Andante grazioso (Theme) (Sonata in A, K. 331, first movement)

Background

Mozart's Piano Sonata in A major, K. 331, does not open with the usual quick first movement. Instead it begins with this gentle theme, marked Andante grazioso ("at a walking pace, gracefully"), followed by six variations on it. The variations keep the theme's shape and harmony but change its surface: the third turns it into A minor, the fifth slows it to an expressive Adagio, and the last speeds it up into a lively Allegro. (The sonata's other movements are the Menuetto and the famous Rondo alla Turca.)

The theme is written in the style of a siciliana, a slow, swaying dance-song in compound time with a characteristic long-short-long rhythm, linked with pastoral and tender moods. It has two halves, eight bars and then ten, and in Mozart's score each half is repeated.

The tune has had a long life beyond the sonata. In 1914 the German composer Max Reger chose it for his orchestral Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Mozart.

How to practise it

This arrangement plays the theme once through without repeats: 18 bars in A major (three sharps: F, C and G) and 6/8 time.

The first three bars lie in a five-finger position, with the right thumb on A and the fifth finger on E:

Count six eighth notes to the bar while you learn it. The dotted eighth lasts one and a half eighth notes, so the sixteenth comes late and leads straight into the next note. Make it light and graceful, not snappy; this is a song, not a march.

The left hand is quietly busy. In the first bar the thumb repeats an E in the same long-short rhythm as the tune, while the lower fingers move with the tune's first three notes a tenth below:

Keep the repeated Es soft and the moving notes underneath smooth, so the accompaniment rocks like a cradle.

A plan:

1. Right hand, first half (eight bars), until the rhythm is relaxed.
2. Left hand, first half, holding every long note for its full value.
3. Hands together, two bars at a time.
4. The second half the same way. Near the end come fuller chords and left-hand octaves, which want a rounder sound, then a quick three-note flourish into the last bars.

Set a metronome to the dotted-quarter beat, two clicks per bar: 36, 44, 50, then the full 56 (the app shows this as 84 quarter notes a minute). Keep it a true andante, a walk rather than a run.

Listen for long, curved phrases, a clear tune and a soft accompaniment. Once you know the theme, listen to Mozart's variations: you will hear this melody hidden inside each of them.

Dotted rhythms like the siciliana's are explained in the ties, dotted rhythms and upbeats unit.