A Study on Compositional Techniques of Mozart’s Thematic Melodies: Centering on Slow Movements of Keyboard Sonatas
While composers in the Classical period fundamentally focused on compositional techniques of repetition and alteration of motives, W. A. Mozart not only further refined these techniques to make large-scaled ‘singing’ melodies but also developed his own distinguished ones beyond the scope of traditional motivic work.
Moreover, although the existing studies on Mozart’s thematic melodies have widely admitted the importance of Mozart’s distinguished melodies, they have more narrowly focused on a specific work or the first movement. Especially, no studies have investigated all the slow movements of his keyboard sonatas as a whole to systematically analyze distinguished characteristics of Mozart’s compositional techniques.
Therefore, this study attempts to analyze them systematically classifying compositional techniques of Mozart’s thematic melodies into three groups of motive(s)-based, variation-based, and through-composed ones.