Sonata for Horn, Trumpet and Trombone movement 1

Texture
1. There is simple melody dominated homophony texture
  1. The trumpet has the tune, the trombone plays a simple bass line, and the horn providing harmony with alternating notes
2. Sometimes the top two instruments join forces in two part texture, eg. Bar 12, where they are in 6ths
3. Bar 25: Monophony, where the tune is shared between instruments
4. Bar 26: three part texture where the trumpet and trombone move together in two part counterpoint, while the horn has wide ranging broken chords
5. Bars 40-45: 'Oom-pah' accompaniment
6. In the last bar all the instruments move in octaves, in homorhythm
Structure
1. Very loose ternary form containing several short themes.
2. Section A: Bars 1-25/G major
  1. 1-8: Main theme modulating to D major
  2. 9-17/17-21: Faster subsidiary pair of themes
  3. 22: Return of opening idea but slower and with suggestions of tonic minor (gm)
3. Section B: Bars 26-57
  1. 26: New slower theme in E flat, played by the trumpet
  2. 30: The horn then takes over
  3. 34: The trumpet resumes the theme
  4. 39: A four bar linking section includes two octave leaps for trumpet, followed by a miniature trumpet cadenza
  5. 40: A further theme, related to the opening melody of the movement, in B flat
4. Section A (including 4 bar Coda): Bars 58-end
  1. Return of the main theme in the tonic key (G). Music from the end of Section B (Bar 48) is then interpolated
  2. 73: The subsidiary ideas return
  3. 86: A short chromatic coda, the piece begins to gradually slow
Tonality
1. Fundamentally tonal
2. Frequent discords, which reduce strength of keys
  1. Frequent chromatic notes weaken sense of key
3. Bar 86: scalic phrase in trombone
4. Poulenc tends to modulate to remote keys instead of closely related ones
  1. The beginning is in G major
  2. The middle is in the unrelated key of E flat (Bar 26), though there are a number of chromatic notes, including the A and B naturals in the trombone (26-28)
  3. Bar 40: music in B flat
Harmony
1. Harmonies often quite bare
  1. Last bar in octaves with no chordal notes at all
2. Bar 4: 'Simple' perfect cadences transformed by discord
3. Harmony often outlines by broken chords. At the beginning of the middle section (Bar 26) there is a first inversion chord of E-flat, with the horn outlining the root and fifth of the chord
4. Bars 86-7: trumpet plays B flat, sounding underneath the trombone's chromatic descent
Melody
1. Melodies are frequently simple diatonic tunes, e.g. main theme in G, Bars 1-4
2. Tune often outlines broken chords, eg. first three notes of the trumpet music
3. Occasional large leaps, eg. octave on Bar 2
4. There are occasional ornamental phrases eg. the grace notes in Bar 12
5. Conjunct music found e.g. trumpet Bar 4
  1. Sometimes extends to more scalic music e.g. Bar 9
Rhythm and Metre
1. Principal melody contains mainly quavers and semiquavers, with crotchets for the cadence
2. Tunes often begin on the anacrusis (up-beat), eg. the first phrase
3. Bar 39: semiquaver scale in free rhythm
4. Bars 13-14: syncopation in upper two parts
5. Times signatures change frequently
  1. Bar 39: 9/8 time signature, though this is a way of notating a bar of 4/4 plus a quaver anacrusis leading into next section of the movement
  2. There are three bars in quintuple time (bars 17, 65 and 81
6. Speeds change frequently and are ofte used to differentiate between sections

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Sonata for Horn, Trumpet and Trombone movement 1

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	Created by Matt Pope almost 11 years ago