Télécharger le livret - Outhere
Télécharger le livret - Outhere
Télécharger le livret - Outhere
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eginning of the Sonata in E flat major<br />
showed certain melodic similarities with Mozart’s<br />
Sonata in B flat major, K 570 or with the beginning<br />
of Beethoven’s Third Symphony, this theme<br />
in B major irresistibly aspires in a youthful manner<br />
towards the heights rising from the fundamental<br />
B right up to a twelfth above F sharp before<br />
falling back again into the very low register.<br />
We already see some signs pointing to Bruckner,<br />
whose themes are so often of great range. After the<br />
softening of a serene response which sett<strong>le</strong>s down<br />
the tonality, the second entry of the opening motif<br />
erupts energetically and impatiently with a half<br />
bar anticipation, springing forth in octaves rising<br />
to the minor ninth C: the notes B-C sharp-C<br />
which follow each other in quick succession c<strong>le</strong>arly<br />
form a dominant chord in E minor or E Major. Any<br />
musician or music-lover would expect therefore<br />
to hear one of these two chords. But something<br />
entirely different happens.<br />
Boldness of harmonic sequence represents<br />
Schubert’s most important innovation in this<br />
Sonata without any doubt. Unfortunately, the details<br />
cannot easily be described without the use of<br />
a certain amount of technical jargon. The uninitiated<br />
reader will have to excuse us here and skip the<br />
paragraph that follows: there are still many other<br />
things to say which will be comprehensib<strong>le</strong> for the<br />
music-lover who has no formal technical training.<br />
The ninth B-C is a “hard” dissonance. For centuries<br />
it was thought that the bass – the basis –<br />
was so important that it was in the present case<br />
the C in the upper part which had to resolve into<br />
the con-sonance of the octave B; the ru<strong>le</strong>s dictated<br />
29 English Français Deutsch Italiano<br />
that such dissonances should not be allowed to remain<br />
suspended without resolution. But Schubert<br />
thought otherwise: “why should the bass not give<br />
way for once?” Why should it not itself take the<br />
“step” of the semitone towards the resolution of<br />
the dissonance, the step from B to C? This reversal<br />
of the ru<strong>le</strong>s was for music a Copernican revolution.<br />
Metaphorically, it is as if Schubert had, for the first<br />
time, questioned the princip<strong>le</strong> of man’s absolute<br />
primacy, for the bass. And so we are <strong>le</strong>d not toward<br />
E but towards C Major. This C Major is not however<br />
the final goal: a simp<strong>le</strong> passage carries us to G<br />
Major the key of what we might call the transition,<br />
a G Major which, by dint of an added minor sixth<br />
E flat, is tinged with fluttering melancholy. Finally,<br />
the transition passes by way of E minor to end in<br />
E Major, the key of the second subject. Here again<br />
we find one of Schubert’s great innovations: of the<br />
two po<strong>le</strong>s which can be set against the tonic (the<br />
dominant and the subdominant), the subdominant<br />
had been culpably neg<strong>le</strong>cted, and this had happened<br />
throughout the musical evolution preceding<br />
Schubert’s tim; this key only served as a kind of<br />
support for the other chords, like an “invited guest”<br />
who had a word to say only in the development or in<br />
the coda section. Schubert, however, attributed to it<br />
a new significance by creating an antinomy between<br />
its gent<strong>le</strong> character and the nearly always dynamic<br />
nature of the dominant key. After being happily established<br />
in the second subject, the subdominant<br />
E Major neverthe<strong>le</strong>ss resolves into the dominant F<br />
sharp major, the key of the conclusion.<br />
The multiplication of usual harmonic sequences<br />
could easily have <strong>le</strong>d to a break up of formal and