Have you ever listened to a piece of music, closed your eyes, and imagined yourself in another place, in another time, or as another being? 

It can easily be said that music has an acute ability to literally lift you from your shoes and transform you into anyplace you want to be. But… was that always the case?

In the early part of the Classical Era, composer Franz Joseph Hyden created a way to merge the characters and events of what was then known as Comic Opera and through no words at all, build the foundations of what would become Sonata Allegro form and in doing so, completely change the world of classical music by influencing practically every composer who came after him.

In this episode of The Art of Listening, Jeff Bradbury and Gabriel Gordon discuss the history of Sonata Form and share examples of how an idea that started on the stages of opera morphed over 100 years through the introduction of the Tone Poem into what we hear today on movie screens and our favorite video streaming services.