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Wednesday, February 16, 2005

Mazurka in e minor - op. 17 no. 2

I will be the first to admit, and the blog will be the first to confirm, that I have analyzed this piece before. However, I thought it'd be nice to go back and take another look at the structural functions of the sections and mention some things I left out before.

The piece is ternary - mm. 1-24 are the first A section, mm. 25-52 are the B section and the second A section is mm. 53 to the end.

The first section is expository, like the beginning of most pieces. The materials exposed are very important to the whole piece because, not only does the A section return, but thematic material from it is used to begin the B section.

In that sense, the B section could be considered to have developmental function - it starts off with previous motivic material, or at least a melody that is very similar. However, the second part of the B section (mm. 39-52) seems more like a transitional section, in that there's a lot of agitation and harmonic activity. Basically, it's a stretched-out, undulating passage that goes through lots of chords and eventually ends on the dominant, which leads into the return of the A section.

The second A section has a terminative function - the extension to the final cadence reinforces the tonal center, which is the primary attribute of terminative sections, according to the text.

w0rd out.
$poon

1 comment:

Scott said...

B section (mm. 25-52), includes an expository section (mm. 25-39 downbeat) and a transition (39-52). The melody at m. 25 is different enough from the previous material to be deemed independent, and the new key of C major is relatively stabile.