To illustrate our analysis of sonata form in this lecture and the next, we turn to the fourth movement of Wolfgang Mozart’s Symphony in G Minor, K. 550. Mozart composed a prodigious number of masterworks during his short life, despite constant poor health and alongside an astoundingly full and active personal life. The principle of dramatic thematic contrast inherent in sonata form is nowhere more apparent than in the fourth movement of Mozart’s Symphony in G Minor, K. 550. The most complex of the Classical-era forms, sonata form allows for the introduction and development of two or more contrasting principal themes. Although technically a form evolved from Baroque-era binary dance form, spiritually, sonata form was inspired by dramatic procedures inherent in opera.