Piano Sonata No. 11 in A major, K. 331: III. Rondo alla Turca

The Turkish Rondo — the final movement of this A-major sonata — arrives with a military swagger entirely at odds with the elegant variations that precede it. Mozart is doing something like an impression here, evoking the Janissary band music that was fashionable in eighteenth-century Vienna: the short, percussive phrases, the insistent repetitions, the almost mechanical regularity of the rhythm. The piano writing is deliberately keyboard-orchestral, the left hand providing bass drum and cymbals while the right hand pipes the melody in bright, clipped eighth notes. There's nothing subtle about this piece and it doesn't want to be subtle — it wants to be immediate, striking, slightly exotic by Viennese standards, and above all enjoyable. The A section returns three times, each time with the same cheerful insistence, a melody so sticky it refuses to leave the mind for hours after hearing it. What's remarkable is how this relatively simple, populist piece became one of the most recognized classical works in the world, played in elevators and advertisements and first piano recitals, endlessly surviving decontextualization because the tune is simply that good. You reach for it when you need something with a pulse and a grin, something that asks nothing of you except attention and delivers pure, uncomplicated pleasure.