First Movement of Sonata in a Majar-----Mozart

Sonata in A majar-----Mozart（1756-1791）

Mozart was an Austrian composer. He was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, operatic, and choral music. He is among the most enduringly popular of classical composers.

The first movement of Mozart’s Piano sonata K331 is set out as theme with 6 variations. The theme is written in 6/8 timing, the form is rounded binary and is written to be played andante grazioso. There are slurs at the beginning of nearly every bar during the theme which helps to keep it calm. There is use of sequences.

In the first variation the mood becomes agitated, there is a lot of use of chromatic auxiliary and passing notes. Like the theme, variation one has similar sequences, this helps to keep the connection with the theme.

Second Variation changes dynamics more .This assists in creating a light and bouncy mood. The majority of this variation is made up of sequences.

Variation three modulates from A major to A minor. The tonality change and the dynamics make this a sad variation. The melody in octaves and the forte make the variation sound angry.

Variation four back to A major is much brighter and happy. In the majority of this variation the right hand plays the accompaniment with the left hand playing melody crossing over.

In variation five, the speed changes to adagio and the mood returns to calm and peaceful. However it seems to have stabs of anger when it is forte and there are a group of repeated notes at the same time.

Variation Six is very light and jumpy. The time signature changes to common time. The semi quavers passages making it sound faster. The piece ends on a perfect cadence with block chords.

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