It’s Been Years

I was pleasantly surprised to rediscover Mozart’s Piano Sonata In F Major, K.332. I Used To Play This! It must have been junior high or early high school. Hours and hours of practice seem to have burned this song into my brain, because I remembered every note. Though my piano chops may have been better in those days, my theoretical scope of knowledge is much larger now. I shudder to think how many piano sonatas I played without ever knowing what a sonata was.

This piece has so many great qualities. The melody is tuneful and memorable – the polar opposite of Brandenburg. The dynamics are frequently changing. The tempo modulates from slow and lilting to fast and furious. The mood changes from light and playful to strong and powerful. The harmonic changes are imaginative.

The form is, indeed, a sonata. The second theme of the exposition in the dominant key of C returns in the recapitulation in the tonic key of F. (To hear this contrast the third and fourth CD tracks of the piece to the eighth and ninth tracks.) The way in which the exposition moves from tonic to dominant is genius. Measure 22 (I wish I had the entire score, but I’ll have to get by with the excerpt on page 554) features a dramatic move to the relative minor key of D. Since the keys of F major and D natural minor share the same tones, Mozart could’ve made this transition seamless. Instead he opts for a three octave forte chord of C#, the leading tone of D minor, but the non-diatonic augmented fifth of F major. Several diminished seventh chords on the leading tone further solidify this key change to D minor before modulating down a whole step creating a new tonal center of C minor. Further modulation leads us eventually to G which serves as the dominant chord for the second theme in C major. The development (the fifth track of the piece) begins on the dominant C, briefly changing to C minor and then going tonally haywire. The development features a deceptive dominant cadence on A7, which suggests a return to D minor, but then through some chromatic trickery finally resolves on C7. This brings us back to the recapitulation in the tonic F major.

It is amazing the Mozart was able to create a work which was both melodically expressive (gallant) as well as harmonically complex with a high degree of chromaticism. I remember enjoying this piece in my younger days and looking back on it with more experienced eyes I am able to appreciate it on an even deeper level.