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seems that this time had not yet come: almost immediately
afterwards, these stylistic elements were
to disappear almost completely from Schubert’s
music, to return only in a sublimated form with
his very last works.
The first movement begins with a calm meditative
theme: two phrases as it were in unison,
whose response is in the nature of a chorale. The
ensuing entry restates the theme in the bass register,
sonorous as if played on the cello. Everything
still seems “normal”; however, with the following
quotation of this main subject, rapid chromatic
figures emerge in the form of counterpoint which
captures all the energy and leads to the expected
dominant chord of G major. Then, the first surprise:
the second subject, with its broad melodic
line, enters not as we might expect in G major, but
in E flat major, blossoming out in an authentically
romantic way (we already find something similar
for example in the work of C.M. von Weber and
also in that of Hummel, but not with the same precision).
Four “magical” chords take us back with a
great beauty of sound to the true dominant key of
G Major, where the exposition ends with two new
ideas, one sparkling the other elegiac.
The normal rule now would be that one of the
four themes from the exposition would provide
the material for the development section. But
here not at all! A surprising passage, with a broken
cadence, moves from G to A flat major bringing
a fifth theme, a peaceful phrase of four bars
which is repeated with modulation and enriched
with new parts in pianistic counterpoint, sometimes
above, sometimes below (the beginning of
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this middle section is in many ways similar to the
development of the first movement of the Sonata
in A flat major Opus 110 by Beethoven, which
was not to be composed until three years later!).
All this is amazingly organic. Unity is assured
by the constant movement in semiquavers which
animates both the end of the exposition and the
development, and by a perfect logic in the modulation.
This movement stops suddenly on an E in
the bass. This halt in E major is certainly a signal
for the arrival of the recapitulation: the development
has reached its “goal”, however, just before
the expected entry of this recapitulation this so
promising fragment of the work ends. i have tried
to complete it in the style of Schubert.
Although we cannot prove that the Adagio in
E major D 612 belonged to this Sonata, it seems
very likely. it perfectly matches the two other
movements. Without going any further, the relationship
of the keys – C-E-C – is typical for this
period. Unusual and very similar in modulation to
the first movement, the mediant key relationship
between the main and secondary themes is found
again in the Adagio. The secondary theme, instead
of appearing in the dominant B major, arrives in G
major, therefore with the same intervallic separation
from the main key as we found in the second
subject in the first movement. The rapid chromatic
scales correspond to similar figures from the first
and third movements.
The theme, lyrical, noble and calm, is followed by
a progressive acceleration. The piano with its trills
and its “sighs of love” imitates birdsong, particularly
the languorous chanting of the nightingale.