WebFacts More WebFacts    WebFacts 1 In Mozart's time, composers were taught to write sonata forms by first learning to write smaller musical forms. They would begin by writing one-, two-, three-, and four-measure melodic units-the basic "bits and pieces" of Classical music. Then they would learn to combine these fragments into phrases and periods and to transpose a fragment to make a sequence. After mastering such basics, a young composer was instructed to combine the elements into a short binary-form movement, like those we composed in Chapter 23. The next step was to expand the little binary movement into the longer sonata format. We know that these methods for teaching composition were in use in at least some areas of Europe during the Classical era because of two existing composition manuals from the time: Joseph Riepel's Anfangsgrunde der musikalischen Setzkunst (1752-68) and Heinrich Koch's Versuch einer Anleitung zur Composition (1782-93).

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