Music Theory And Analysis Lm 2023/2024

LEARNING OUTCOMES: The one-semester course will offer a critical overview of Beethoven's piano sonatas, arguabily one of the pivotal musical corpus of Western art music, both from the aspect of cultural history and from that of music analysis. Our starting point will be a close examination of crucial issues such as the genre of piano sonata, its social destination, the stylistic aspects that were considered appropriate to this genre according to coeval writings. Subsquently, we shall consider the history of the sonata form concept, from the early writings to the first comprehensive descriptions in late eighteenth century (Koch, Galeazzi), to the onset of the German Formenlehre in the 1830s (Czerny, Birnbaum, Marx). A more analytical part will follow, based mainly on the recent works of Caplin, Hepokosky-Darcy, and Schmalfeldt. FInally, we shall deal with aspects of musical signification such as the topic theory, to conclude  introducing ideas and concepts of Historically Informed Performance (HIP). The course will be accompanied by live performances of a selection of piano sonatas.