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