Harmony/Modulation: Learning from Mozart et al.

Dear all,

I just signed up for what appears to be a great forum. I'm a very experienced pianist but a very newbie composer. In my first little attempts I found that my main weaknesses are:

1. finding interesting harmonic progressions

2. learning modulation techniques

I thought it might be a good idea to learn from the masters directly rather than only from method books. I have started to look at Mozart piano sonatas with a focus on these two topics (because they might be easier to start with than e.g. some late-romantic music).

Would anyone be interested to do this jointly by discussing here? It could be fun and very instructive. If so, how about starting by discussing the harmonic progressions and modulations in the exposition of K.332? (it's just a suggestion to make things concrete; I'm open for all alternatives!).

Ok let's see if anyone is interested! :)

Your post gives the impression that you're trying to get us to do your theory homework for you.

Your post gives the impression that you're trying to get us to do your theory homework for you.

flint-wwrr, not at all! I have a day job as a statistician, but my passion is entirely for the music (especially piano music). Have a look at my Youtube profile (YouTube - pianovirus's Channel) to see that I'm not fooling you! I also posted in the "Introduce yourself" thread.

Also, I will be happy to start by posting what I can analyze (as well as the parts that I don't understand and the questions I have) to show that I don't want people to do work for me, but instead to do work jointly to learn from each other! Provided of course there are others here who are interested in pursuing this (or helping with their expertise)...

I just made the suggestion of K.332 to make things as concrete as possible (and avoid remaining stuck just in 'planning' instead of 'doing'). But as I said, I'm completely open for any alternative suggestions (e.g. Bach Chorales or other parts of Mozart sonatas). Only for the beginning to keep it simple I think it would be good to have a relatively simple pre-romantic tonal language and homophonic structure.

Ok, I hope I have explained myself now. I would be really happy to find some fellows with whom to discuss harmonic progression and modulation technique used in Mozart's or any other master's works!! :)

Thanks, that's better.

It's always better to lead off a discussion with info of your own.

Dear all,

I just signed up for what appears to be a great forum. I'm a very experienced pianist but a very newbie composer. In my first little attempts I found that my main weaknesses are:

1. finding interesting harmonic progressions

2. learning modulation techniques

I thought it might be a good idea to learn from the masters directly rather than only from method books. I have started to look at Mozart piano sonatas with a focus on these two topics (because they might be easier to start with than e.g. some late-romantic music).

Would anyone be interested to do this jointly by discussing here? It could be fun and very instructive. If so, how about starting by discussing the harmonic progressions and modulations in the exposition of K.332? (it's just a suggestion to make things concrete; I'm open for all alternatives!).

Ok let's see if anyone is interested! :)

OK, let's just start with mm. 1-40 of KV 332. Where do you see interesting modulations and harmonic progressions? I would say there are at least three modulations on the basis of very interesting harmony progressions.

By the way, there's an easy way to find the score of KV 332 in the internet: the Digital Mozart Edition