Schubert's Ugly Duckling

Author(s): Leo Black

Source: The Musical Times , Nov., 1997, Vol. 138, No. 1857 (Nov., 1997), pp. 4-11
Published by: Musical Times Publications Ltd.

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1004222

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 Schubert's ugly duckling
LEO BLACK reassesses Schubert's Arpeggione Sonata
1. Schubert and OR MOST music-lovers, to know Schubert's out of the window. This is the more so when it is
the essence of treated as a work to project to the back rows of a large
Arpeggione sonata is to love it, yet it has ne-
melody. Though an ver aroused enthusiastic comment from hall: hearing it once at a European festival, I found
eminently indepen-
dent judge of Schubert experts. The original Deutsch the- myself wondering why my normal pleasure had been
everything, Hans matic catalogue repeated the comment by the joint replaced by total boredom, then noticed that the dis-
Gal never lost his
editor of the old complete edition, Mandyczewski, tinguished cellist was red in the face with the effort of
reverence for his
that 'Schubert's MS is written in a careless manner trying to make it sound enormous. He would have
teacher Mandy- which shows lack of affection for the work': accord-
czewski, whom he done well to take a tip from the great Lieder singers,
had later helped ing to Maurice Brown's Critical biography it 'was not who move one by subtlety, not brute force.
edit the Brahms considered seriously by Schubert, and thrown off So what are the experts tending to miss and the
Gesamtausgabe; hastily for Vinzenz Schuster, the inventor of the newthe naive music-lovers managing to hear in this ugly
so much was still
instrument' (recte its first performer). Hans Gall de- duckling from Schubert's output?
apparent in a con-
versation I had with votes not one word to it, a heavyweight of recent The sonata's place in his life's work deserves
him some seventy years, Peter Guilke,2 very few, while the 1946 'life andattention. With many great composers the pattern
years later, shortly work' by Walter and Paula Rehberg found that'early, middle and late' can reasonably be identified,
before his death.
alongside the more important compositions from the but in Schubert's case it makes a lot of sense, even
2. Franz Schubert same period (the autumn of 1824) it has a 'distinctlywithin so short a career, to look for four periods
und seine Zeit
needy air'. Of the two major English contributors resembling four seasons. His spring music, from the
(Laaber, 1991), a
remarkable book
to Schubert biography in 1997 Elizabeth Norman years 1812-20, ran to over four hundred and fifty
urgently requiring
Mckay3 ignores it; Brian Newbould,4 who likes the songs, enough in themselves to transform the
translation, were work enough to have made a transcription for clar- German Lied for ever; six symphonies that left him
anyone so bold. inet and string quartet, is nevertheless happy to well aware how far he still was from his ideal of a
3. Franz Schubert leave it as 'not music to plumb the depths', with an'grand Symphony in the Beethoven manner'; his first
(Oxford: Clarendon attractive 'gently lyrical slow movement' and an ope- four masses, full of engaging moments; many piano
Press, 1996). ning movement full of 'concessions to gentle virtu-sonatas and piano duets, adventurous string quar-
4. Schubert: the osity and lightness of touch but having a pensive tets, part-songs, and the prophetic unfinished can-
music and the man theme which embodies not too distant echoes of tata Lazarus.6 Had Schubert died at the end of 1820
(London: Gollancz, other A minor music...'. Getting warm, but not as
he would still rank among the great composers yet it
1997).
warm as Robert Winter,s who grants the sonata would
the have been realistic to write over his grave
5. 'Paper studies status of an 'impressive achievement on a smaller what was written eight years later: 'Music has here
and Schubert
buried a fair achievement, but hopes that were far
scale', adding perceptively 'its mood is at once retro-
research', in
Schubert studies,
spective and anticipatory'. fairer still'. By the time he died he was so far on that
edd. Badura-Skoda The Arpeggione Sonata lay unpublished until the Dia- world had really very little idea what he'd
and Branscombe achieved, even though for his last few years he
belli brought it out in 1871, and it has since been
(Cambridge: only intermittently in the public eye. The Catalancounted among Vienna's leading musicians, receiv-
CUP, 1982).
ing good reviews and earning a respectable amount
cellist Gaspar Cassadd seems to have been responsi-
6. Cf. MT (January ble for unearthing it again in the 1920s, going sofrom
far publication of his music. He was, for example,
1997).
as to orchestrate it as a cello concerto; the Rehbergs
one of those chosen to be a pall-bearer at Beethoven's
7. Are summers funeral in 1827.
also mention a viola concerto version by Nicolas
ever? After all, Biro. In the late 1950s, during the early stages of Ihis
date Schubert's transition from spring to sum-
both world wars
friendship with Rostropovich, Benjamin Britten merper- at the end of 1820, when he was approaching
this century broke
out during the 24. The marriage of his former girlfriend Therese
formed the sonata, and so far as his subtle, percep-
summer. tive playing of the deceptively simple piano part Grobis in December coincided exactly with the pro-
concerned their recording is a classic account: Brit-
duction of two remarkable outbursts, the String
8. 'I feel myself
to be the most Quartet movement in C minor (D.703) and the
ten was, after all, a successor to Schubert as great
unhappy and composer and great song-accompanist. Schlegel setting 'Im Walde' (D.708). In 1822 he hit
wretched creature in
the bullseye with the 'Unfinished' symphony, and
Moving briefly from the near-ideal to a worst-case
the world. Imagine analysis, the special problems presented by theother
so- things have the same feeling of a burning high
a man whose health
nata's solo part (cf. p.5) mean that in many a perfor-
summer, above all the 'Wanderer' Fantasy for piano.
will never be right
again, and who in mance the merely technical aspect becomes para- It was a very short summer though, and far from
sheer despair over mount while the nuances of the musical argument idyllic.7
go The story of his 1822 illness, his break from

4 THE MUSICAL TIMES / NOVEMBER 1997

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composition, his suffering during the acute primary
stage of a sexually-transmitted disease and his fight-
back during 1823, with two operas, music for the Franz Schubert
play Rosamunde, a very strange piano sonata in A
minor (D.784) and a lot more songs culminating in
the cycle Die schine Millerin - all of that is too fami-
"Arpeggione Sonata"
liar to need retelling here.
At the end of 1824 Schubert was 27 and had en-
tered a period of relative calm which one could call
his autumn, before the final 18 months of winter.
One of his important times away from home, in
1818, had been as tutor to an aristocratic Hungarian
family with a son and two daughters. Although tech-
nically one of the servants, he'd had a good time.
Returning six years later as an honoured guest he
felt he'd made a big mistake. Various legends have
sprung up about his falling in love with the younger
Princess: probably there was less to it than novelists
like to imagine and whatever there may have been
must remain an enigma - his cancellation of a dedi-
cation as against his alleged remark 'everything I
write is dedicated to you'. She was by all accounts Version for viola: Version for violon-
simple-minded to the point of childishness, which and piano cello and piano
need by no means have ruled her out as a compan- HNi612, DM 18.- HN 611, DM 18.-
ion for whom he could feel deeply.
Some of Schubert's letters from that summer
: i ?G. HENLE PUBLISHERS
show him in a better or at least more philosophical MUNICH http://www.henle.com
state than the famous one to his painter friend Leo-
pold Kupelwieser written a month before he set off.8
One of the Hungarian letters points up a state of
mind which could be reflected in the Arpeggione So- ences avid for the songs he performedthis with everhis makesfre-
nata and its mixed emotions: 'We imagine that hap- quent companion, the great singer Vogl. things Just worse
as im-instead
of better', etc., etc.
piness lies in places where once we were happy, portant were his delighted reactionsThat to has
allcome
hetosaw
whereas it is actually only in ourselves - so although
around him in the country. be taken as locus
I had an unpleasant disappointment here, and re- The Arpeggione sonata (A minor, D.821) was
classicus for a one-the
peated an experience already undergone last sum- sidedly dark,
very first piece he wrote, safely back from wintry
his second
view of Schubert.
mer in Steyr, I'm now better able to find happiness Hungarian visit. To his friends he seemed well -
and peace in myself'9 - a shrewd observation 'divinely
to 9. To his
frivolous, refreshed by delight andbrother
pain'.10
counterbalance gloomier moments during the same Ferdinand, 18.7.24.
Straight away an acquaintance called Schuster asked
visit and sum up the music of those years. him to write a piece for a strange new instrument
10. Schwind to
just invented by one Stauffer: it was Schober,
played8.11.1824
with a
ND SO TO HIS 'autumn'. It's a clich6 of bow, like a cello, but was shaped, strung and tuned
(DBB 503).
Schubert biography that alone among like a the
guitar, with six strings not the11.cello's
Which isfour.
about It
great composers of the first also Viennese
had frets like a guitar. Stauffer's the
'guitar-violon-
sum-total of
school he was born in Vienna and spent
cello' sank almost without trace: examples
the lightsurvive
thrown in
the whole of his life there. All the same, on the work
though hecollections in Vienna, Leipzig,
instrument andbySalz-
Veronika Gutt-
didn't travel widely during his 31 years, and which
burg: never is to say that there are more Arpeggiones
mann's article
beyond the bounds of Austria and Hungary, than his reg-
pieces to play on them, for though Schuster
contributed to thepub-
ular holidays in the country during the latter lishedpart
a tutor
of nobody other than Schubert is
1978 Schubert known
sym-
his life were immensely important to to him.
haveHecomposed
just for it at all. posium: the experts
were as ever hard at
missed the invention of the railway and his His travels
way of life, however, was to sit down at his
work patronising
were by stagecoach, so once out of Vienna desk he'd
of a be
morning and write; a commission's a com-
the ugly duckling.
away for many weeks and on one occasion mission, so write he did - a three-movement sonata
(1825)
for as long as five months. Which was forall
thistoinstrument
the which he nicknamed the 'Arpeg-
good, given his precarious existence there and
gione', thethe
only advantage of its extra strings and gui-
way his dearest friends would disappear to work
tar-tuning being to make spreading chords easier."
elsewhere for years on end: in the country he had
Schuster a
performed the sonata straight away at a pri-
fuss made of him by generous hosts and new
vate audi- it's to be assumed that Schubert played
concert:

THE MUSICAL TIMES / NOVEMBER 1997 5

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12. One early dominant and tracing a descending curve (ex.1c).
Klopstock setting For completeness' sake one should add a fourth ba-
Wer sich der Ein -sam- keit er - gibt
in A minor, 'Die
sic shape, type IV, found in for example the impor-
frfhen Graber' Ex.la
D.290 (?1815), has tant Schiller setting 'Die G6tter Griechenlands',13
its original aspects, though this is rarer (ex.1d).
enlarged on at some If Schubert really composed the amazing final
An die Tu - ren will ich schlei -chen
length by Gulke, versions of the Harper songs in 1816 they were a ma-
op.cit., pp.76-78); Ex. Ib
jor achievement for a 19-year-old: he may have add-
there is a early
setting of 'Harfen- ed the transforming touches about the time he fell ill
spieler I' D.325, I 9% M' 4.' I1 rip in the autumn of 1822, but the characteristic outline
from November Wer nie sein Brot mit Tr - nen ass,
(type II) of the second song's opening certainly be-
1815, and the fol- Ex.Ic longs in his 'A minor year' 1816.
lowing month (to March 1816 saw a small cluster14 of A minor
an unspeakable but
evidently not unset- works: Violin 'Sonatina' (March), first movement
table ballad by (type I) and finale (type II); 'Winterlied (13 March)
Sch - ne Welt wo bist du?

Schubert's worthy (type II); 'Auf den Tod einer Nachtigall' (13 March)
friend Kenner) 'Der Ex. Id
Liedler' D.209.
(type I); 'Lied - ins stille Land' (27 March) (type I)
(first version in G minor; second version in A minor
13. Cf. MT (June the piano part. That for
the the Arpeggione can most
same month).
1997). ily be played on the violin or viola and has
A minor continued to appear throughout Schu-
14. In the spring known to be performed on wind instruments, bu
bert's career, in works showing the various types of
and early summer my mind it sounds most like Schubert on the
'incipit':
of the same year Its first publisher evidently felt the same since
there was a good
instance of
earliest printed edition Year
(1871) included
Work Type a cello p
1817 Piano Sonata D.537
Schubert's way of
first movement I
turning to a key
several times for
music that shared a
AS A MUSICAL journey, a train of thought,
this sonata is not quite like anything else
he wrote. A lot of it is almost hearty, as if
third movement II
Huttenbrenner Variations n/a
basic mood - in this
remembering happy days in the country, 'Atys' II
case the result was a 1818
cluster of pieces in a but that only serves to point up a streak of melan-
1819 'Abendbilder' II
happy-sounding E choly which puts me in mind of Byron's Childe Ha- 'Die G. Griechenlands' IV
major: 'Trinklied im rold communing with himself against a background 1820-
Mai', 'Minnelied', of all the best European beauty-spots: not Harold in 1822
'Die fruhe Liebe',
Italy but Franz Peter in Styria. The Arpeggione so- 1823? 'Der Zwerg' II
'Blumenlied', 'Selig-
keit', 'Erntelied' (all nata could be called a journey from a rather icy mi- (but outline reaches only
composed in May), nor key through much warmer climes to a very sub- to fifth of scale)
'Das grosse Halle- dued and ambiguous ending in the major. And Piano Sonata D.784
lujah', 'Schlachtlied', Schubert was indeed on a journey - or rather a new outer movements II
'Gott im Frahlinge', (use only the fifth for
stage in the same very long journey, not just through
'Der gute Hirte'
winter but through all four seasons. opening idea; no stress
(a shade more
on sixth as in the many
thoughtful, from The sonata's passage from A minor to A major re-
cases cited above)
June), and the peats the pattern in the great A minor string quartet
Five Piano Pieces 'Lied (Die Mutter Erde)' III
(D.804) from nine months earlier, before his visit to
('Sonata', first and Die schone Midlerin,
last pieces in E,
Hungary. Other extensive A minor works from both no.5 'Am Feierabend' III
D.459, August), earlier and later (piano sonatas D.537, 784 and 959, 1824 'Abendstern II
then finally 'Ferne Violin Sonatina D.385) stick with their minor mode 182515 Piano Sonata D.845
von der grossen right till the final movement. first movement IV
Stadt' (September). fourth movement III
The line of A minor works in Schubert's output is
15. Widening the 'Das Heimweh' related to II
impressive. The key is rare in his early music, almost
scope to take in 'An mein Herz' IV
as if he were reserving it for important things.12 The
individual move- 'Die Manner sind mechant' I
three definitive settings of Goethe's songs of the Old
ments of long 'Nur wer die Sehnsucht II
works, another Harper from the novel Wilhelm Meister (D.478-480,
kennt' D.877/4
piece sums up September 1815) are like templates for Schubert's 1826 Piano duet ? inverted I
a whole side of
varied ways of beginning in A minor - we find three Coronation March
Schubert, the sec-
ond movement of
basic shapes: type I, beginning on the lower domi- 'Hippolyts Lied' IV
the 'Great' C major nant and working in the range up to the upper dom- 1827 'Des Fischers Liebesgluck I
symphony (summer inant (ex.la); type II, beginning on the tonic and Fantasy I
1825, type III). finding its highest point on either the upper sixth or second movement

the seventh (ex. ib); type III, beginning on the upper Winterreise, no.2 I

6 THE MUSICAL TIMES / NOVEMBER 1997

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Piano

Arpeggione -

Ex.2: Arpeggion

Ex.3: Arpeggion

'Die Wetterfahne' 16.

calling that he had all those friends, went to all those Here there is a
1822 'Mut' I curious link with
happy gatherings, got away to all those generous
(originally A minor, the type II orien-
hosts in the country - but took his own self with
later G minor) tated Arpeggione
him, his own very thoughtful nature, his private joy
Sonata: the rotating,
1824 'Der Leiermann'16 I
and sadness, which he hardly ever talked about20 but
re-entrant motion
(originally B minor, found in the second
later A minor)
shared generously with people whenever he made
subject of the first
1828 Piano duet Allegro17 music for them and with them. The opening move-
movement (ex.3)
Benedictus18 for varied II ment's second subject is as much an expression of
and the first episode
1816 C major Mass irresistible joy through motion as any 'concession in
tothe finale re-
virtuosity'. Movement was very precious to the
appears, greatly
slowed down and
Viennese21
In these terms the Arpeggione Sonata's and Schubert makes much of his circling,
first move-
abbreviated, in the
ment is a classic type II, a broad smoothdancing
curvesecond subject; it does, however, always tail
begin-
main accompani-
ning on the tonic, moving to the (minor) sixth
off (ex.3, from *) into a cantabile ending. ment figure of 'Der
above, then returning to its starting-pointIn either
the development
di- section the mood changes Leiermann'.
almost from
rectly (piano introduction) or with further leapsbarupto bar, like the weather on certain
17. Spuriously
to a climactic point (first subject as announced
spring days in atStyria. The piano's immediate versionknown as 'The
greater length by the solo instrument) (ex.2).
of the (The in F major seems happy enough,
first melody storms of life'

finale in the tonic major likewise uses with

the atonic
pluckedas a left-hand-chord accompaniment
and (whose second
lower resting-point for its melody). subject
to its octaves, a first faint hint of the texture in the has a strong
resemblance to the
The Arpeggione Sonata is like a snapshot 19th song of Winterreise, 'Tauschung' (Deception)
of Schu- music at 'Christe
bert at the start of autumn. It is not much of a dia- (exx.4 a and b), but the forte chord and the arpeg- eleison' (bar 51
logue - the hero or solo instrument often seems gione'sentry immediately change the mood: and soetitseq.) in another
alone, and the 'partner' can only try to support as goes on, for fifty bars. In the course of these peri- 1828 work, his final
Mass in Eb D.950).
best he or she can, which is to say that there are a peteia we find fingerprints like the rapid switch from
Beginning on a
mere handful of short passages with the piano al- major to minor (bars 101-14, underlined by a change high A, the opening
lowed to take the lead. Just how important some of from mf to pp); a typical interrupted cadence (bars melody fits none of
these are will, however, be seen later. Mostly the 104-05), and one of Schubert's modulations usingthe a above pigeon-
holes.
piano part is like a series of song accompaniments, single note as pivot (ex.5).
with the endless possibilities for subtle voicing and 18. Schubert had
The 'return home' at the start of the recapitulation
followed both
colouring that implies. is subtly new, a clue lying in the sustained piano left-
Viennese custom
The first movement shows the contrast of first hand where there were originally a note and a rest
and his own pre-
and second subjects typical of sonata form, but(bars 124-25): the differences soon flower (136- dilections and
Schubert very characteristically does things 'the144), as a 'bridge passage' theme (ex.6) originallymade the original
wrong way round': rather than setting out briskly stated and varied, in both cases by the arpeggione,Benedictus a high,
awkward solo for
and forcefully, keeping his singing, lyrical side for-has its decorated restatement given to the piano, a
his soprano girl-
laterlg9, he begins wistfully (ex.2) and introduces a pattern then repeated on the dominant. Until the friend Therese
strong element of movement, perhaps dancing, per-second subject reappears this is unlike the typical Grob. In October
haps whirling, with his second subject (ex.3). literal Schubert recapitulation; and at the point-1828, a few days
Looking at this basic contrast in Schubert's music matching the one where the exposition ended (barafter completing his
between singing line and movement, it is worth re-188) Schubert just as unusually goes into a mostlast piano sonata

THE MUSICAL TIMES / NOVEMBER 1997 7

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(Bb D.961), pizz. arco

Schubert found
time to compose a
p f p
remarkable replace-
ment, full of restless
counterpoint and
yet at times of an
almost Verdian
suavity.

19. So general is
Si i - i__ ! _ F / i i II
Ex.4a: Arpeggione Sonata, first movement, bars 75-80
this that German
terminology uses
the expression
'Gesangsgruppe',
cantabile group,
for the ideas found
at the point where
we say 'second
subject'. Ex.4b: Winterreise, 'Thuschung', bars 1-5
20. The locus
classicus as a record
of this side of him
is the letter from SA f p I pp cresc.
Anton Ottenwalt to
Spaun, 25.7.1825,
(Deutsch: Docu-
ments no.574).

21. Joseph Wechs-

berg's Schubert: his
life, his work, his
time, not otherwise Ex.5: Arpeggione Sonata, first movemen
recommended,
charmingly de-
scribes the Schubert expressive coda. From apreceding
maximum of
would say 'an embryonic consequent the
circle: 'They may warmth in the antecedent' (ex.8).24
tonic major, with the pian
seem a relaxed
er register, the In the second half ofsuddenly
texture the movement (bars 42 on- clears an
crowd, always
singing and dancing from ex.6 is heard on
ward) the sky yet again the
clouds over, the solo solo
instru- instrum
and their girls were sively broken up and with
ment's dark lowest register against a tolling bellain bare piano
pretty in their high- ment. This ending the is stern
piano: eventually the pulse slows right stuff,
down, after s
waisted dresses'.
ing and jollity. and the solo instrument plays with just one melody-
22. Cf. note 14 Such fluctuations note to a bar, of mood
against a piano accompaniment of re- are vivid
for a hint of what
hearing a good performance peated chords (cf. p.10). Bar 52 contains a problem: but are not
this key meant to
to any but very detailed Schubert originally wrote (ex.13) ananalysis:
Ab in the pi- here c
Schubert; its most
of the reason for the different reactions of music- ano's left hand, which he later changed to G, without
famous, poignant
use, one could lovers and scholars. an accidental to indicate whether sharp or natural.
almost say ironic on Many editions, including the Henle 'Urtext', take
some superhuman
level, is for the
THE SECOND movement, Adagio, is in the this to mean he merely forgot to add the natural-sign
slow movement of dominant, E major,22 the most obvious to make it clear he intended G; it is as logical to
the C major string model for its melody being the slow move- think he merely took against the written Ab, which
quintet. ment of Beethoven's Second Symphony.23 since it returns upwards to A is a leading-note and
23. Half a year The arpeggione's eloquent singing paragraph is sym- should be written G#. By normal rules of musical
earlier Schubert had metrical, with answering two-bar phrases adding up orthography the key signature takes care of this and
already quoted the to a four-, then eight-, and 16-bar span, until the points to a G#. Musically speaking, G produces a
same Beethoven
return of the opening is expressively stretched (bars crass 6/4 chord, Ab/G# a characteristically Schuber-
movement in the
24-33) to give one of 14 (4 + 3 + 3 + 4) bars (ex.7). tian augmented-sixth. This is but one of several sig-
corresponding
movement of his The piano has already anticipated this asymmetry in nificant alternative readings in the sonata (cf. note
C major Grand Duo a brief introduction as cryptic as it is beautiful: three 24). On a larger scale the appearance of Ab eight bars
for piano (second bars only in three-time, with the arpeggione's later is not repetitive since it is harmonised differ-
subject). melody entering where one expects the resolution ently and moves down where it originally went back
24. Mysteriously, in and completion of a four-bar pattern: a Mozartean up: the surprise in bar 52 lays the foundation for
the Henle 'Urtext'
subtlety this, but the way the piano gets in ahead of another, which is one definition of good composing.
the third beat of
bar 1 is not tonic
the main melodic line, carrying on from its first cli- The end, from bar 49 on, has typically far-fetched
mactic point (bar 5) is pure Schubert -- the analyst and effective Schubert harmonies exploiting distant

8 THE MUSICAL TIMES / NOVEMBER 1997

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Ex.6: Arpeggione Sonata, first movement,
bars 136-37

Ex.7: Arpeggione Sonata, second movement, bars 20-33

Piano Arpeggione

Ex.8: Arpeggione Sonata, second mo

"' L- or or -c ".- -
T

Ex.9: Arp

trasted episodes (subdominant

but (for minor, dominant second-inversion
but dominant root-
sic tonality. major). The second episode is, however, followed
position with F# at
The Arpeggione is unique among Schubert's so- not by a further hearing of the main section but by
the top. This I am
natas in joining slow middle movement directly to the transposed return of the first.25 The contrast reluctant to believe:
finale, like Beethoven (as an afterthought) in the found in the first movement is present here too: it needs looking
'Waldstein' Sonata and again in the 'Appassionata'; in again the first (rondo) theme is quiet and thought- into.
the latter the slow movement is a sizeable set of vari- ful, though this time in the major, and each of the 25. A later Austrian
ations in its own right whereas the 'Waldstein' 's slow two episodes has its own kind of movement,26 the composer, Franz
section is much more of a mere introduction. Schu- first recalling the vigorous second subject of I, while Schmidt, followed
Schubert's example,
bert's Adagio is a genuine slow movement (melodicthe second episode, taking up the 'happy' E major of in the scherzo of his
paragraph with middle episode and return of the ini- II, offers the most bucolic music in the work, until A major string quar-
tial tune, then second section) but an introduction the crucial point where it goes quiet before the tet, where a second
insofar as its second section eventually comes to a piano's dramatic intervention and the reappearance trio is likewise fol-
halt and leads into the finale. Such a link to the en- of the first episode. lowed immediately
by a repeat of the
suing quick movement was more typical of an ac- The rondo theme is rhythmically restful, repetitive first.
companied display piece (which in one sense this so- even, and a persistent pedal-note in the piano's left
nata is) rather than for true chamber music: it is hand adds to the stasis: the theme's return after the 26. Hungarian
countryside, Styrian
found in for example Chopin's Introduction andfirst episode is literal (with the written-out repeatcountryside?
grande polonaise for cello and piano (1829-30, only aomitted), the second and final one having at least two
27. In between,
year or two after Schubert's death), and in Schu- most important small alterations that contribute a
in his 1823 opera
mann's Adagio and allegro for horn and piano from good deal to the remarkable and moving ending of Fierrabras, Schubert
the late 1840s. A later Schubert work in the same for- this curiously autobiographical work (ex.9). The
came up with a
mat is the Introduction and rondo in B minor for vio- effect of the A# (bar 405) and the flattened seventhspowerful echo of
lin and piano. Beethoven's example notwithstanding, a repeated falling
(bars 408-11), with the piano's reharmonisations
figure from near the
the incorporation of this scheme into a sonata with a (especially the move to the subdominant, D major)start of the sonata's
full-scale first movement was very unusual. should be overwhelming in a good performance. Atfirst movement (e.g.
The finale, Allegretto, in the tonic major, is also the very end the arpeggione once again shows whatbar 47 onward); it
unusual in that Schubert virtually always ends his it is best at - an upward vanishing arpeggio on the occurs in the pas-
sionate aria for one
sonatas with a mixture of rondo and argumentative, tonic chord - and despite a ff chord in the penulti-
of the opera's hero-
fully worked-out sonata form (exposition, develop- mate bar the sonata tails off into silence.
ines, Florinda (Act
ment and recapitulation). Here, with hardly a trace Schubert's mind often ran back to earlier works,2, no.13, 'Der Brust
of 'development', there is a pure rondo - main sec- in a few cases used as basis for an entire new com- gebeugt von Sor-
tion heard three times, and two contrasting and con- gen'). A book could
position, but often simply reawakening some brief

THE MUSICAL TIMES / NOVEMBER 1997 9

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 frtr

T T Is -

Ex.10: Piano Sonata D.784, second movement, bars 53-56

pizz.

IM, I Mr I I I -
, . \ , ....- F-

Ex.l.l: Arpeggione Sonata, third movement, bars 296-307

r- 9 17" -*'w 9

S d-- -I - . . .. - i

Ex. 12a: Arpeggione Sonat

be written on all the

idea that had attende
for a long while and only needed the right poems to
manifestations of
because set them free. As much as anything Winterreise
something in is
four repeated notes
in Schubert. The ing thing about
about
trying to stop looking back the
on something that A
Sonata D.784 itself all its cross-references look forward not back. The was the most important thing in life and that one has
looked back in the major exception is an allusion to the sombre Alost. For the lover in Miuller's poems it was a girl, for
principal melody Schubert it was more than anything his robust
minor piano sonata D.784, the strangest music from
of its second move-
ment to one note-
just after his illness, eighteen months before thehealth. That was undermined: some day - who knew
worthy detail in
Arpeggione sonata.27 Near the end of the sonata'swhen, probably sooner rather than later - it would
the 1820 song 'An slow movement there is a strange incursion of some-fail completely. For the final years of his life he was
den Mond in einer thing that could be a sound of nature, perhaps bird- on a tightrope and he knew it: in fact he finally died
Herbstnacht', a song (ex.10). At the turning-point of the Arpeggione of typhoid, caught from the water in a Viennese su-
recitative-like set-
Sonata's finale the transition from second episode to burb so new that nobody had yet straightened out
ting of words that
sum up human the drainage system. Bearing in mind the state in
repeat of first, the piano has one of its very rare dom-
loneliness faced inating episodes, based on a new version of that which syphilitics like Schumann, Wolf, Maupassant
with death's inevi- arabesque over the chord of the dominant minor and Nietzsche spent their final years, one could re-
tability (cf. 'Wort ninth (ex.11). There is an immediate decorated gard his typhoid as providential, while still wishing
oder Ton?', in MT
(March 1997),
repeat, not on the arpeggione but still on the piano:bitterly that it had waited a few years longer.
p.21). Such net- this whole passage deserves attention in the context Near the end of each movement of the Arpeg-
works of association of the work as a whole (as does this whole under-gione sonata the music seems to drop its mask: it
run through Schu- rated sonata in the context of Schubert's career. ). turns very bare and simple, the piano reduced to the
bert's output like
simplest possible pattern - a note in the left hand, a
the human lymph-
O much for backward glances. But textures inchord in the right. In the first movement, the change
system, rarely
thought-about the sonata's piano part show Schubert's mindof mood is sudden and striking, the maximum
but vital. already turning to things that would emergewarmth (A major) giving way to the first wintry
with greater poignancy when he came to setspell in autumn. You can almost see someone trudg-
the Winterreise poems. Some of his friends believed ing through the snow. The deceptive A major that
later that writing those songs had affected him soprecedes this looks forward to the illusory warmth
deeply as to help bring on his early death: there isspoken of at the end of the Winterreise song 'Tau-
enough in the Arpeggione Sonata from two years ear-schung' (Illusion, or Deception): there is even a the-
lier to suggest that they were boiling up inside him matic similarity (exx. 12 a and b).

10 THE MUSICAL TIMES / NOVEMBER 1997

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 ihm weis ein hel - les,war - mes Haus und ei ne lie - be See - le drin

atempo

A ".4 N- I N I i "f ? FI N I N 'I N I N 1 I NI I "/I "N " -0, N I N

Ex.12b: Winterreise, no.19, 'Thuschung'

p?
Ex.13: Arpeggione Sonata, second movement, bars 47-56

. ... . ? - , , e no19,'Taschng
A iI? ! I r 1 92' i;

Ji

Ipvues.I- I-

f P-l--100~

Ex. 14: Arpeggione Sonata, third movement, bars 269-95

The second movement contains

an end ais comparable
where everything yet again open to ques-28. 'Analysis and
transition (ex. 13).
The finale offers a different use of a similar tex-
ture: the music remains in the major, but with a
marked quietening of the harmonic rhythm after the
sonata's liveliest, most bucolic section (ex.14). This
leads directly into the crucial piano interlude bars
296ff: it all adds up to a less drastic 'change for the
colder' than the comparable passages in the first two
movements, but this whole subsection is still a turn-
ing-point within the finale and a major structural
point within the entire work.
Performing the Arpeggione Sonata I am left with
the ever-stronger impression that Schubert, a phase
in his life just ended, was taking stock - reviewing
hermeneutics and
tion. Erwin Ratz had wise things to say about the
their significance
relationship between music and life:
for the interpreta-
If we ask ourselves why so many people seek a clo- tion of Beethoven',
in Osterreichische
ser acquaintance with the works of the great masters
... we can probably reject from the outset any notion Musikzeitschrift
vol.25 no.12
that a general aesthetic pleasure in the meaning or
(1970). Translation
interest of musical forms per se is the sole reason. It
by Mary Whittall.
is surely beyond question that the majority of these
people experience an enrichment of the personality,
in so far as a work of art releases emotions and
transmits experiences which enable them to arrive
at new insights into their own natures and their rela-
tion to the world.28
In such a release of emotions and transmission of

the past, dimly anticipating the future. Nothing less experiences could lie the key to the enigma of why
would explain its extraordinarily labile moods and music-lovers love the Arpeggione Sonata and musi-
its progression from uncertainty through warmth to cologists not.

THE MUSICAL TIMES / NOVEMBER 1997 11

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