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March 28, Y: Precis On "Introduction: The Nineteenth-Century Musical Background

This chapter analyzes the shift from common practice music to 19th century music. It characterizes this shift as a search for individuality. Composers of common practice music like Haydn and Mozart had clear harmonic structures and phrase patterns. In contrast, 19th century music obscured these formal structures by blurring tonal regions and keys to allow for greater tonal exploration. This flux between stability and instability in tonality is a defining feature of 19th century music discussed in this chapter.

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Luis Alexander Rodriguez
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26 views2 pages

March 28, Y: Precis On "Introduction: The Nineteenth-Century Musical Background

This chapter analyzes the shift from common practice music to 19th century music. It characterizes this shift as a search for individuality. Composers of common practice music like Haydn and Mozart had clear harmonic structures and phrase patterns. In contrast, 19th century music obscured these formal structures by blurring tonal regions and keys to allow for greater tonal exploration. This flux between stability and instability in tonality is a defining feature of 19th century music discussed in this chapter.

Uploaded by

Luis Alexander Rodriguez
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© © All Rights Reserved
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Luis Rodriguez

Sara Gilbert

March 28, y
Word Count 265
Precis on Introduction: The Nineteenth-Century Musical Background
As an analysis of the shift in the aesthetic and structure of nineteenth-century music as
opposed to common practice music, this chapter provides insight on the details and possible
causes of this change. The chapter basically characterizes this shift as a search for individuality.
The common era is defined by its form types that developed in conjunction with tonality.
Composers such Gluck, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven had their stylistic differences, i.e Beethoven
was one of the first pioneers of unconventional key changes within pieces. An example of this is
the shift to the III in his Piano Sonata in C major for the second theme. Despite these
trademarks, music from the common-practice ultimately achieved long and autonomous
musical structures by using tried and true patterns of harmonic and phrase structures.
Nineteenth century music did away with some of the structures by forgoing the dominant phrase
model in place of a system that could explore more remote tonal regions with even greater
frequency and emphasis. This obscurity of formal key structures goes hand in hand with the
obscurity of the keys themselves. In nineteenth century tonality keys are implied rather than the
stated overtly clearly (i.e A PAC in the 8th measure of a sentence structure). This flux between
tonal stability and instability is a commonality shared between nineteenth century music and
common practice music. The key difference is the clarity of the harmonic movement, with
nineteenth century being a melding of keys so much so that they can be almost imperceptible
from each other. This difference is what this chapter was dissecting

Work Cited

PRECIS

Morgan,RobertP.TwentiethcenturyMusic:AHistoryofMusicalStyleinModern
EuropeandAmerica.Pg18,NewYork:Norton,1991.

PRECIS

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