Sonatina in F, 1st Movement: Form & Artistry

Hello, and welcome back. I'm Joseph Hoffman, and in this lesson we're going to analyze the form of "Sonatina in F Major,"

maybe by Beethoven Anh. 5, No. 2, and we'll also talk about how to play it with maximum artistry.

Let's get started by checking out the score.

So let's first think about the form of this piece.

You're thinking about form of an entire piece. It's very helpful to know where the sections, the major sections, each begin and end.

So where does the first major section end in this piece? Can you find it?

The first major cadence is down here in measure 18.

A big clue for a section end is often a repeat sign. That's often the marking

of the end of a major section which in a piece like this, will repeat.

And another clue can be a cadence, and notice here in measure 17

Notice how this downbeat on 18 sounds like it could be the end of a piece.

Notice again,

that feeling of a rival here on that C, and then the cadence is a little bit obscured or blurred by this chromatic scale which is a transition to get us back to the start.

So again we have a cadence it's a little blurred, brings us back to the start. So we would call these first 18 measures the A section of this piece.

Now, inside the A section we have two main themes. We have this theme:

And then a parallel phrase with that same theme presented again just a step higher but we could call this our Theme 1,

and then I would call this:

that Theme 2,

starting here in the pickup to measure nine.

Now let's check out the next section.

The same as our A or different?

Well, we're using theme one but what happened?

Uh, we've changed theme one and introduced this E-flat which kind of it gives us a tonal shift. Starting to feel like we're more in the key of B-flat than the key of F.

Common in a B section to start doing some tonal shifts.

Now one question we might ask as we're going is,

is this piece in sonata allegro form?

In a previous lesson we've learned about sonata allegro form, and one thing we learned that the first theme in sonata allegro form

is presented in the original key of F major which is what we see here,

but the second theme is presented in the key of the dominant.

The dominant is the five,

which would be the key of C.

However, this theme is still in the key of F.

Although eventually we start

modulating to the key of C. We start to see these B naturals, but

it would be much more common in sonata allegro form to see this theme

in the key of C from the start, which isn't what we see. We're still seeing some B-flats along the way here.

So that's making me feel like maybe this isn't true sonata allegro form, but let's keep looking to find out.

So going on in the B section we see that we've had this tonal shift to B-flat major.

And that's facilitated by having these E-flats. Notice anytime we have an E in this section it's an E-flat, which is making us feel like.

Notice that B-flat major tonality.

But then we get another shift here.

This line feels like it's in G minor with all and G harmonic minor because of the F-sharps and the B-flats and the E-flats. That's all going to make it sound like G minor.

But then it keeps shifting. Then we get some F naturals, E naturals.

Starting here the tonality is going to feel very fluid going through different tonal centers.

And that's really common for the development section

in sonata allegro form. So again, is this an sonata allegro form?

This matches a very typical pattern for development section.

With all these tonal shifts playing around with some of the original themes.

But let's see what happens as we come out of the development.

So now here we're coming out. We can hear that we're kind of transitioning out of the development.

Back to something familiar. When our ears hear something very familiar that we heard back in the A section,

we call this a return to the A section, but what's wrong? This is not our theme one.

This has skipped directly to our theme two. Remember, theme one is:

but we don't see that. We skip

directly to theme two here.

It's like the composer is taking a shortcut back home for us.

And then as is often the case,

we have what I call a little coda. Remember, a coda is a special ending where a composer might introduce something brand new to help wrap things up.

So starting down here I'd call this our

coda because we could end the ...