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iod when Liszt was dazzling his audiences, when
the quarrel between Wagner and Brahms was
the subject of conversation, when Tchaikovsky,
Mussorgsky, Franck, the young Debussy and the
young Richard Strauss were becoming the targets
for discussion, is it hardly surprising that the discovery
of Schubert’s Sonatas (mostly works of his
youth) should have evoked little interest and even
less support?
in this respect Beethoven’s fate was more enviable:
contemporary publishers grabbed his piano
works – the last three Sonatas owe their existence
to a commission from Adolf Schlesinger – and already
during his lifetime we find pirated editions.
But Schubert did not have the luck of Beethoven
or later Chopin: the publisher Schott sent back his
impromptus Opus 145, D 935, noting that they
were too difficult for his clientele to understand
and play; and he asked him if he didn’t have something
more digestible to offer (no doubt he meant
waltzes or marches). This attitude of rejection on
the part of publishers might explain the fact that
some of Schubert’s Sonatas remain unfinished.
For he had no source of revenue other than that
which came from the sale of his compositions. it
is interesting to note, in this regard, that for two
of these Sonatas we have two surviving versions,
one partly incomplete and another extremely developed
(D 575, opus post. 147 and D 567, opus
post. 122/D 568). A publisher had probably enlighted
his hopes for publication, which was not
however to be finally realised until after his death.
When eventually a collection of eleven Sonatas
appeared, which still represents for many music
11 English Français Deutsch Italiano
lovers today the complete Sonatas of Schubert,
people began to make comparisons with those of
Beethoven which had long been established in
musical circles. it is amazing to see to what extent
Schubert’s Sonatas were torn to shreds even by
specialists, biographers and critics. Rarely has so
much stupidity been written about music as in the
commentaries produced around 1900.11 The majority
of this criticism revolved around the idea that
Schubert was no Beethoven. This is just about as
legitimate as calling Leonardo da Vinci a secondrater
because he was not Michelangelo! Today we
see things completely differently: the great achievement
of Schubert was his very discovery that in the
realm of the piano sonata he could write without
depending on Beethoven (nor indeed on Mozart,
Hummel or Weber), with absolutely new potential
and a new prophetic vision which is often more
developed than Beethoven’s: we find this already
in the Sonata in a minor D 537 with its successions
of mediant key relationships and “thematic
blocks” in the style of Bruckner, while the first and
third movements of the Sonata in a minor D 784
(opus 143) anticipates the piano writing of Liszt
(with amongst other things the demented octaves
at the end) while the second movement begins
with a harmonic progression typical of Brahms.
We even find sequences of scales a second apart, as
in Debussy, and sonorities which anticipate those
1 To quote a typical example, an extract from a criticism by Hubert
Parry, written in London: “Schubert’s movements are in varying
degrees diffuse in form, slip-shod in craftsmanship and unequal
in content. He had the least possible for abstract design, balance
and order”.