Building Music: What is a Theme? - TWO MINUTE MUSIC THEORY #36

The video tutorial explains the concept of musical themes, comparing them to musical sentences and paragraphs. It highlights the importance of themes in compositions, especially in the classical period, where themes often spanned 8, 12, or 16 measures. The tutorial uses Mozart's work as an example to illustrate how themes are constructed from motifs and phrases. It also discusses monothematic and polythematic movements, explaining that a monothematic movement has one theme, while a polythematic movement has multiple themes. In fugues, the theme is referred to as the subject.

What is a theme in music often compared to?

• A musical book

• A musical word

• A musical paragraph

• A musical sentence

During the classical period, how many measures were themes typically?

• 16 or 20 measures

• 8 or 12 measures

• 4 or 8 measures

• 12 or 16 measures

In Mozart's work, what forms the opening idea of a theme?

• A closing motif

• A second motif

• An opening motif

• A third motif

What is a movement with one theme called?

• Polythematic

• Monothematic

• Bipartite

• Fugue

In a fugue, what is the theme referred to as?

• The period

• The motif

• The phrase

• The subject