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

I The Beginnings
10
Schubert’s favourite harmonic procedures can be found in this movement: the
major/minor duality (bars 9 ff. and 64-66), harmonic relationships between a key and
its flattened sixth (bars 41-45), as well as frequent modulations (bars 86-104), including
an unusual whole-tone progression (bars 90-93). However, as said before, the most
striking feature of this movement concerns its pianistic textures. The virtuoso style of
Beethoven and other contemporaries finds a place in Schubert’s writing: fast scales in
both hands, quick changes of register, broken octaves, strong dynamic contrasts,
powerful octave passages in both hands, etc. (Ex. 7.) This movement is also one of the
first examples of Schubert’s taste for entering the recapitulation in the subdominant. He
had already done this in the first movement of his Second Symphony, written just a few
months earlier, but never before in a piano sonata. This procedure is worth noting
because it will become very common in his sonata-form movements. As a closure to the
movement, Schubert inserts a short coda in which these virtuoso influences are again
present (bars 205-211). In the fast right-hand octaves and the dense chords we can
envisage this young composer exploring the possibilities of the new keyboard
instruments in a manner similar to his contemporary pianist composers.
The Andante is in the subdominant, F major, and is in traditional A-B-A form.
The character and melodic gestures in the first part comply closely with Classical
models, especially with those of Mozart. It is perhaps significant that Schubert never
writes excessively tardy slow movements or extremely fast finales. Typically he gives us
smoothly flowing second movements and gently moving finales, probably as a result of
his admiration for Mozart. It is also interesting to see elements here that are present in
much later works: note the resemblance between the transitional passage at bars 14-17
and the last variation of the second movement of the later Piano Sonata in A minor
(D845) of 1825; incidentally both passages are in C major. It is in the central episode
(bars 26-52) where we see Beethoven’s influence most clearly. Written in D minor, the
sixth degree of the tonic (again involving a tonal relationship by thirds), there are
musical associations with the opening of Beethoven’s Second Symphony, a work
especially loved by Schubert. 12 As a matter of fact, the nature of the writing is orchestral,
with strong opposition between the triplets in unison and their harmonized answer in
another group of the orchestra; as well as in the dialogue between the sections over a
continuous harmonic backdrop of triplets.