{"id":1034,"date":"2017-11-22T15:33:11","date_gmt":"2017-11-22T19:33:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/?p=1034"},"modified":"2018-08-20T21:46:37","modified_gmt":"2018-08-21T01:46:37","slug":"sonatinas-and-other-two-sided-stories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/2017\/11\/22\/sonatinas-and-other-two-sided-stories\/","title":{"rendered":"Sonatinas and other two-sided stories"},"content":{"rendered":"

The word \u2018Sonatina\u2019 is used to describe a variety of pieces for the piano.\u00a0 Some of these pieces, such as the first movements of Muzio Clementi\u2019s Sonatinas Op 36 numbers 1<\/a> and 2<\/a>, the first movement of Haydn\u2019s Sonatina in G Hoboken XVI: 8<\/a>, and the first movement of Beethoven\u2019s Sonatina in F<\/a>, are microcosms of sonata form.\u00a0 (Click on any of the four links in the last sentence to hear the pieces mentioned.)\u00a0 They contain the contrasting first and second themes introduced in the opening exposition section, as well as the development and recapitulation sections that can also be found in longer sonata-form pieces like Mozart\u2019s Sonata in C K 545<\/a>.\u00a0 These short sonata-form pieces can be compared to traditions in other art forms that depend on contrast between two characters with sharply articulated differences.\u00a0 The scores I would recommend most highly for the Haydn and Clementi sonatinas mentioned above can be found at sheetmusicplus.com – here are links to Haydn <\/a> and Clementi\u00a0<\/a>collections available there.\u00a0 Various other scores can also be found at imslp.com.<\/a><\/p>\n

The two-person comedy team is a long tradition in North American popular culture in which two performers play off the contrast between their voices, body types, and\/or personalities.\u00a0 Laurel and Hardy<\/a> played the same pair of characters \u2013 the thin, quieter man and the large, louder man – in their many films.\u00a0 As radio comedians Bob and Ray, Bob Elliott and Ray Goulding used the contrast between Elliott\u2019s smooth interviewer voice and Goulding\u2019s more garrulous, animated voice to create scenes like The History of the United States<\/a>.\u00a0 For me, duos like these model the kind of sharp contrast that makes for good storytelling both in a comedy routine and a piano piece.\u00a0 (These two examples also point up the historic lack of gender balance in the comedy world, which is beginning to be challenged by female comedy teams such as the star-studded one in the latest Ghostbusters film.)<\/p>\n

While the contrast between the first and second themes in a sonata-form piece can be compared to the contrast between the members of a comedy duo, a parallel to the way a sonata-form piece evolves can be found in the tradition of the short story and its antecedent, the fable.\u00a0 Aesop\u2019s fable The Hare and The Tortoise<\/a> begins with short statements from both the antagonistic Hare and the serenely confident Tortoise, and continues through the \u2018rising action\u2019 of the story where they race each other.\u00a0 The hare gets ahead in the race and becomes so confident of victory that he decides to take a nap, while the tortoise persists at his slower pace, eventually passes up the sleeping hare, and wins the race.\u00a0 When the two meet up again at the end of the race, the roles of the two characters are reversed: the taunter and the target of his sarcasm become the vanquished and the victor.\u00a0 A somewhat longer story involving two characters can be found in O. Henry\u2019s short story \u2018The Gift of the Magi<\/a>\u2019.\u00a0 In this story, a fretting wife and a busy husband attempt to surprise each other with Christmas gifts, but the result of each one\u2019s efforts ends up foiling the other\u2019s plans.\u00a0 The structures of both of these stories contain parallels to the development and recapitulation sections of a sonata-form piece.<\/p>\n

In the Clementi Sonatina Op. 36 number 1, the overall descending, intervallic motion of the first theme is contrasted by the ascending, scalar motion of the second theme.\u00a0 The first movement of Clementi\u2019s Sonatina Op. 36 no. 2, as well as the first movement of Haydn\u2019s Sonatina in G display these same types of contrast between their first and second themes.\u00a0 In the Beethoven Sonatina in F Major, a descending scalar first theme is contrasted by a second theme based on a intervallic pattern of descending thirds connected by ascending scale motion.\u00a0 If you are learning one of these pieces, I would suggest both consulting a high-quality recording of the piece, such as the recording of the Beethoven Sonatina by the mid-twentieth century British pianist Solomon<\/a>, or any of the videos to which I linked in the first paragraph, to study the way these performers create musical contrast between the two themes of the piece.\u00a0 It might also be helpful to study the comedy sketches and short stories mentioned above for ideas about character contrast in other art forms.\u00a0 For those who have an interest in other kinds of storytelling, it could be helpful to come up with a story of your own to parallel the musical story in the piece, such as Anthony Burgess did with the Mozart G minor symphony in his book On Mozart: A Paean to Wolfgang<\/a>.\u00a0 One of my students who was studying the Clementi sonatina op. 36 no. 1 and also had an interest in theater named the two themes in the piece \u2018Jumpy\u2019 and \u2018Runner\u2019, as though they were characters in a play.\u00a0 Learning and performing a sonata-form piece, even a shorter one such as those cited here, is an opportunity to find the story within the music and bring it to life in your own way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The word \u2018Sonatina\u2019 is used to describe a variety of pieces for the piano.\u00a0 Some of these pieces, such as the first movements of Muzio Clementi\u2019s Sonatinas Op 36 numbers 1 and 2, the first movement of Haydn\u2019s Sonatina in … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":865,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1034","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1034","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/865"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1034"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1034\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1182,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1034\/revisions\/1182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}