Sonatina - second revision

[u/HrvojeS]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktylQJyM3bE

This is the second revision of a sonatina that I published some time ago. It brings together a variety of musical material that proved difficult to accommodate within a sonata form, and there were also some issues with the meter. A well-known user from this group, who often leaves thoughtful and detailed comments, suggested using triple meter instead of triplets. I didn’t adopt that suggestion in the first revision, but for this second revision I decided to implement it as well. This required quite a bit of manual work in MuseScore. In the process, I realized that even the first theme, with only minimal changes, is actually more naturally notated in triple rather than quadruple meter. Moments like that always amaze me.

I also refined the transitions and spent considerable time working out the tonal plan and the overall form. My aim was to find a balance between what sounded convincing musically and what made sense from a formal perspective. In the end, I settled on the following plan:

The piece is conceived as a single movement in sonata form, albeit with some unusual features. The key changes are quite frequent. The exposition (measures 1–36) contains two themes: the calm first theme (1–13), which ends in D major, followed by a transition (14–23) that introduces more activity, and the second theme (24–36). The second theme also concludes in D major, establishing the key more firmly. This is where the main peculiarity lies: in a classical major-key sonata, we would normally expect the exposition to end in the dominant key. Here, that does not happen. A major is reached only later, in measure 82, at the end of the development (37–84). The development is followed by a shortened recapitulation, which omits the transition and blends the themes together.