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This article reports the views of 17 living contemporary composers on their writing of program notes for their own works. This is not so in the case of newly composed works, which formed the basis of the exploratory study reported here. In the case of canonic works, performers and listeners may already be familiar with much of the program note information. However, the scant program note research conducted to date reveals that program notes may not foster understanding or enhance listener enjoyment as previously assumed. Program notes tend to inform listeners and performers about historical context, composer biographical details, and compositional thinking. When you're finished, watch the video presentation on this piece, and you'll have a strong understanding of the music's overall form.In concerts of western classical music the provision of a program note is a widespread practice dating back to the 18th century and still commonly in use. The time stamps below show where the large sections occur in the movement. As you listen to the entire piece, follow along with the diagram below and see if you can follow where you are in the in music. The diagram below demonstrates the entire form of this 1st movement. Traditionally speaking, the soloist would actually write their own cadenza, but composers would write out a cadenza themselves when they published the music because not all performers are capable of writing their own music! Take a listen to the cadenza in Mozart's flute concerto: here, you'll hear the orchestra drop out entirely, while the flute player plays their own solo for over a minute before the orchestra joins back in. Instead of concluding the music, however, the recapitulation always leads to a cadenza: here, the entire orchestra drops out, and the soloist plays their own unaccompanied music, almost improvisationally - sometimes up to 2 or 3 minutes before the orchestra joins back in, and brings the movement to a close. The flute will then enter and play all of the themes with the orchestra accompanying them.Īfter the 2nd exposition, the music moves into the development, as we would expect before returning to the Recapitulation. You'll hear the orchestra introduce the flute by playing all of the exposition before the flute soloist even plays a single note. Listen to the first 3 minutes of Mozart's flute concerto performed by Emmanual Pahud. The exposition with the soloist is then repeated! This is referred to as the double exposition: Exposition 1 is played by the orchestra, and it is then repeated with the soloist performing the themes instead of the orchestra. Then, the entire exposition is repeated, this time played primarily by the soloist. In the concerto's first movement's expanded sonata form, the entire orchestra typically plays the entire exposition without the soloist at all as an introduction. Readers should re-familiarize themselves with sonata form before reading on. In addition to a larger orchestra, Classical Era composers treated the first movement's sonata form more expansively. Often, composers would write their music with a specific soloist in mind, so they already knew what their soloist would be capable of. Composers often sought to push the limits of the performers. As a matter of fact, as the time periods progressed into the 19th and then 20th centuries, the music became more and more challenging for the performers. You'll notice that the harpsichord is no longer used, and the orchestra combines strings with woodwinds, brass, and some percussion as well.Īll of the well-known composers of the Classical Era (Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven) composed concertos for a variety of instruments: flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano-you name it, they wrote it! These pieces were not for amateurs, as mentioned in the previous pages. As one would expect, the size of the orchestra is larger than it was in the Baroque Period. The Classical Era concerto keeps the 3-movement "fast-slow-fast" structure that we see in the Baroque period, but the form of each individual movement is treated similarly to the instrumental sonata: the first movement is often in sonata form, the final movement is often in rondo form, and the middle movement is written in any form, as long as it's slow. When we compare the concerto in the Classical Era (1750-~1820) to the Baroque Period (1600-1750), we see a similar evolution of size and form that we see when we compare the instrumental sonata in the two periods.
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