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to the absurdities that have been written more recently
about Schubert’s so-called incapacity in the
field of instrumental music!
From the outset the main theme of the first
movement has a particular expressivity and profundity.
it is presented as a dialogue and in this
respect resembles the two preceding Sonatas: a
lyrical motif announced in unison, with a welldefined
rhythm is “answered” by a chordal figure,
first with a “gentle” repetition of the notes, then,
after a second call, with a doleful cry. How else can
we interpret this crescendo which spirals up only
to end with a dissonance? The whole theme has
the character of dark foreboding. in her excellent
biography of Schubert, Brigitte Massin speaks of
a “theme of burial”. What follows is a rather long
harmonic progression based on the dominant E
which gives way to a march theme in an inexorable
manner. From the viewpoint of form this
new motif might be described as a “transitional
group”. But in reality it is already a second subject
whose staccato provides an extreme contrast to
the “sweetness” of the initial subject. And then,
after a modulation, where we might expect the real
second subject there is another appearance of the
opening theme in C minor, a minor key variant of
the relative major! The epilogue theme, in C Major,
directly contrasts fragments of the two themes by
presenting the first in the march rhythm of the
second. it is impossible to describe the “vicissitudes”
of the main theme and its final outburst
(exceptionally in the manner of Beethoven) in the
development section which never leaves the minor
mode. After a long evolution, it is interrupted in
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the dominant of F sharp minor. What then follows
resembles a continuation of the development (the
conflicting part): after a rest the main theme reappears,
in canonic imitation, in the softest ppp, followed
by fragments in F sharp minor, A minor and
in the dominant of C minor (with G in the bass).
From there a modulation in the style of Winterreise
takes us steadily step by step by way of B flat and C
sharp to E where we again hear the second subject
like “march motif”. The development and recapitulation
are entirely fused. (Retrospectively we
might however consider the brief appearance of
the main theme in A minor, quoted after a while,
as the beginning of the recapitulation). But what
seems like a formal game is extremely serious with
each note giving the impression of being “lived”.
The recapitulation also follows its own course: the
epilogue theme here appears not in A, as we might
expect, but in F Major and finally passes by way of
a modulation to A minor at the beginning of the
coda which begins like a funeral march and ends
like an apocalyptic storm (turning upside down,
the last “despairing” cry of the theme before it is
almost crushed in the final page).
The second movement consists of a series of
variations on a tender theme of consolation in C
Major which in mood and harmony resembles the
variations in Beethoven’s final Sonata, opus 111.
The theme has the structure of an idealized string
quartet movement: played first by the “second violin”,
it moves to the “top part” only in the ninth
bar. in the first edition, as well as in all subsequent
editions issued before 1960, four bars are missing,
no doubt because of an oversight: contrary