Austin A asked 8 years ago
So how do we compose additional movements to our sonatas? What forms do we use? Like some sonatas have a rondo movement, a minuet movement, etc.
Do we just start over and have each successive movement have an exposition, development, and recapitulation, or does that form only apply to the 1st movement?
Jon Brantingham Staff answered 8 years ago
The 2nd, 3rd and 4th movements tends to have relatively standard types of forms as well.
2nd movements can often be slow movements. I think Large Ternary is the most common.
3rd movements often feature a Minuet-Trio form. You’ll often see it labeled scherzo, but in reality there is no clear differences between scherzo as a form and minuet-trio as a form. I would say scherzo titled movements tend to be more active.
For 4th movements, it is usually sonata or rondo form.
As far as composing them, this is a great opportunity to dig into the music. I obviously don’t have courses on each movement, but the process of breaking down the form, and modeling it is the same.
- Listen to the piece a few times through so it is familiar.
- Identify big articulation points – cadences, key changes, major texture and orchestrational changes, new melodies, tonality changes (a theme in major that changes to minor), etc.
- Identify the raw compositional material you will need to cover. For instance, in the sonata form course, we really only compose about 16 measures of purely raw compositional material. Everything else is related to that material through loosening and development techniques.
- Compose your own music based on the model.
In the future, I may put up follow on movements to the sonata form course, but that probably won’t be this year.