The Unfinished Piano Sonatas of Franz Schubert Javier ... - Ethesis

me a greater awareness of what music truly is and what it represents. Whether its
context is performing, composing, researching or listening, for me, music is ultimately
one more way of spiritual enrichment that can help us to grow as human beings – a
purpose for which Schubert’s music, even regarding his unfinished works, serves
splendidly.
Some time ago, during a trip to Italy, I had the chance of staying for a couple of
days in Florence, a city where there is so much to see and wonder at – as, in fact, there
is all over Italy. But when time is limited, one must necessarily make a choice, so I
decided to spend one of my free mornings at the Galleria dell’Accademia. I remember,
among many other wonders, a hall dedicated to a series of unfinished works by
Michelangelo: four sculptures of slaves intended for the tomb of Pope Julius II in Rome.
Those pieces have given me food for thought right up until this day. They are, in some
respects, at least as impressive as, and possibly even more interesting than,
Michelangelo’s completed Moses or Pietà. Lacking any detailed carving, they represent
partial torsos whose heads are imperceptibly turning out of the stone as if awakening
from a long period of lethargy, and whose bodies seem literally to be emerging from the
rock itself, rather like a snake ridding itself of an old and dead skin. Incredibly, they
powerfully retain that sense of mass and movement that is so characteristic of
Michelangelo’s finished sculptures. A little later, I learned to my surprise that the slaves
I had seen in Florence were considered by Michelangelo to be finished. As a sculptor, he
always believed that his work was the removal of superfluous stone in order to liberate
the form which was hiding inside. To him, those blocks of marble contained only that
form and nothing else. Moreover, it is interesting to see how the same material can hold
different potential for different artists. Some might find possibilities where others see
no more than a dead end. For instance, Buonarroti carved his monumental David from
a piece of marble already used and rejected by other sculptors.
There are thousand of similar examples to be found and from many diverse
fields. My intention here is to illustrate the latent possibilities within the materials that
an artist uses – be it stone or sound – and how the process of creation is usually far
more complex and arduous than the perfect final work might suggest. When we
consider Franz Schubert, we cannot help but be amazed at such a huge output in such a
short lifetime. Schubert’s thirst for music – and words – was insatiable, and his
productivity, even in the ‘bad’ years, was quite phenomenal. In this vast œuvre, music
for solo piano occupies an important place. Besides a large number of smaller-scale
pieces, Schubert worked on twenty-three piano sonatas that cover his entire
compositional career. However, he only completed eleven of them. One wonders why
that should be so and also whether we can learn something more from those twelve
unfinished works about a composer who made such an original and seminal
contribution to the genre of the piano sonata. A large number of Schubert’s works,
including many of his piano sonatas, nowadays occupy a place at the core of the
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