STUDENT: ELENA BONANNO

ANALYSIS ADAGIO IN B MINOR, MOZART

The Adagio in B minor for piano is a standalone composition for solo piano. Mozart
completed this Adagio on March 19 in 1788. It was an economically difficult period for
him. In fact the war against Turks limited the interest of the Viennese citizens for the music:
works are not commissioned and concerts were not requested.
English musicologist Alfred Einstein considered this piece “one of the most perfect, most
deeply felt, and most dispairing of all his works”.
This Adagio is in the key of B minor. The relative Major of B minor is D Major . Mozart
rarely used this minor key. It is used in only one other Adagio movement from the Quartet
for flute,violin, viola and cello, K. 285, composed eleven years earlier. This key must have
held a special significance for Mozart because in his personal catalogue he wrote, “H moll”
(B minor), the only time he ever listed the key of a work. With 57 measures, the lenght of
the piece is mainly based on the performer interpretation, including the decision whether to
do both repeats. For this sense, the piece may last about 6 minutes or 12 minutes.
The piece starts on a down-beat and the time signature is 4/4. In sonata form, the piece
opens with a B minor triad. The first theme (bars n. 1 - 6) is very rhytmically various and
diversified, by the frequent use of different types of note values (crotchets, quavers,
semiquavers, demisemiquavers...) and several dynamic changes (soft, loud, medium loud,
forced..). After a stop on the dominant (F) on bar n. 6, the first theme begins again (bar n.7),
but in the left hand, initiating the transition to D Major, B minor relative. The second theme
(bars n. 11- 14) is played with the left hand too. It consists on an ascending arpeggio, played
loud in the lower register of the piano, immediately balanced by a rising chromatic ascent in
the treble, played soft, after crossing the hands. In the development section (bars n. 23) the
first theme starts on G major, while the second theme is inverted. After a brief repeat of the
sections and a short coda, the pieces closes in B Major.