies, so now, let's go the extra step of going meta on the meta!
Freytag's dramatic structure pyramid.
Freytag's analysis
According to Freytag, a drama is divided into five parts, or acts,[5] which some refer to as a dramatic arc: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and dénouement.
To put Freytag more simply, everything is Boy meets Girl, etc. If you ever took creative writing, those terms in the blockquote could be familiar to you. They also have much in common with Sonata-allegro form, so, really, we're going meta on the meta on the meta here. We went meta on romantic comedies, then meta on the basic form of all literary drama, and now, meta on narrative in ALL media!
How cool that I get to write diaries like this.
Let's break down romantic comedies, using Freytag. First, we have the exposition. Here's the Boy! Here's the Girl! A situation is created which is static but unresolved. She's attracted to him, he's attracted to her, but they despise each other because of whatever. Maybe she's a pro-life abortion clinic bomber and he's an abortion provider, for instance. Oh, how will they ever hook up?
Now we have the Rising Action, something dynamic that changes the static situation. For instance, she plots to disguise herself, infiltrate the clinic, and blow it up really good. Hilarity ensues as they meet and exchange witty banter and double entendres in the clinic. For instance, "Is that a dead fetus in your pocket or are you just happy to meet me?" It really is a dead fetus. Soon she's ready to blow everything up. She has set the timer, got out of the building, is calling up her friends to brag and... OH NO! The cute doctor is working late to help abort more fetuses.
Now we have the Climax. She saves the doctor, Instead of thanking her for not killing innocent people, he calls her a psycho murdering bitch that belongs behind bars.
Falling Action. She cries on her best friend's shoulder and heads for the airport with the sniveling co-conspirator that wants to marry her, although she doesn't really feel the same way about him... And the rest we have already covered. You can change a lot of things around, but that's basically it.
Now let's apply all this to music.
A Sonata-allegro form movement consists of Exposition, Development, and then Recapitulation. Exposition is the presentation of the main themes, or melodies, if you prefer, that make up the basic working material of the movement. Development is a musical free fantasy based on those themes. The plot thickens, dramatic things happen, things get loud then soft then oh god, it's really loud now, as the music works its way towards a climax. And then we have Recapitulation, which is the repeat of the original melodies of the Exposition, but changed somehow to be more resolved, as if there was a lesson learned.
There is a great deal of wiggle room for how and what happens within that format, but that's basically it. However, there are a number of other details that you probably need to know and expect, just like a Yamato Indian needs to know what a taxi is.
If you grew up in Vienna, if you were that guy walking to the pastry shop, nobody would have told you this, but you would already know it in your bones from your cultural exposure that Exposition sections have their own format. They often have a short attention-grabbing Introduction. (In Beethoven's Fifth, that's Da da da DAHHH!) Then the first theme, or group of themes begin. After some twist in the music, some audible seam that works as a separator, the second theme begins, one that's contrasting, very different in character.
These two themes are sometimes called the male and female themes. I'm sure nobody anticipated my Boy meets Girl analogy when they called it that, but hey, it does come in handy. The second theme is usually the more lyrical, slower, softer, more catchy of the two themes.
After the second theme, we have something to end the exposition and say, "That's the end of that part! End of First Act, beginning of Second Act!" We call this the Codetta, Italian for short tail.
So now let me haul out my graphic that I made many moons ago to keep from explaining this every time.
Dumbo's handy Sonata-allegro form graphic so he doesn't have to type this all the time.
When you lay it all out there like that, it lacks a certain romance. Well, get over it. This isn't the music itself, but the AAA road map to the music. If you get lost, if you don't understand it, if you're a Yamato Indian, like me, this is useful. If you hear a beautiful piece of music somewhere, if you're intrigued by it, if you can pick out parts that you like, but the rest of it kind of swamps you and you feel dumb and like you're missing the whole story, this outline is your guide. Sonata-allegro movements follow a well-worn time-tested path, just like any cheap piece of shit romantic comedy.
Let's put it all together with an example now. I'm not going to analyze these examples to death with color commentary, just break them down a little.
Prokofiev Symphony #1, first movement, Allegro, St. Petersburg Symphony Orchestra, Silvia Tabor.
This one is so short and crystal clear, it's perfect for our purposes. And it is a fucking perfect performance. Click through and give the woman conductor a Like click if you can.
1. No intro
2. Exposition
a. First theme (0:00)
b. Second theme (1:05)
c. Codetta (about 1:39)
3. Repeat of exposition (not done here)
4. Development (1:53)
5. Recapitulation
a. First theme again (3:02)
b. Second theme again (3:33)
6. Coda (4:00)
Do you notice how the second theme is a little sweeter, softer, more lyrical than the first theme?
Now, let's try an example of some harder music, but still, one that adheres very strictly and cleanly to the form.
Stravinsky Violin Concerto, Allegro movement, Gil Shaham violin and the NPR Symphony Orchestra
There is a voice over narrator introducing the violinist. Skipping ahead to the music...
1. Intro (0:24)
2. Exposition
a. First theme (0:29)
b. Second theme (1:09)
c. Codetta (About 2:07...)
3. Repeat of Exposition (not done here)
4. Development (2:18)
5. Recapitulation
a. First theme again (4:41)
b. Second theme again (5:08)
6. Coda (5:37)
I wanted another short one, but my short examples turned out to be longer than I thought. So why not, for my last example, go straight to hell with the Grieg Piano Concerto first movement? The first example was Prokofiev, a modern composer, satirizing Mozart. The second was 20th century neoclassical. This one will be from the heart of pure Romanticism.
Grieg's Piano Concerto in A minor, First movement Allegro, Sviatoslov Richter, Orchestre National de l' Opera de Monte Carlo
1. Intro (0:00)
2. Exposition
a. First theme (0:28)
b. Second theme (2:31) (and it's a real beauty)
c. Codetta (3:56)
3. Repeat of Exposition (not done here)
4. Development (4:16)
5. Recapitulation
a. First theme again (5:50)
b. Second theme again (7:15)
6. Coda (8:38) (with a VERY long cadenza)
I'm glad to get this out of the way before we start Beethoven, because Beethoven's music is VERY MUCH Sonata-allegro form and all the twisty quirky things he was able to do with it. Beethoven was, more than any other composer before or after, an architect, a builder of great musical cathedrals. Stepping outside the form and going meta will be necessary, occasionally, in order to get the full picture of what he is doing.
NEXT WEEK: We'll cover the first half of Beethoven's Symphony #5 in C minor. I'm going to break it up in two parts so we can cover the whole thing, not just the Da da da DAAHH. And I'm going to work hard to find interesting things to say about it that haven't been said. Whew.
Also, on Monday, be sure to check out ProudtobeLiberal's Monday Music series, which will be about modern composer William Walton.