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Monday, March 14, 2005

BEETHOVEN- Sonata in E major Op. 14 No. 1, II

Initially when looking through the entire piece and deciding where the movements began and ended, I had photocopied only through the Allegretto leaving the Maggiore out. This completely changes the piece! The music that I copied and took a look at is a simple binary form. It begins in E major and is constructed of two parallel periods. There is a HC in measure 8 on the first beat, and a PAC in E major in meaure 16 on the first beat.
The B section begins in measure 17 and there is a HC on the first beat of measure 24. In through the next measures the tonality starts to shift somewhat and we end up on another half cadence in B in measure 32. The half cadence kind of keeps things more tonally open until measure 40 where there is another half cadence in B kind of getting that key more in the listener's head. I felt like the defining termative phrase started in measure 54 and continued through measure 61 with the chord being played on the first beat of every measure. It sounded like the ending to a piece, especially since the section had made its way back to a PAC in the key that it had begun in. Like I said, this could have easily been a simple rounded binary.
However, when listening to the recording I found that the maggiore is actually included. This changes everything. Now it is a lot like the menuetto and trio that we all looked at for homework, a Composite binary. This new section serves as the bigger "B" in the ternary structure. This section is more tonally open, and a little bit more relaxed and flowing than the previous making it a good example of a developement upon the main theme of the piece which comes back in its orginal key at the end of the maggiore completing the ternary outline.
I liked this piece, especially that terminative section that I mentioned it is dramatic, and builds some tension then lightly kind of leads away from that feeling with the three chords and the pac back in E.

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