Last week, I posted an analysis of Beethoven’s Bagatelle, Op. 119 No. 1 that I intended to post in January. Why didn’t I?
I was so caught up in the harmony of the last 10 measures. That’s it. Just 10 measures made me question my validity as a music theorist, so I put it off and kept trying to make sense of them, and finally, I just posted it.
Basically, the issue was that the motive from the A section is transposed from G minor to C minor at the end, so most analyses across the internet claim that this section is in C minor, and the whole piece ends on G major, which makes it end open.
But I just don’t hear the harmony underneath that way. I hear it as containing a Picardy third (when a composer suddenly makes a minor key major by raising the third scale step) and as having plagal motion, which means that the piece does not end open.
There’s a lot more to it, so if you’re interested in the arguments I had with myself, you can check the article out here.
|