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around them like ribbons; finally imagine avenues
of enormous trees where you can walk for hours,
and the whole thing enclosed by the highest mountains
stretching out as far as the eye can see, guarding
this divine valley; imagine that and you will have
a vague idea of its inexpressible beauty […]”.
in the following letter dated 25 (or 21st)
September, Schubert continues with his picture:
“The Untersberg, or rather the highest one, shone
and glittered gloriously, with its escort and the common
detachment of the other mountains, in, or next
to the sun. We drove through the valley described
earlier as if through Elysium, except that it has the
advantage over paradise in that we sat in a delightful
coach, a convenience denied to Adam and Eve.
instead of wild beasts we encountered many most
charming young girls… it’s quite wrong for me to
crack such miserable jokes in such beautiful countryside,
but i simply cannot be serious today […]
Heavens and the devil and all the description of a
journey is a dreadful thing! i can’t do it any more…”.
The first movement of the Sonata is dominated
by a virile theme whose ostinato rhythm (a long
note followed by four staccato quavers) has a joyful
character like a triumphant march. Towards the
end of the movement, the tempo of this march
quickens to suggest the entrance of a complete
orchestra: it is as if we could hear the horns, and
above them the violins singing. The second subject
on the other hand recalled a quiet and contemplative
walk, a recurrent element throughout this
Sonata. Unlike that of his predecessors, Schubert’s
music is characterised by the evident pleasure that
he seems to feel when in contact with the sounds
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of the same harmony; here this is especially so in
the first movement. This leads him to suspend, so
to speak, the music on a triad, only to take this repeated
harmony up again, as if in ecstasy. in other
words, the harmony, the sonority itself becomes a
constituent element in the musical style, independently,
or almost so it seems, of the melody and of
the rhythm. Here we see the same trajectory which
will lead through the music of later composers like
Bruckner, but also Debussy, to certain composers
of the present day.
The second movement, Andante con moto, grows
out of the contrast, so dear to rondo form, between
a first theme that is both fast and secretive and a
second theme that is exuberant, joyous and syncopated,
in the style of folk music. The passage in
which the second theme after reaching a kind of
paroxysm, is soon no more than a fragile pianissimo,
like an echo, or like a shadow in a wood after
the incandescent light of the sun, is considered to
be one of Schubert’s finest creations. in the final
recapitulation of the initial melody, the rhythm of
the second theme – not unlike that of the tango
– is superimposed over the first, and finally it subsides
into very deep sounds, in a melancholy elegy.
The Scherzo suddenly takes us back to the elation
of the beginning. in many ways it recalls
some popular dance, especially in its second theme
which seems to grow out of an Austrian “Ländler”.
We would search in vain for an original model.
Schubert in fact possessed that marvellous gift of
being able to invent his own melodies which were
so popular that some of them became integrated
into folk culture, later becoming quite universal;