Debussy may have said, “Music is the silence between the notes.” So I wanted to share my analysis of one specific section from Mozart’s Piano Sonata No. 16 in C, K.545, 1st movement. In the passage I’ve shown, there are some differences between the Exposition and the Recapitulation. For starters, the melody in the Exposition rises fairly gradually, while in the Recapitulation the melody does a jump instead. This jump fits perfectly with a chord change (diminished seventh, F#dim7) that isn’t present in the Exposition, which heightens the climax to help end the movement.
But I wanted to draw specific attention to the left hand. For the Recapitulation, the beginning of each bar in my example has an eighth rest (denoted as “a) actual”), and I feel that it makes all the difference. Try playing that passage without those eighth rests (see “b) theoretical”, as if it had followed the Exposition more closely), and you’ll hear the value of silence between the notes! It’s such a simple change too, but I think it’s just brilliant.