Sonatina by Clementi, 2nd Movement: A Section: Right Hand

Hello and welcome back. I'm Joseph Hoffman, and today we'll be moving on to the second movement of the Clementi "Sonatina" we've been learning. Remember, each movement can feel like its very own piece with its own mood, tempo indication, and key. This will be like reading book two in a three-part book trilogy. Let's get started by checking out the score. Here's our score for the second movement. Let's check out our tempo indication. It's andante. Do you remember what andante means? Andante is our relaxed, medium, slow, peaceful tempo. Remember, our first movement was allegro, and that's almost always what you see for the first movement. In general we see fast, slow for the second movement, then fast again for the third movement. So an andante is what we would expect. We have treble and bass clef as expected. What's our time signature? 3/4. 3 beats in every measure with a quarter note equaling 1 beat. And I saved our key signature for last because we want to figure out what key we're in. Remember, every movement is like its own book in the trilogy so just because we're in the key of C in movement one, In movement two we could be in a completely different key. We have one flat. That's an important clue. Now we also need to check the last note or the last chord of the song or piece for our next clue. So here's the end of the second movement. can you tell me the name of the last note of the right hand. We're in treble staff so that's an F, and what's the last chord you see here? This is an arpeggio. Pause if you want to figure it out on your own, otherwise That is an F major arpeggio. So, we ended on an F with an F major arpeggio. We have one flat. What key are we in? We're in the key of F major. Remember, with one flat we could have been in the key of D minor. D minor and F major are relative so they use the same key signature, and that's why it's important to check the last note. That combined with the key signature will be a sure way to know what key we're in. Now, any other new symbols that you see today? You might notice this new term dolce. Maybe we've seen dolce before. I can't remember. Dolce is an Italian word that means sweetly. So anytime you see dolce, you're going to play the music very sweetly, tenderly. Like a lullaby. You know what legato means. I'm going to play smoothly. Here's another new one. This fancy cursive 'tr'. It's kind of cursive. It's definitely loopy. Whenever you see that 'tr' in music written like that over a note, that means trill. A trill is when you take two notes and play them back and forth quickly. This is a trill: So when you see 'tr' over a note, actually what you're going to do is start on the note above the note that you see. So, this note is what? We're in treble staff. So that's a G. We're going to actually start on an A, and go back and forth. A G A G. Back and forth: A G A G And that's a trill, and then this is called the exit from our trill. These two little teeny notes tell us how we're going to get out of the trill, and there if you look closely, you'll see it's an F G. So, musicians like to save time and so instead of writing out A G A G F G They just wrote trill, which tells you okay this G, instead of just playing that G I'm going to trill the G, which means actually play the note above G. A G A G F G, and then at full speed it will be: Doesn't that sound pretty? And that's called a trill. So we're getting pretty fancy now. We'll work more on that in a minute. The other new symbol that we might not have had before is this forzato. A forzato means to play this note extra loud. Just that one note with extra strength. It's essentially the same thing as an accent. Remember, you can write an accent as a little alligator mouth. Alligator mouth right over a note head or under a note head. It really means the same thing as an accent played extra strong on that note. Don't confuse an accent with a decrescendo. A decrescendo will extend more than one note. An accent only fits over a single note played extra loud. A decrescendo means something totally different. It means gradually get softer. I know they look similar, but totally different meanings. What's that you say? Some symbol I've been missing? Perhaps you notice this most interesting symbol of all, this three with this bracket over these eighth notes. What's this? This is a new kind of rhythm called a triplet. A triplet is when you take eighth notes and you squeeze three of them into 1 beat. You know that generally you can only fit two eighth notes into 1 beat, but with triplets you make them go a little bit faster so you can fit three of them in a beat. So before we would count eighth notes 1-& 2-& 3-&. Now we count them 1-&-a 2-&-a 3-&-a So you can hear they have to go a little bit faster. 1-&-a 2-&-a That's going to help the music sound like it's flowing. 1-&-a 2-&-a 3-&-a, 1-&-a 2-&-a 3-&-a. Can you count that with me? While I play? Go! 1-&-a 2-&-a 3-&-a, 1-&-a 2-&-a 3-&-a, 1-&-a 2-&-a 3-&-a, Isn't that beautiful? And that's the sound of triplets. 1-&-a 2-&-a 3-&-a Now, music printers are always looking for ways to save ink, save paper, right? That's wh ...