Grove's dictionary of music and musicians

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SONATA 527
•hoven probably stood just at the point where
the extremest elaboration and the most perfect
mastery of combination on a large scale were
possible. He himself supplied suggestion for yet
fnrtlier elaboration, and the result is that the
works of his successors are neither so concentrated
uor so well in hand as his. Weber was
nearest in point of time, but his actual mastery
of the art of composition was never veiy certain
nor thoroughly regulated, though his musical
instincts were almost marvellous. He had one
great advantage, which was that he was a gi'eat
pianist, and had the gift to extend the resources
of the instrument by the invention of new and
characteristic eifects ; and he was tolerably successful
in avoiding the common trap of letting
ettect stand for substance. Another advantage
was his supreme gift of melody. His tunes are
for the most part of the old order, but infused
with new life and heat by a breath from the
genius of the people. His two best sonatas, in
A|> and D minor, are rich in thought, forcible,
and genuinely full of expression. He always
adopts the plan of four movements, and disposes
them in the same order as Beethoven did. His
treatment of form is also full and free, and he
often imports some individuality into it. As
simple instances may be taken—the use of the
introdnctory phrase in the first movement of the
Sonata in C, in the body of the movement
the rondo structure of the slow movements,
especially in the Sonata in D minor, which has
a short introduction, and elaborate variations in
the place of exact returns of the subject ; and
the interspersion of subjects in the first movement
of the Sonata in E minor, op. 70, so as to
knit the two sections of the first half doubly
together. An essentially modern trait is his
love of completing the cycle of the movement
allusion to the opening
by bringing in a last
features of the whole movement at the end,
generally with some new element of expression
or vivacity. Specially noticeable in this
respect are the first and last (the Moto ' perpetuo
') of the C major, the last of the A|j,
and the first and last in both the D minor
and E minor Sonatas. Weber had an exceptional
instinct for dance -rhythms, and this
comes out very remarkably in some of the
minuets and trios, and in the last movement
of the E minor.
As a whole the Weber group is a decidedly
important item in pianoforte literature, instinct
with romantic qualities, and aiming at elaborate
expressiveness, as is illustrated by the numerous
directions in the Ab Sonata, such as'con anima,'
'con duolo,' con passione,' 'con molt' '
affetto,'
and so forth. These savour to a certain extent
of the opera, and require a good deal of art and
musical sense in the variation of time and the
phrasing to give them due effect ; and in this
they show some kinship to the ornamental
adagios of the times previous to Beethoven,
though dictated by more genuinely musical
feelings.
Schubert's sonatas do not show any operatic
traits of the old manner, but there is plenty
in them which may be called dramatic in a
modem sense. His instincts were of a preeminently
modern type, and the fertility of his
ideas in their superabundance clearly made the
self-restraint necessary for sonata -writing a
matter of some difficulty. He was tempted
to give liberty to the rush of thought which
possessed him, and the result is sometimes
delightful, but sometimes also bewildering.
There are movements and even gi-oups of them
which are of the supremest beauty, but hardly
any one sonata which is completely satisfactory
throughout. His treatment of form is often
daring, even to rashness, and yet from the point
of view of principle offers but little to remark,
though in detail some perfectly magical feats of
harmonic progression and sti'okes of modulation
have had a good deal of influence npon great
composers of later times. The point which he
serves to illustrate peculiarly in the history of
music is the transition from the use of the idea,
as shown in Beethoven's Sonatas on a grand and
richly developed scale, to the close and intensely
emotional treatment of ideas in a lyrical manner,
which has as yet found its highest exponent in
Schumann. In this process Schubert seems to
stand midway— still endeavouring to conform
to sonata ways, and yet frequently overborne
by the invincible potency of the powers his obti
imagination has called up. The tendency is
further illustrated by the exquisite beauty of
some of the smaller and more condensed movements,
which lose nothing by being taken out of
the sonatas ;
being, like many of Schumann's,
specimens of intense concentration in short
space, the fruit of a single flash of deep emotion.
Among the longer movements, the one which
is most closely unified is the first of the A
minor, cp. 143, in which a feature of the first
subject is made to preponderate conspicuously
all through, manifestly representing the persistence
of a special quality of feeling through
the varying phases of a long train of thought.
Like many other movements, it has a strong
dramatic element but more under appropriate
control than usual.
As a whole, though illustrating richly many
of the tendencies of modern music, the Sonatas
cannot be taken as representing Schnbert's
powers as a composer of instrumental music so
satisfactorily as his Quartets, his String Quintet,
and some of his finest Symphonies. In these
he often rose almost to the highest point of
musical possibility. And this serves further to
illustrate the fact that since Beethoven the
tendency has been to treat the sonata-form with
the fresh opportunities afforded by combinations
of instruments, rather than on the old lines of
the solo sonata.