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What is the Most Important Musical Form of All Time? The Sonata

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about the most important musical form, the sonata form. You would not believe how much music is based upon this form. You might wonder why the sonata is so important. What’s the deal about this?

I’ll start with a little bit of background on the sonata.

The sonata form has been around since the Baroque era. But it really came into its own during the Classical era. During the Baroque, composers like Scarlatti wrote sonatas. These were one movement works that had two sections, each of which repeated. But that’s not what we’re talking about today. We’re talking about the classical sonata form, which has endured to this day. Not only are sonatas prevalent from composers from Mozart to Prokofiev and beyond, but concertos, string quartets, symphonies, every kind of musical form you could imagine contains the sonata form within them!

What is a sonata?

I have a video on this which will be in the description below. But briefly, a sonata is a multi-movement work generally, except for those Baroque sonatas that I referenced earlier. Sonatas usually have at least two movements, typically three and oftentimes four movements. These are separate sections that are almost like separate pieces all unto their own. When a performer plays a piece and it seems like it’s over, then they start something that sounds like a whole other piece. Well, that’s a sonata! You’ll see the same thing in trios, quartets, duos, multi-movement works. Almost all multi-movement works contain at least one movement in what’s referenced as the Sonata Allegro form. Allegro means fast. Typically the first movement of a sonata is fast, so it became known as the Sonata Allegro form because the first movement is usually in that form, although other movements can be also.

What is so special about the sonata form that has inspired so many composers to use it over hundreds of years?

I could simplify it first and say, it’s kind of like an ABA. You have a statement, you have something different, and then you have the statement again. It’s a little bit more complex than that. So what I want to do is first of all, is to outline the form for you. And what I’m going to do is make it easy and digestible by picking not a sonata, but a sonatina, which is essentially a short sonata. I’m going to use the famous Clementi Opus 36 number 1 in C Major. I’m going to show you what the form is intrinsically. Then I’m going to talk about how composers have used this form and why it’s so effective and pervasive in all of music.

Sonatas and sonatinas start with a theme called the exposition.

The exposition exposes two themes. This sonatina is in C major. So the first theme, of course, is in C major. It starts off with a catchy little theme. Since it’s a sonatina, it’s short, so it makes it very easy to digest. From there, a second contrasting theme is introduced. There’s a little transition using a G major scale there. That is the introduction into theme two, which always goes to another key. This is a trademark of the sonata form. It generally goes into the theme of the dominant, that is the five. Since this was in C major, it goes into G major. And from that point on, you’re going to see a lot of F sharps since it’s in G major. That is the exposition of this sonatina. You’ll notice when you get to the end of the exposition, there is a repeat sign. The exposition always repeats. Why does it repeat? The idea is to cement these two themes into your head, because after the exposition comes the development section. This is where the music gets really interesting. Composers will take these two themes and go wild with them!

The development section is really interesting.

Mozart and Haydn had development sections that were very compelling. Beethoven exploded the development section making them much longer and going much further afield. Now before I explain the reason why this works so well, I’ve got to tell you the last section. You started with the exposition exposing two themes, the theme in the tonic, and then the theme in the dominant. Then that whole section repeats. Then you have the development section. So what’s next? The recapitulation!

The recapitulation brings back both themes.

At the end of the development section, it comes back like the beginning. Now there are always little deviations that composers make in their writing, because there wasn’t a guide of how to write a sonata. This is just something that happens to work. In the case of the Clementi Opus 36 no.1 in C Major, the recapitulation comes back an octave lower. So we get the theme once again in the tonic, just like it was at the beginning, except an octave lower. But now instead of going to G major, the dominant, it stays in the tonic key of C major starting with the C major scale. So that is basically the form of a sonata. You have two themes in the exposition, tonic and dominant, repeat, development section, then a recapitulation in which the two themes are both in the tonic key of the piece. So, it ends in the key it began.

Why does this form work so well?

The sonata form works because the first themes are so strong in your head. You’ve heard the whole exposition twice through. Look at all the sonatas of Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn, Schuman, and Chopin. And it isn’t just the Classical era. It goes through the 20th century with Poulenc, Prokofiev, and Shostakovich. And it’s not just sonatas, it’s also in their chamber music. Symphonies almost all use this form too, because it is so effective! After going far afield in the development, it’s so refreshing to have those themes back again. And of course you want your piece to end in the key in which it began, which is why theme two in the recapitulation stays in the tonic.

So that’s why the sonata is the most substantial form of music of all time!

It’s not just because sonatas are so pervasive in music. It’s because the sonata form has been used in countless compositions other than just sonatas again and again. Even popular music is loosely based upon the sonata form oftentimes, because the idea of what is familiar and what is unfamiliar, and the interplay of those elements, is universal to human nature. And it really works! It establishes these themes for you so you can really grasp the music and where you are. You go far afield, then you get that great feeling of coming back home. The sonata form just fits human nature!

I’m interested in your opinion about this. You can leave comments on LivingPianos.com. I’m here to answer your questions. I’m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

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WHAT IS A SONATA?
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EXTREME Instrument Restoration: What is a Conservator?

Hi, I’m Robert Estrin, this is LivingPianos.com. The question today is about musical conservators. What is a musical conservator? Have you ever heard that term before? I hadn’t, until a few years ago when I met a musical conservator in Los Angeles. It was an enlightening experience! I didn’t understand the process until I experienced it for myself and I thought you’d be interested in this. Now, of course, there are people who restore instruments. There are piano rebuilders, technicians who take older pianos and try to make them fresh and new again. They’ll put in new pin blocks, they’ll refinish cases, they’ll put all new parts on the pianos they restore. They actually rebuild all the thousands of parts of the pianos, getting high-level performance out of old instruments. What a conservator does is quite different, even though the end result can be similar.

How is a piano conservator different from a piano rebuilder?

When a conservator is working on an old instrument, instead of just putting new parts in it, they will go to painstaking lengths to preserve as many original parts as possible. For example, if the pins are loose, usually, a rebuilder will remove the strings, remove the plate, and craft a new pinblock for the piano. The pin block is the piece of wood underneath the plate that has holes for each tuning pin. The holes are drilled to tolerances of thousandths of an inch at precise angles. So when the pins are banged in and twisted, they’ll hold. But a conservator will do something dramatically different. If they’re meticulous enough, they’ll torque each and every pin to see how much strength it takes in order to turn the pins. They will record the torque of each and every one! There are 220+ strings on a piano. Each pin is labeled to identify which pin came from which hole. And then they go through hole by hole, filling in the holes with the precise amount of wood to be able to get the proper amount of torque out of each pin rather than just putting a new pin block in.

What about the finish of the piano? How do you preserve that?

Believe it or not, they will scrape the finish off and then liquefy it and reapply that same finish! There are all sorts of techniques. If the hammers are worn out, typically you can just get a new set of matching specification hammers. But a conservator will take felt and rebuild each and every hammer one by one, putting the missing felt back on each hammer. This just gives you an idea of the absolutely tedious process a conservator goes through in restoring instruments. Why would they go through such a process? It would be far easier to replace these parts, wouldn’t it? In truth, yes, it would be much easier to simply replace the parts. Is the purpose to save money on those parts? Absolutely not, because the labor is so intensive.

The point is to preserve the past!

If nobody ever goes through the intense process I’ve described for an older piano, say a 1912 Steinway, painstakingly bringing that instrument back to its original state, at some point in the future, we won’t know what a 1912 Steinway was! In museums particularly, when you see historical keyboards, obviously you don’t want to rip out those irreplaceable parts and put in new parts because it wouldn’t even be that historical instrument anymore!

So that’s what a conservator does. It’s a completely different methodology from typical instrument rebuilding. It requires a different mindset! It has a different purpose. Yet, either one can get great results in the hands of masters! I thought this would be interesting for you to know. I know I was flabbergasted when I learned about this.

Keep the questions coming in! I give preference to my Patreon subscribers, but all of you are welcome to contact me any time! I’m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

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Why Practicing the Piano is Different From Other Instruments

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about how practicing the piano is different from practicing on all other instruments. I majored in both piano and French horn in conservatory. In fact, all through my childhood I was completely obsessed with both instruments. I think what I loved about the French horn and the piano was how completely different they were from each other. And in regards to practicing, it’s a completely different experience. Practicing the horn is about tone production, intonation, being able to play at any volume, with any articulation, at any register with control, and getting a beautiful sound.

Basic tone production on the piano is the easiest of just about any instrument!

On the piano, you push a key and it sounds pretty good. With flute, getting a sound out at all is really tough! Just holding a violin correctly is incredibly difficult. Other instruments have tremendous challenges. For example, double reed players like oboists and bassoonists spend a tremendous amount of time crafting reeds, either making their own reeds or refining reeds they get from others. This requires meticulous carving with knives to get just the right response out of the reeds. Vocalists have to study languages and diction. Think about the hours spent doing that, yet there is only so long you can practice singing before you will tire your voice. But there is a tremendous amount of research that goes into understanding what you’re singing in other languages, and being able to express content appropriately. You also have to stay healthy, because you are the instrument! Every instrument has challenges. The big challenge with piano is the music.

The piano is fundamentally easier to play, but the music makes up for it with its great complexity.

As a classical pianist, the vast majority of your time is spent learning scores. On French horn, there’s a tremendous amount of warmups involved in practicing. Things like long tones on wind instruments are essential. My wife is a flutist and she doesn’t miss a day of doing her long tones. What are long tones? Long tones are slow swells from very, very soft to very, very loud, back to very, very soft on every single note on the instrument. This is a great way to develop control on a wind instrument. So if you have a decrescendo, you can maintain the pitch and beauty of the sound by practicing each and every note consistently. On the piano, of course, we don’t have those issues. We don’t even have those capabilities!

With French horn, a great deal of time is spent on the instrument itself developing the physiology of the lips. There’s an old saying about French horn, “Skip a day and you know it. Skip two days, your section players know it. Skip three days, everyone knows it!” After a break from French horn, it can take weeks to get back into shape! The muscles of the lips are so delicate. You can’t just practice and practice until you’re back in shape, because you’ll blow your chops and then you can’t play anything! Your facial muscles become fatigued. So you have to really baby your lips and keep them in great shape. After a break from the piano, at first your fingers feel kind of mushy and lack strength. But just keep playing. Make sure you don’t tax yourself too much. After a day or two, you should be right back in shape. Everything should come back pretty easily.

What is so different about piano practice?

With piano you’re learning scores, and it is a meticulous process. One of the reasons I loved practicing French horn so much is that I could concentrate on pure sound, the beautiful rich tone of the instrument. The sound you get out of each note becomes a trademark of your own personality. On the piano, this just isn’t the case. Practicing the piano, if you’re doing it right, requires tremendous mental effort. You’re assimilating notes and scores and music. You must be able to think through complex arrangements that have polyphony and counterpoint and bring out different lines. Now, it’s true that other keyboard instruments have some of the same challenges. As an organist, you even have the pedals! However, you don’t have to balance notes and lines within a texture. For example, if you’re playing a four part chorale, you have four different lines. You can bring out the soprano line, the alto line, the tenor line or the bass line. You can do this simply by reaching with your fingers. The most obvious is to bring out the top line. But you can emphasize any of the four lines, each one calling attention to different lines within the score.

But balancing isn’t necessarily just bringing out one line, it’s being aware of all of the lines and controlling them.

In order to get that kind of control, you have to really know the scores. You have to study the music to develop that level of control. Are there techniques or exercises that can help with that? Somewhat. But there’s no substitute for spending a great deal of time really learning scores. You want to know the score so well that you have control of all the notes literally under your fingertips! And that’s what makes piano practice unique! I’m interested in your opinions on this subject. If you play other instruments, as well as the piano, let me know how you feel about practicing those instruments compared to practicing the piano and how it feels different to you. I’m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

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Finger Staccato Technique on the Piano

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I’m going to address a question from a viewer. The viewer asks, “Can you comment on finger staccato and how this interacts with the wrists and staying closer to the keys as speed increases? I’m referring to the technique of flexing the fingers toward a more closed fist with each staccato note. The action requires suddenly scratching the keys or sliding the finger pads on the key tops. This is described as feeling like pulling the notes from the keys. I found this very valuable, but I seek more wisdom on integrating this with other techniques of speed and lightness.” This is a very interesting question. I get a lot of people asking about this idea of rubbing the keys. Indeed, there is something referred to as finger staccato.

What is finger staccato?

I’ve talked a great deal about staccato and how it’s performed from the wrist. Indeed most of the time staccato is performed from the wrist. The wrists are fundamental in playing staccatos on the piano. But sometimes there is an articulation that you want to achieve to get space between the notes, something that’s too fast for the wrists to accomplish. For example, in the Gigue, the last movement of Bach’s French Suite in G major, his fifth French Suite, you can play legato, but playing with a finger staccato creates a harpsichord like tonality to the punctuation of each note. It almost sounds faster, even playing at the same tempo, because of the delineation of each note.

Is this being done by sliding on the keys?

I don’t recommend sliding on the keys for a variety of reasons. First of all, key tops on different pianos are dramatically different from one another. On most pianos today you have composite plastic key tops. Some pianos have ivory. Ivory is a porous material that has more friction than plastic key tops. Also consider the dryness or the moisture on your fingertips. Dry fingers can really slide like crazy on ivory key tops. Sweaty fingers can slide a lot on plastic key tops. But the point is that you have different levels of friction on different key tops. So trying to rely upon rubbing the keys isn’t a reliable technique.

How do you achieve finger staccato?

You achieve finger staccato by staying very close to the keys and getting used to playing with spaces between the notes. You can practice this in your scales. Try practicing at a slower tempo, doing progressive metronome speeds, and keeping it very light. Avoid using the wrists! The wrists can’t go fast enough.

Practicing with staccato fingers is a phenomenal way of training your hand to play fast passagework because each note is articulated.

One of the tricks to getting clean finger work, whether it’s scales, arpeggios, or other types of passagework, is focusing on the release of notes. You want to have note lengths that are uniform throughout. The only way to achieve that is by playing with spaces between the notes. Playing all the notes very short from the fingers makes the maximum space between notes. Which later you can control, so you can have different lengths of spaces between notes. We think of practicing scales as a one-size-fits-all, but why not practice them detached or semi-detached? Ultimately, what makes music sound even is not just the attack of the notes, but the release of the notes as well. You want to have even durations of notes and even spaces between the notes, which can only be achieved by the fingers. By practicing with staccato fingers, it’s an extreme difference from legato playing. Then you can try to fill in all the touches between notes from staccato fingers to legato, so you can get any kind of phrasing you’re after in your playing!

That was a very interesting question! Maybe I didn’t give the answer you expected. I hope this is interesting for you and valuable for your piano playing, as well as your practice. Practicing a piece that has a lot of finger work with all staccato fingers is a heck of a workout for you! And it’s a great way to strengthen your piano playing. I’m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

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How Long Should it Take to Learn a Piece of Music?

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about how long it should take you to learn a piece of music. There are a lot of people who feel really committed to the piano. And when they are passionate about learning a piece, they don’t care if it takes a year to learn it. They just really want to learn that piece! This is not necessarily the best approach. Let me explain. In the amount of time that it would take in that year to learn one piece of music, imagine instead you focus on pieces that you can master in a couple of weeks. Then you build up a repertoire of pieces you can play on a high level.

Find music on your level.

Focus on pieces you can learn relatively quickly, each one a little bit more difficult than the last. You can expand not only the difficulty, but the style, the range, the mood, the period, all different aspects of music that you can assimilate into your technique. After a year, that piece that maybe would have taken you a year might only take you three or four weeks! The secret is finding music on your level. Now there are certainly exceptions to what I’ve just said. For example, maybe you’re a pretty serious pianist and you’ve just always wanted to study a monumental work like the Brahms Handel Variations, the Beethoven Hammerklavier Sonata, or the Liszt B Minor Sonata. Are you going to learn one of those pieces in two or three weeks? No, not likely. It could take you months to really learn and maybe up to a year to get on a performance level. A major concerto takes time to master as well. But even if you are learning such a work, I would strongly recommend that in parallel you also work on other formative pieces along the way. So at the end of the year you don’t have just that one piece, but maybe you have a dozen or more pieces that you’ve learned over the course of the year, including that one long-term piece that you’ve always wanted to learn.

Always be assimilating new music into your repertoire.

Learn music of different styles, different techniques, and you will grow as a musician far faster and greater than just focusing on one or two pieces that you really want to learn. You will actually be able to learn those pieces far sooner and get them at a higher level if you have progressive repertoire that you’re always mastering on the piano. I hope this is helpful for you and that you don’t find this discouraging. This is actually the fastest way you’re going to be able to learn that piece you’ve always wanted to learn! I’m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

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How Did The Great Composers Create So Much Music?

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about how the great composers came up with so much music. It just seems impossible! When you think about Brahms, Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, and so many other composers, it almost seems like magic. It’s as if something was handed down to them from the heavens. It doesn’t seem like anyone could write so much fantastic music.

The truth is that we only have a tiny glimpse of their music.

Most of the great composers made music up spontaneously, constantly. They were known to be tremendous improvisers. But because audio recording was not developed until centuries later, we only have the written scores of these great composers to go by. But we get glimpses as to what the great composers actually improvised, and some of their fantasies. For example, you think about Bach and you think about very regular, beautifully crafted music that obviously was written out. But what about music that he just made up? Are there any glimpses into that? Yes! For example, Bach’s Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue. The way that starts out is very rhapsodic and spontaneous in nature. It’s an amazing work that goes places you would never expect. It gives you a little glimpse of what these composers were able to create on the fly.

Improvisation can sow the seeds for compositions.

This isn’t just true of the early composers. Think about when you listen to a Chopin Nocturne. Just imagine the melodies that Chopin and Liszt made up. Sometimes they would have parlor gatherings, and they would go back and forth. As did other great composers of the 19th century, such as Anton Rubinstein. It was one of the things that they did, where they played for one another spontaneously. Listen to the opening phrase of the B-flat minor Nocturne of Chopin. The second cadenza is something that no-one would think of writing. He must have just played this and figured out a way to write it down. It’s very rhapsodic, off the cuff phrasing. It’s not metered. And it gives you just a little hint as to what these composers did on a daily basis, by themselves, for their family, for their friends, and at all kinds of get-togethers.

Have fun with music!

I believe all the great composers have joy and passion in their music! It wasn’t just a tedious task. It wasn’t all lonely nights of crafting great compositions, although that’s a part of music. A part of practicing and learning music is spending the time to learn scores. But having fun with it and not losing the love of music is what it’s all about! I believe those are the seeds of the great composers. So enjoy your music! Explore things and see what you can come up with! I’m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

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