The Mechanical Doll: Form & Artistry

Hello and welcome back. I'm Joseph Hoffman, and in this lesson we're going to analyze the form of Zavodnayakukla aka "The Mechanical Doll" by Dimitri Shostakovich. We'll also talk about how to play it with maximum artistry and flair. Let's come to the piano to get started. Remember, as I've mentioned before you can buy the sheet music using the link below. Now today we're going to take this piece apart and really try to understand what's happening. First let's mark all the major sections. So you'll need a pencil or colored pencils, markers, highlighters, whatever you want to use to mark in your score. I'd like you to find the major sections for this piece and label them in your music. Find the A section, mark that with a big capital A inside a box. Find the B section, mark where that begins. And then do we return to the A section? Is there a C section, is there, what comes next. Find, and my clue is there are three major sections for this piece. Mark them all and then we'll discuss. All right, we begin with the A section always in music. So, you might mark that over measure one. Capital A in a box, and then the B section begins in measure seventeen. So mark that with a big capital B inside a box if you haven't already. How do we know that's the start of the B section? Well, a section ends when we feel a strong cadence, and in measure 15. See how that almost feels like it could be an ending? It's not the ending of the piece, but it's the end of the A section. Composers give us little clues notes that sound final. It kind of comes to rest, and that's called a cadence. So we have that cadence in measure 16 and then something new happens, and the composer introduces kind of a new theme, and that's a clue that we've begun a new section when we start something new. And then the final section begins down here in measure 30. We would call this another A section because it sounds very similar. It's the same melody although now the melody's in the left hand. So we might mark it A' because it's not an exact repetition of our first A. There's some variation. The left hand has the melody now, and then as we get towards the end of this section, We have some some new material that we didn't have before. And so that's why we would mark this A'. It's the A section again, but varied. So the overall form is A B A', which we could call ternary form. Remember, ternary form is a three-part form that goes A B A. Now let's hunt for the various tonal centers that Shostakovich goes through. We've talked about how Shostakovich likes to change tonal centers in his pieces. We start off in B minor here in measure one. So will you mark that in your music with a capital B little m for B minor. And then where's the next tonal shift? I think it's here in measure 11 where we have an A major tonal center. So we can mark that with a capital A. Now on your own can you go through and mark all the other tonal shifts in your score, and then press play and we'll check them out together. In measure 13, I feel like we go to B-flat major. You might think F at first right because it looks like the F major pentascale, but if you keep going because of that E-flat. It feels more like B-flat major to me, and then, I think we go back to B minor just for two measures, and then suddenly we're in G major now. G major, but then maybe G minor, so G major slash G minor maybe. And then G-sharp minor. Then back to G major slash G minor because we've got sometimes B natural, sometimes B-flat, So he can't even decide: are we in G major or G minor? It's part of the fun. And then we're back to B minor again. Then we stay in B minor all the way to measure 40 where we have this shift to C minor. And then here I feel like we're in some kind of weird F key. Even though F normally has a B-flat, Shostakovich is using B natural to make it sound like some bizarre F key like maybe F Lydian which actually doesn't have that B-flat. It has a wild sound to it. And then back to B minor at the very end. When I'm learning a piece, I love to keep in mind those tonal shifts because it helps me memorize the piece and know where I am. Now let's shift to talking about artistry. What's the style of "The Mechanical Doll"? Well, my best clue is always starting with the tempo indication: Allegretto. So it needs to feel fast, but not too fast. A comfortably fast is how I like to think of allegretto. With all the staccatos that I see, I also feel like Shostakovich wanted a crisp sound. Really clean, mechanical sound, and so I would recommend not using any damper pedal. I think that will take away from the crisp, clean sound that I think this piece needs. As you're playing these stacatti, remember to keep them light. You want to keep a really flexible wrist, and think of coming up off the key instead of really hammering down on this those staccati. Think up, up, up, and then on that little slur right there you can use a little arm weight to give that a nice shape. Up, up, up, down up, down up. Okay, pause and practice this kind of motion. So you're thinking smooth, up, up, up, down up. Pause to work on that kind of wrist feel, and then press play to go on. Now in measure 13, Make sure you keep a really flexible wrist otherwise it gets really ...