Key of a Mozart Sonata

In my Mozart Klaviersonaten book, it's called

Sonate
Komponiert wahrscheinlich 1783

and is further identified as K.V. 331 (300i) I know what K.V. 331 refers to but not (300i)

Anyway, I'm working on the Alla Turca part. and at the same time doing major and minor scales. I have not gotten to F# Major nor its Harmonic and Melodic minors, but this piece (the Alla Turca part, anyway) seems to be in one of those minors.

I haven't asked my teacher about the key yet, and I'm wondering if she's waiting for me to spot it. There are 3 sharps in the key signature for most of the piece - and most of the Alla Turca, as well.

I don't know what the whole Sonata sounds like, but the A-T section is so joyous, so ebullient, that from what I've been told, this is not the proper mood for a minor key.

So please tell me. Which is it - A Major or F# Minor?

The sonata as a whole is most certainly in A Major. However, exceptions occur, namely in the Trio of the 2nd mvt (in D major) and some sections of the 3rd (in A minor). So to answer you question, the 3rd mvt is primarily in A major, but with sections in A minor (where no sharps or flats are seen in the key signature). I don't recall there being any significant amount of F# minor.

Thank you Kelly_Kelly.

I couldn't ask for a better answer.

Hallo barnowl.

My search showed that

K.331 (K.300i) Sonata in A for Piano (w Rondo Alla Turca)

has the A-T also set in A Major.

Both Numbers you have given are valid for this piece.

Prof K S (Mohan) Narayanan

Quote from: ksnmohan on October 21, 2006, 05:50:33 PM

Thank you, Professor.

While I'm here, I would like to ask what the (300i) is for? Isn't Koechel's cataloguing
sufficient?

Hallo Barnowl,

Mr Köchel's attempt was to arrange Mozart's works in chronological order, but it was sometimes sheer guesswork regarding the actual dates of many of the compositions written prior to 1784.

Understandably people who came along later dffered and there had to be subsequent listings, the 3rd by the musicologist Alfred Einstein (1937), - people easily confuse him with the Father of the Relativity theory! - and the sixth by Franz Giegling, Gerd Sievers and Alexander Weinmann (1964).

Not to totally wipe off the Original KV numberings, but yet to maintain a more accurate chronological sequence, the Numbers were changed and letters were added - like a, b, c.......i......t etc. Sometimes the alphabets even doubled up- like ss.

Koechel's original list (K1) showing KV331 now shows up as 300i in the sixth revision (K6). Nothing to do with KV300 - which is a dance piece.

Interstingly, with the Köchel Numbers and some simple arithmetic, one can get a rough idea of when Mozart wrote a particular work. Take any KN above 100, divide it by 25 and add 10. This will give Mozart's rough age when he composed the piece. In your current particular piece, 331 divided by 25 = 13.25 plus 10 = just over 23 years of age. The K 6 revision puts the age as 12 + 10 = 22 years.

Hence the numbering difference.

Add the age to Mozart's year of birth - 1756. It will give a fair idea of the year.

Warm Regards

Prof K S (Mohan Narayanan)
Musicologist, Teacher
Chennai, India

Wow! Thank you for the treasure trove of information, Professor Narayanan.

I spent 6 or 7 hours yesterday, working on Alla Turca (I'm a quasi beginner who took about a year of piano back in 1983 and went nowhere with it), and throughout the session regularly thanked Mozart for writing K.331—just for me, of course.

That movement is preset in my digital piano, so I occasionally take a break to hear the finished version. It is a wonderful feature for instruction and motivation. I can slow the tempo to my existing skill level and also let the piano play just one hand (right or left), while I play the other. Haven't done that yet, but it's on the horizon.

Thanks again for giving so much of your time to educate me!

Hallo barnowl,

Thanks - it is my pleasure.

Do you work solely with your digital piano? What make - Yamaha, Kawai....? How does its range compare with a full-fledged concert piano?

Comparing your progress from time to time with the A T preset in your piano is fine. Does the music sheet you have in front of you for practice have the EXACT SCORE as you are able to hear from the preset?

This is important since there are different scores/sheet music for the same work. May sound very much the same, but a note changed/added to a triad in the harmony part, changes in f and p in the melodic part etc.

What I do with my students is to project (8 feet diagonal image) of a good DVD of the piece they are currently learning. There are plenty of DVDs of the Beethoven Sonatas, Chopins Preludes & Etudes. But I do not see a DVD of Mozart's KV 331!

The next best thing is to listen to a good CD - e.g. by Mitsuko Uchida who studied piano at Salzburg and Vienna and is considered to be one of the best Mozart interprets. Or the latest CD by the young Portugese Maria-Joao Pires on Deutsche Grammaphon. Both are accepted Mozart specialists. Martha Argerich has also recorded plenty of Mozart, but I do not see the KV 331 in her discography.

Listen first to Uchida and Pires - amazon.com or B&N samples over your Real or Widows Media Players. Also MP3 sites which will allow you to listen FREE the full piece - the downloading will cost you around 0.80 to 0.99 Dollar from a good site.

Somehow I find that (this is totally subjective and I accept any amount of disagreement from the Forum !) women pianists interpret Mozart better - perhaps in line with the sensitiveness of the Composer.

Incidentally, as you would have noted, the Mozart listings are nowadays - after the 6th Edition - referred with a simple K (having dropped the V - my students also shun the German tongue twister Verzeichnis!). The last number in the new list now is just under 700, an increase from the first Koechel's 650 odd.

So much for today - being Sunday you should be practicing more!

Regards and lot of fun!

Prof K S (Mohan) Narayanan

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