Piano Sonata No. 9 (Mozart)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Piano Sonata No. 9 in D major, K. 311 (284c) was written on the composer's stay in Augsburg and Mannheim in November-December 1777, and is contemporaneous with his Sonata K. 309 (Mozart wrote his Sonata K. 310 in the summer of the following year, in Paris). The three sonatas K. 309-311 were published as a set 'Opus IV' in about 1782, by Franz Joseph Heina in Paris.
The work has three movements:
A typical performance takes about 15 to 17 minutes.
The first movement is in sonata form. Its first subject has a quasi-orchestral opening, and its second subject in the dominant key (A major) is quieter. The development section is almost entirely based on the last four bars of the exposition.
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Piano Sonata K.311 in D Major - II Andante con espressione (1:04)
 Performed by Giorgi Latsabidze on piano |
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The second movement has an episodic structure A-B-A-B-A-coda. The second theme's melody is gently decorated with syncopation, accompanied by broken chords in the left hand. This key is G major, the subdominant of D major.
Lastly, the most technically demanding movement of the three is a sonata rondo, with a short central episode in B minor (the main key's relative minor). A slow cadenza-like passage containing a rapid ascending chromatic scale leads back to the first theme.
The piece displays mature thematic development.
References
- Irving, John (1997). Mozart's Piano Sonatas: Contexts, Sources, Style. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0 521 49631 4.
External links
- Sonate in D KV 311: Score in the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe