(California Studies in 19th Century Music 11) Charles Fisk-Returning Cycles - Contexts For The Interpretation of Schubert's Impromptus and Last Sonatas - University of California Press (2001)

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The publisher gratefully acknowledges the generous contribution

to this book provided by the following individuals
and organizations:
John and Jola Anderson
Carol Franc Buck Foundation
Emily Callaghan
Frank A. Campini Foundation
Patricia S. Dinner
Eldorado Foundation
Ann and Gordon Getty
David B. Gold Foundation
William and Flora Hewlett Foundation

R e t u r n i ng C yc l e s
california studie s in 19th-ce ntury music
Joseph Kerman
General Editor
1. Between Romanticism and Modernism: Four Studies in the Music

of the Later Nineteenth Century, by Carl Dahlhaus, translated
by Mary Whittall
2. Brahms and the Principle of Developing Variation, by Walter Frisch
3. Music and Poetry: The Nineteenth Century and After, by Lawrence
Kramer
4. The Beethoven Sketchbooks: History, Reconstruction, Inventory,
by Douglas Johnson, Alan Tyson, and Robert Winter
5. Nineteenth-Century Music, by Carl Dahlhaus, translated
by J. Bradford Robinson
6. Analyzing Opera: Verdi and Wagner, edited by Carolyn Abbate
and Roger Parker
7. Music at the Turn of Century: A 19th-Century Music Reader,
edited by Joseph Kerman
8. Music as Cultural Practice, 1800–1900, by Lawrence Kramer
9. Wagner Nights: An American History, by Joseph Horowitz
10. Decadent Enchantments: The Revival of Gregorian Chant at
Solesmes, by Katherine Bergeron
11. Returning Cycles: Contexts for the Interpretation of Schubert’s
Impromptus and Last Sonatas, by Charles Fisk
Returning Cycles
Contexts for the Interpretation of Schubert’s

Impromptus and Last Sonatas
charle s fisk
u n i v e r s i ty o f ca l i f o r n i a p r e s s be rke ley lo s ange le s london

University of California Press
Berkeley and Los Angeles, California
University of California Press, Ltd.

London, England
© 2001 by the Regents of the University of California
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Fisk, Charles.
Returning cycles : contexts for the interpretation
of Schubert’s impromptus and last sonatas /
Charles Fisk.
p. cm .—(California studies in 19th-century
music ; 11)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-520-22564-3 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Schubert, Franz, 1797–1828. Impromptus, piano,
D. 899. 2. Schubert, Franz, 1797–1828. Impromptus,
piano, D. 935. 3. Schubert, Franz, 1797–1828.
Sonatas, piano, D. 958–960. 4. Piano music—
Analysis, appreciation. 5. Sonatas (Piano)—Analysis,
appreciation. I. Title. II. Series.
ML410.S3 F6 2001
786.2'1894'092—dc21 00-059006
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum

requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (R 1997)
(Permanence of Paper).8
Portions of chapter 3 and the epilogue are reprinted from

“Questions about the Persona of Schubert’s ‘Wanderer’
Fantasy,” College Music Symposium 29 (1989): 19–30; and
“Rehearing the Moment and Hearing-in-the-Moment:
Schubert’s First Two Moments Musicaux,” College Music
Symposium 30 (1990): 1–18. Used by permission of the
publisher. Portions of chapter 9 are reprinted from
Charles Fisk, “What Schubert’s Last Sonata Might Hold,”
in Music and Meaning, edited by Jenefer Robinson.
Copyright © 1996 Cornell University. Used by
permission of the publisher, Cornell University Press.
For Agustin
and
in memory of my mother
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Prologue: Schubert after Winterreise 1
1. Resonant Beginnings 25
2. Fields of Resonance 38
3. The Wanderer’s Tracks 60
4. Retelling the “Unfinished” 81
5. Expanding the Scope of Schubertian Tonality:

The Opus 90 Impromptus as the Stations of a Tonal Quest 115
6. Displacing the Sonata: The Opus 142 Impromptus 141
7. Beethoven in the Image of Schubert:

The Sonata in C Minor, D. 958 180
8. Recovering a Song of Origin:

The Sonata in A Major, D. 959 204
9. Schubert’s Last “Wanderer”:

The Sonata in Bb Major, D. 960 237
Epilogue: Telling, Retelling, and Untelling Schubert 269
Afterword 284
Notes 287
Index 303
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to Wellesley College for the sabbatical leave in 1995–96 in which

I began to write this book. Several passages included here have appeared be-
fore in print: sections II through IV of chapter 3 are largely taken from
“Questions about the Persona of Schubert’s ‘Wanderer’ Fantasy,” College
Music Symposium 29 (1989): 19–30; a few sentences of section V of the
epilogue appeared in “Rehearing the Moment and Hearing-in-the-Moment:
Schubert’s First Two Moments Musicaux,” College Music Symposium 30, no. 2
(1990): 1–18. Sections II through IV of chapter 9 are taken, for the most
part, from “What Schubert’s Last Sonata Might Hold,” in Music and Meaning,
ed. Jenefer Robinson (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1997),
179–200. I am grateful to these publishers for permission to reprint these
passages.
My personal thanks go first to Joseph Kerman, who took an interest in this

project in its earliest stages and has followed it closely ever since. I know no
one who understands better how to temper firm, sometimes even di‹cult
criticism with kind encouragement and support. Not only has he steered
me away from some dubious paths, he has also encouraged me to persevere
along some that I might otherwise have lacked the courage to follow whole-
heartedly. In him I have been blessed with a sympathetically engaged men-
tor who, despite his deep involvement with my project, has never once im-
posed on me an agenda of his own.
ix
The colleague of my own generation to whom perhaps I owe the most
is also the one I have known the longest. Within days after I arrived as a first-
year graduate student at the Yale School of Music, I heard the Bb-Major
Sonata, which I myself had just learned, coming from a neighboring prac-
tice room. Eager to know my competition, I barged in on Janet Schmalfeldt.
A steadfast friend over the many years since then, she has listened inex-
haustibly, and with sympathetic and astute critical understanding, to both my
performances of and my ruminations about Schubert, contributing much to
their development.
Martin Brody, my colleague at Wellesley for more than twenty years, has
also listened sympathetically, and responded insightfully, to some version of
just about every thought on Schubert I have ever had. He also read and com-
mented on drafts of about half of the chapters of this book. Arlene Zall-
man, my other composer colleague at Wellesley, has also been wonderfully
supportive of me both as a performer of and a writer about Schubert. Her
extraordinary ear for tonal relationships has opened new paths for me.
Fred Maus, whom I first knew as a colleague at Wellesley in the late 1980s,
has remained an important friend and intellectual influence ever since. It was
he who, on the basis of conversations with me about a book I especially ad-
mire, Edward T. Cone’s Composer’s Voice, invited me to contribute to a ses-
sion on that book at the AMS meeting in Baltimore in 1988, thus providing
me with the opportunity for my first conference paper. It was at that session
that I first met Cone, whose writings have been inspirational to me, and also
Kerman, who chaired the session. That paper, incidentally, is the basis of my
chapter on the “Wanderer” Fantasy, which holds in essential ways the kernel
of my argument. Mr. Cone himself read my manuscript for the University
of California Press, and made careful and invaluable comments on it.
Other friends and colleagues who have contributed especially to my un-
derstanding of aspects of music and performance germane to this study, and
who have read and helped me with written work I have incorporated into
it, include Julie Cumming, Donna Doyle, Joseph Dubiel, Jonathan Fineberg,
Claire Fontijn, Richard Goode, Marion Guck, Gregory Karl, Jay Panetta, John
Rhodes, Bonnell Robinson, Carl Schachter, Lois Shapiro, and Muriel Wolf.
It has also been my privilege to collaborate with Lois Shapiro in the per-
formance of some of Schubert’s four-hand works, to benefit from her ex-
traordinarily sensitive help with my own solo performances, and to learn
x ac k n ow l e d g m e n t s
from her by listening to and discussing hers. Other wonderful musicians with
whom I have enjoyed memorable and thought-provoking collaborations in
Schubert works include violinist Nancy Cirillo, cellist Bruce Coppock, tenor
William Hite, baritone Mark McSweeney, and soprano Sarah Pelletier.
I also wish to acknowledge my students in recent years who have been
especially stimulating in class discussions of this repertoire.Three of the best,
Erica Schattle, Mandy Wong, and Joanna Wulfsberg, have played specific and
crucial roles in the preparation of this book. Erica has prepared the figures,
and Mandy and Joanna have proofread and commented constructively on
the entire manuscript.
I must also make grateful mention here of Phyllis Henderson Carey, who
donated the professorship that I hold at Wellesley College. She is an avid and
well-informed music lover, and it has been especially gratifying to enjoy her
interest and support.
Finally, I wish to dedicate this book to the two people without whose
influence I could probably never have written it: Agustin Llona, whose love
and support have made it possible for me to collect myself and know my-
self well enough to envision this project and carry it through, and my mother,
who led me on my first excursions into the world of music, and who al-
ways nurtured our artistic inclinations without ever dominating them.
ac k n ow l e d g m e n t s xi
Prologue
Schubert after Winterreise
The questions addressed in this study of Schubert’s piano music originated

as a performer’s questions. Wanting better to understand and to deepen my
sense of identification with this music while playing it, I began to search for
words to describe what it held for me. While drawn to all of Schubert’s ma-
ture piano music, I felt an a‹nity especially with the last three sonatas. I
studied all three of them when I was a student, read what little I could find
about them, and returned to them again and again in conversations with my
friends. Even as a student I often mentioned that I felt the aura of Winter-
reise in these sonatas, especially in their slow movements, and that I was struck
by the cyclic return of specific melodic and harmonic material within each
sonata, from one movement to another. These two observations have come
to seem closely related but cannot by any means be collapsed into each other.
They not only help to articulate what follows but also become further ar-
ticulated in the course of my narrative.
Like almost every other pianist, I played several of the impromptus be-
fore playing any of the sonatas. I found stories in them, too, especially in
the tragic Impromptu in C Minor, op. 90, no. 1, with its Ab-major episode
of halcyon but essentially irretrievable memory that is so di‹cult for most
young students to bring to realization, and in the Impromptu in Ab Major,
op. 142, no. 2, which has for me always been a kind of musical refuge, a set-
ting for an enraptured vision. Only after I realized that these pieces were
composed in the same year as Winterreise, and almost certainly followed the
1
completion of its first part, did I begin to associate them, too, with the song
cycle. I began to hear the continuation of its winter journey in the deliber-
ate, unremitting rhythms of the first impromptu of each set and in their
echo in the repeated-note melodies common to all eight of these pieces. I
heard each of these sets as a single composition, as I did the last sonatas,
rather than merely as a set of contrasting and complementary pieces. Even
though the possible association of these sets with the Winterreise cycle had
no specific implications for the musical organization of each set, it nonethe-
less stimulated my speculations about their cyclic interdependence.
It was in the Sonata in A Major, D. 959, that I first specifically identified
and described for myself several of the most elaborate and far-reaching of
Schubert’s cyclic procedures, in which he based separate and contrasting
movements on common musical material. Sometimes almost disjointed in
its gestural juxtapositions, this music counterbalances its disjunctions with
continual returns to its own generative motives. Although this sonata does
not have any feature as manifestly and elaborately cyclic as the return of
the theme of the Andante in the finale of the Trio in Eb Major, D. 929,
from the same period, it exhibits a wide range of cyclic characteristics: its
opening rhythmic motives return in all of its movements; the finale ends
by virtually quoting the beginning of its first movement (see ex. 8.2b); the
Scherzo incorporates another virtual musical quotation, a downward rush-
ing C#-minor scale (see ex. P.1b, mm. 34¤.) recalling the wild central episode
of its Andantino (see ex. 8.6a); and the Scherzo and the finale both return
to secondary tonal regions especially stressed in the first two movements.
On close examination, still more cyclic elements emerge, until virtually
every passage in the sonata becomes implicated in processes spanning all
four movements.
Soon after making these discoveries about the A-Major Sonata, I studied
for the first time the Fantasy in C Major, D. 760 (“Wanderer”), composed in
1822 and based on Schubert’s 1816 song “Der Wanderer.” Often hailed as a
seminal cyclic work, and associated with Liszt’s tone poems and other later
Romantic pieces, it has scarcely been considered in relation to Schubert’s own
subsequent instrumental music. Several features of the A-Major Sonata of
1828—the wildness of its stormier episodes, the plaintive simplicity of its
slow movement theme, the clear, if sometimes seemingly haphazard refer-
2 return i ng c yc le s
ences of its movements to one another, and the marked presence of C# minor
(the “Wanderer” key) as well as C major—resonate especially strongly with
the fantasy.
Schubert composed no further fantasies until the last year and a half of
his life. In this period, beginning with the completion of the first part of
Winterreise early in 1827, he explored several genres in which he had not
previously worked. At this time he composed not only two more fantasies—
his first fantasies for more than one player—but also his first impromptus,
his first complete piano trios, and his first string quintet. The fantasies, one
for violin and piano, the other for piano duet, are the only pieces after the
“Wanderer” Fantasy that might seem unquestionably related to it, most ob-
viously because both also link together four separate movements through
transitions. But the patently cyclic returns of themes, gestures, and motives
in the Eb-Major Trio and the A-Major Sonata also have no other explicit an-
tecedents in Schubert’s instrumental music. Although close study reveals sub-
tle cyclic relationships in the instrumental music before Winterreise, Schu-
bert only expanded on relationships of this kind by returning to manifestly
cyclic procedures, and to music reminiscent of the “Wanderer” Fantasy, af-
ter his involvement with the song cycle. It therefore seems possible that his
work on these songs may have intensified, or even reawakened, a cyclic im-
pulse earlier revealed most explicitly in the “Wanderer” Fantasy, leading to
a proliferation of new cyclic experiments, some of them drawing on tech-
niques first explored in the fantasy. But how, or why, could Schubert’s work
on Winterreise have had this e¤ect?
II
The argument emerging here—the answer to this question—may seem quite

simple: Schubert, after being consumed with the composition of Winterreise
in 1827, was stimulated by his work on this cycle to undertake other cyclic
compositional projects in the period immediately following, the period that
turned out to be his last. But in fact, no obvious musical features link the
application of the term cycle to Winterreise with that of cyclic to such pieces
as the two last fantasies, the Eb-Major Trio, and the A-Major Sonata. The
p rolog ue 3
song cycle lacks the patently unifying devices characteristic of these pieces:
missing in particular are a clearly unified tonal plan of some kind and clearly
recognizable returns of material from earlier songs in later ones. My argu-
ment may seem to depend more on a deceptive terminological coincidence
than on any truly musical a‹nity.
Several substantial recent studies have taken up what makes Winterreise a
cycle, and their conclusions seem only to confirm these doubts. Susan
Youens’s synoptically states only that “a subtle web of tonal connections and
dramatic associations links groups of adjacent songs and even forms associ-
ated arches between widely separated songs.” Ludwig Sto¤els and Richard
Kramer both undertake more elaborate analyses of the cycle’s tonal networks,
leading to perceptive and suggestive refinements of such a statement with-
out necessitating any essential revision of its content.1 Sto¤els finds in the
cycle a “dense network of tonal, motivic and rhythmic relationships,” but
most of the relationships he describes are, again, subtle and in no way rem-
iniscent of the conspicuous motivic unification of the “Wanderer” Fantasy.2
In a provocative formulation, Kramer writes of phrases that “seem to re-
verberate beyond the actual moment, to invade the pitched space of other
songs, and thus to assume a significance that has much to do with the deeper
questions of cycle making.”3 These words apply as well, in fact, to many
passages in Schubert’s instrumental music, especially after Winterreise, but also
before it. In my discussions of the impromptus and last sonatas, I shall con-
sider some of these passages in detail. But they do not characterize the kinds
of “Wanderer”-related cyclic procedures that appear in some of the com-
positions that followed the completion of the song cycle.
It may be, as Youens argues, that the aimlessness and futility of the win-
ter journey—the almost random succession of its scenes and the failure of
the wanderer to achieve even the death he seeks—preclude the manifest
cyclicism either of explicit motivic and thematic recollection or of any tonal
reinforcement of closure in Winterreise. But its protagonist’s alienated
predicament may still have linked him in Schubert’s mind with “Der Wan-
derer,” and thus indirectly with the musical homecoming of that figure in
the “Wanderer” Fantasy. A brief exploration of this theme of the Winter-
reise poetry and of its musical expression in the song cycle suggests why Schu-
bert might have needed, after completing the cycle, to find a companion
figure for this protagonist.
III
From his opening lines, the winter wanderer proclaims himself an outsider:
“Fremd bin ich eingezogen, Fremd zieh ich wieder aus” (A stranger I came,
a stranger I depart). He has no home with which he feels identified, and,
accordingly, his journey has neither origin nor goal. It begins as he turns
away from the town that might have become such a home, had he succeeded
there in love. But his opening avowal of his alienation suggests the in-
evitability of that love’s failure, the impossibility of his desire’s fulfillment,
and hence the impossibility of such a home for him. As he moves on, his
immersion in one frozen, barren scene after another only deepens his iso-
lation, so that he gradually becomes alienated even from himself, losing every
memory or aspiration through which he might ever have forged or retained
a sense of his own identity. Near the end, in “Der Wegweiser,” he realizes
that not even the signpost he follows stands on solid ground. It ultimately
discloses only an inner compulsion, and the route it indicates is one from
which no one has ever returned. At the very end, in “Der Leiermann,” he
retains only the shell of himself epitomized for him by the old beggar-mu-
sician, whom this final anti-apotheosis reveals to him as his Doppelgänger,
a hallucinatory companion.
Wilhelm Müller’s Winterreise poems never once give voice, even at the
beginning, to any life-a‹rming hope. Unrequited love, their point of de-
parture, has itself already become only a memory for the wanderer as he
leaves the town by night. His journey leads, if it can be said to lead any-
where, to a deeper unrequited longing: a longing for death. The profound,
but mostly subtle and only subliminally sensed musical relationships among
the songs in Schubert’s setting might readily embody the unbidden, mostly
unarticulated impulses that drive the winter wanderer onward. By con-
trast, the cyclic procedures that are absent from Winterreise—recognizably
systematic tonal unification or explicit return of well-formed themes or
motives—can easily bring a sense of a coherent narrative or of the a‹rma-
tion of a life-order to a musical context, suggesting through various kinds
of musical return the recovery of lost memories, the fulfillment of dreams,
or a return home.
The songs of Schubert’s cycle more than match the extremity of their texts.
In their spareness—their unadorned melodies, their unrelenting rhythms,
p rolog ue 5
their frugal, expressively saturated chromaticisms, and their textural evoca-
tions of both the stillness and the turbulence of winter—they bespeak the
intensity of Schubert’s identification with their lonely protagonist. After cou-
pling his musical imagination so uncompromisingly to this poetry of dev-
astation, Schubert may have needed, at the core of his composerly being,
to recover musically his sense of narrative continuity, to reclaim himself
through his own music. His use, after Winterreise, of the very kinds of cyclic
procedures that are not incorporated in the song cycle enacts such a recla-
mation. Winterreise is a cycle without a center, spinning slowly out into a
frozen wasteland; but many of the instrumental pieces that follow Winter-
reise are returning cycles. Their beginnings often suggest searching or wan-
dering, but ultimately these compositions fulfill their quest and restore to
their wanderer a sense of self-possession and belonging.
IV
One might think that, instead of reflecting any musical a‹nity between
Winterreise and the “Wanderer” Fantasy, Schubert’s return in the late in-
strumental music to some of the compositional procedures of the “Wan-
derer” Fantasy—and the elaboration of other cyclic procedures as well—
might simply be a compensation for what is missing from the song cycle.
Were this so, why might his work on the earlier song cycle, Die Schöne Mül-
lerin, not already have entailed such a compensatory reaction? Like Winter-
reise, it avoids both explicit motivic or thematic recall and unity of tonal
plan. As with Winterreise, its poems concern wandering and death, although
their story of unrequited love di¤ers in ending with the young wanderer’s
suicide. Written in 1823, this cycle comes much closer than Winterreise to
the time of the “Wanderer” Fantasy. One might therefore expect that work
on this first cycle would already have activated Schubert’s compositional
memory of the “Wanderer” Fantasy and of techniques associated with it.
But the textual themes of alienation and loss of direction in “Der Wan-
derer” are shared with Winterreise in ways that are not shared with Die Schöne
Müllerin. And the “Wanderer” Fantasy musically articulates these themes.
Its tonal and gestural shape can easily be heard as embodying, and even as
intensifying, the alienation and waywardness of “Der Wanderer,” but then
overcoming them. This fantasy is in its own way a returning cycle: it marks
Schubert’s return to sustained and fully realized instrumental composition
after nearly three years of mostly unsuccessful operatic projects and instru-
mental works left incomplete.The fantasy is clearly based on the third stanza
of his setting of “Der Wanderer” (see ex. 3.4a, mm. 23¤.), which provides
not only the theme for the variations of the slow movement (see ex. 3.1,
mm. 189¤.) but also the leading motives for all four movements. In the
context of Schubert’s hypothetical return to the techniques of the “Wan-
derer” Fantasy as a response to his own musical identification with the po-
ems of Winterreise, the resonance of the text of the third stanza with the
opening lines of the later song cycle is stunning. The stanza culminates in
the line “Ich bin ein Fremdling überall” (I am a stranger everywhere). As I
shall argue in chapter 3, the intrusion of the music of this stanza, in its origi-
nal C# minor, into the C-major context of the fantasy produces a conflict
of tonalities that powerfully represents the wanderer’s sense of estrangement.
But the ensuing tonal course of the fantasy brings the wanderer home. While
we can only conjecture about Schubert’s musical reasons to recall the home-
coming of “Der Wanderer” in his final year, we need not strain to imagine
the motivation provided by the poetry. The memories and dreams of “Der
Wanderer” reanimate a figure whose winter journey has culminated in the
revelation, through the imagery of “Der Leiermann,” of his own self-
annihilation.
So far I have been stressing the striking, although isolated, returns of ex-
plicit “Wanderer”-related cyclic devices in the instrumental music of Schu-
bert’s last year. As I have implied, these are only the most explicit of such
procedures occurring in this music; the late instrumental music returns to
the cyclic procedures of earlier instrumental compositions and Winterreise
as well. But a subtler aspect of the fantasy finds deeper and far more perva-
sive resonances in this later music. The emphases of the “Wanderer” keys of
C# minor and C major in the A-Major Sonata not only recollect the fan-
tasy’s conflicting keys, they also manifest a similar, although more subtle and
elaborate, tonal organization. This kind of tonal organization, which sys-
tematically sets mutually remote keys in conflict with each other and then
gradually resolves that conflict, is characteristic of each of the last three
sonatas. This organization can be said to individuate a Fremdling protago-
nist; but more integrated returns to the same remote keys in subsequent
p rolog ue 7
movements bring this protagonist home. Once again, this kind of tonal or-
ganization does not play a role in Winterreise. Like the more explicit com-
positional remembrances of the “Wanderer” Fantasy, however, this subtler
and more pervasive remembrance of its cyclic tonal organization may again
respond, in compensation or recovery, to the desolation of the song cycle.
As I have already suggested, it seems unlikely that Schubert could ever have
chosen to set the Winterreise poems, or found music so devastatingly appro-
priate for them, unless he had strongly identified with their Fremdling wan-
derer. In fact, the circumstances of Schubert’s life, from about the time of
the “Unfinished” Symphony and the “Wanderer” Fantasy onward, make this
identification very likely. By January of 1823, he was seriously ill with
syphilis; he ostensibly recovered, but from then on knew he would proba-
bly die young. Moreover, Schubert was himself an outsider in fundamental
ways: his family never fully supported his pursuit of a musical career; he
never made a home for himself for any extended period, instead taking up
lodging with one friend after another; and, if evidence of his homosexual-
ity proves well-founded, he may have felt himself to be a stranger nearly
everywhere.The peregrinations of these wanderers may have echoed his in-
ner life.
Several pieces of writing by Schubert and by his friends confirm these spec-
ulations. In constructing a biographical background for his immersion in Win-
terreise, Youens cites three: Schubert’s letter of 1824 to Leopold Kupelweiser,
at first despairing about his personal life, then—as if in compensation—
detailing his compositional ambitions; an 1827 entry in Fritz von Hart-
mann’s diary telling of Schubert’s inability, stemming from a kind of over-
involvement, to carry out his first Winterreise performance; and Joseph
Spaun’s 1858 recollections not only of Schubert’s own very emotional first
performance of these songs but also of his avowal of their central impor-
tance for him.4 Another document, Schubert’s own story, “Mein Traum”
(which was discovered in his papers after his death), suggests Schubert’s feel-
ings of estrangement from his father as a possible source for his identification
with the Fremdling wanderer of this tale. The circumstances of the story’s
composition are not known, but in some respects they do not matter. It is
di‹cult to imagine any external circumstance that would so completely
determine the story’s particular course as to make it unrepresentative of its
author.5
This narrative, its title preceded by the heading “Allegorical Story” in his
brother’s hand, is dated 3 July 1822, only a few months before Schubert’s
breakthroughs in sustained instrumental composition, and a few more be-
fore the full onset of his illness.6 It begins in a happy family setting, with the
protagonist surrounded by his beloved parents, brothers, and sisters. But one
day his father takes them to a feast, at which the protagonist’s sadness con-
trasts with his brothers’ merriment. When he refuses the food, his father
banishes him, and he wanders o¤ to a faraway country to remain there, torn
between love and pain, for years. When his mother dies, his father allows
him to return home, and he stays. Eventually his father takes him back to
the “pleasure garden,” the scene of the feast. When he rejects the food a
second time, his father strikes him and he flees again. Of his second exile
he writes: “Through long, long years I sang songs. But when I wished to
sing of love it turned to pain, and when I wanted to sing of pain it was trans-
formed for me into love.” But at the conclusion of the story, as if by a mir-
acle, the protagonist is transported into a circle of men, young and old, who
are gathered around the tomb of a dead maiden, bathed in heavenly
thoughts and “the most wondrously lovely sound.” “And I felt,” he con-
cludes, “compressed as it were into a moment’s space, the whole measure
of eternal bliss. My father I saw too, loving and reconciled. He folded me
into his arms and wept. And I still more.”7 The story corresponds in some,
although clearly not all, respects to Schubert’s life. He did quarrel with his
father over his musical aspirations and left home for several extended peri-
ods in order to pursue them.8 His first departure in 1816 also marked the
end of his half-hearted courtship with Therese Grob, possibly the only such
relationship in Schubert’s life. In a diary entry of about the same time, he
expressed grave doubts—even revulsion—about marriage.
Although certainly not in themselves conclusive, these correspondences
with Schubert’s life encourage interpretation of “Mein Traum” as a secret
psychological manifesto and thus as potentially revelatory of a¤ective dis-
positions and emotional upheavals that might have found expressive corre-
lates in Schubert’s music. Toward the end of the story, music itself plays a
p rolog ue 9
seemingly functional, although not fully articulated, role: the only specified
activity during the second exile of Schubert’s dream persona is his singing
of his songs. His music apparently takes control of his emotions, transforming
his love into pain and his pain into love. In the final scene of salvation, his
awareness of the “lovely sound” marks the moment—one might even call
it a “moment musical”—of his entrance into the blessed circle. In exile, he
has tried to comfort himself by singing, but he has not overcome his su¤er-
ing or disentangled it from his other emotions. When he becomes a mem-
ber of the exalted circle he no longer has to sing. The lovely music of the
circle is a sensory embodiment of the atonement he has sought through his
own music.
Music thus comes explicitly to “Mein Traum” only in the last two of its
five scenes, but since the story is in its own way cyclic, these two scenes de-
rive much of their meaning from the earlier scenes: from an earlier exile, in
which he is “torn between the greatest love and the greatest pain” but does
not yet sing of these feelings; from an earlier death, his mother’s; and from
the ultimately failed homecoming that follows that death, echoed in his final
redemptive homecoming to the circle around the dead maiden’s tomb. The
story’s alternation of scenes of home and exile produces a simple, quasi-
musical ABABA pattern: home—exile—return home (after his mother’s
death)—second exile, seeking consolation through music—second return
home, to a home transfigured, possibly by music (after the death of the
maiden). Only music di¤erentiates the second exile from the first; hence the
transformative, expressive power of music helps bring about the final salva-
tion that follows the second exile, through the sublimation of his mother (and
even of some aspects of himself ) into the dead maiden and the sublimation
of himself and his father into partners in the brotherhood of the circle.
We cannot know for sure what “Mein Traum” meant for Schubert; Schu-
bert himself could probably not know.9 But by placing himself in its scenes
of banishment and exile and thus articulating a need for salvation, Schubert
seems to express an understanding of himself that would make his identifi-
cation with the lonely, essentially exiled protagonists of “Der Wanderer”
and Winterreise very likely. That “Mein Traum” tells of his singing only in
exile, never at home, also suggests that, for Schubert, his music was not merely
pleasurable or comforting, but profoundly redemptive. With chilling yet
poignant irony, the poetry of Winterreise concludes with an invocation of
this redemptive power of music. “Wunderlicher alter,” the wanderer entreats
the beggar, “soll ich mit dir gehn? Willst zu meinen Liedern deine Leier
dreh’n?” (Wonderful old man, shall I go with you? Will you turn your hurdy-
gurdy to my songs?) For Richard Kramer, this poem, “about neither past nor
future, drones its mantic questions in a timeless present.”10 Schubert’s ob-
sessively minimalist setting makes palpable the falling away of memory and
anticipation and the consequent emptiness—the nearness-to-death—of
such a present. The wanderer’s world has reduced itself to an expanse of ice
and snow that finally reveals his Doppelgänger, the old man who will pre-
sumably never speak or sing, but will only continue turning the handle of
his instrument, recycling the same sounds again and again.
Of course, Winterreise can also be read as an allegory of the Romantic
Artist—or, more specifically, the musician—and perhaps even “Mein Traum”
can be understood in this way. In both Müller’s poems and Schubert’s story,
the central protagonist is a spurned wanderer who creates his own songs while
in exile. Winterreise’s protagonist longs for death, yet, paradoxically, his wan-
dering keeps him intensely alive. He sublimates the desire that drives him ever
onward, the desire that by its nature can never be fulfilled, into his poems—
his songs, his art. His final song brings his feverish but aimless quest into
stark contrast with the Leiermann’s numb stillness. Does he pose his final
question to another human being, or simply to another awareness within
himself, one that realizes he has reached an outer limit? By joining with the
Leiermann, by renouncing the desire that can lead only to death, he can
perhaps be reborn, and thus recreate himself within the imaginary home-
land of his art. In “Mein Traum,” the final scene might figure as that home-
land itself: the dead maiden as the muse, the circle of men as other artists,
here all reconciled for a common redemptive cause. Like the Romantic Artist,
the protagonist is reborn.
If Schubert identified with Winterreise’s wanderer as strongly as these spec-
ulations suggest, both personally and as an artist, then he might very well
have sought to enact, through his subsequent instrumental music, the re-
demption or rebirth denied to that wanderer. He might have sought to re-
vive the wanderer through that music, to restore to him or re-create for him
his memories and aspirations, and to find for him a new home or a place of
rest.11 Recollection of “Der Wanderer,” whose protagonist, unlike the win-
ter wanderer, could still remember and dream of a homeland, might have
p rolog ue 11
o¤ered one possibility of such recovery and rebirth; recollection of the
“Wanderer” Fantasy, in which that earlier wanderer finds his way home,
would have suggested ways to achieve it.
VI
Cyclic organization, both in the form of occasional obvious references to

earlier material—references meant for recognition—and in the form of more
pervasive subtle references that produce deep resonances between ostensibly
unrelated passages, may seem uncharacteristic of the Schubert understood
by most music lovers. Motivic unification through the return of the same
motivic and tonal material in widely disparate passages and separate move-
ments may initially seem unrelated to, if not even inconsistent with, a per-
vasive characteristic more traditionally recognized in Schubert’s music: the
linking of passages of markedly contrasting tonality and character, as if in
improvisation, through such sounding elements as common tones or chords.
It is possible, however, to understand these linkages and the recurrences—
especially veiled recurrences—of motivic material as complementary man-
ifestations of a single complex of musical and expressive concerns. The as-
sociations that these elements rekindle through their resounding are musical
analogues of what in the twentieth century came to be called the stream and
the wellsprings of consciousness: the stream being the constant associative
activity of the mind, and the wellsprings manifested by the constant return
of the same structures of memory in the images this activity brings to aware-
ness. In contrast with so much of Beethoven’s music, which in Scott Burn-
ham’s recent formulation can seem to generate a world from the premise of
a heroic self, Schubert’s music can seem to question the very existence of a
persisting and unified self. Schubert’s music is thus preoccupied with the
finding and preservation of self in a world that, in its disparate and conflict-
ing demands, threatens to consume it.12 In Winterreise the wanderer’s jour-
ney, ultimately a quest to find himself, fails so utterly that he cannot even
prepare to die. But he is left with music, however vestigial. And in much of
Schubert’s subsequent instrumental music, a Winterreise-haunted self threat-
ened with annihilation, in intensified doubt over its own unity and persis-
tence, can seem gradually to regain continuity and integration.
VII
A passage from the A-Major Sonata—the first page of its Scherzo (ex.
P.1a–b)—exhibits with special concentration the seemingly contradictory
tendencies that suggest such an interpretation of Schubert’s last music: its
quasi-improvisatory manner and its rich cyclic allusiveness. In the first phrase,
the introduction of Gn in measure 6 brings a deflection of the music’s tonal
course to B minor. The Fn in measure 10 has the e¤ect of neutralizing, even
of retracting this B minor, and the phrase cadences happily in the A major
in which it began. Immediately after this cadence, with no direct modula-
tory preparation, C major intrudes (m. 17). The neighbor-note figure
through which it announces itself summons back the melody of measures
11 and 12, transforming its E from 5 of A major into 3 of C major. Provi-
sionally stabilized through a semicadence (m. 21), this C major becomes static,
calming into quiet reverberation over a dominant pedal of twelve full mea-
sures. A violently downward-rushing C#-minor scale bursts into this calm
(m. 34), again jolting the music without warning into a new key. Once again,
a common melodic emphasis links this disruptive gesture to the music upon
which it intrudes—this time the initiating A that the scale shares with the
preceding measures. After the disruption the music, now a C#-minor dance,
is calm again. It makes its return to A major only as if through sleight-of-
hand, by reinterpreting in A the melodic ending heard moments earlier in
C# minor (mm. 48–49).13 Rather than emerging as the stations of a pur-
poseful tonal course, the principal tonalities of this Scherzo—C major, C#
minor, and A major in its return—seem to befall the music.Thus this move-
ment proceeds in the manner of free association: it is like an improvisation
in which common tones and motivic resonances bind disparate, heteroge-
neous gestures and tonal regions together in a sounding stream.
But even on first acquaintance a listener or reader of the score might rec-
ognize the allusion of the down-rushing C#-minor scale to the very similar
gesture that wrenches the feverish music at the imperiled heart of the An-
dantino into C# minor for its harrowing climax (see ex. 8.6a, mm. 107–108).
The recall of such an impressive gesture may seem in no way to controvert
the improvisatory quality of this Scherzo. It may seem even to reinforce this
quality, making the apparent improvisation of this moment especially evoca-
tive of the free association that it mimics, in which just about anything might
p rolog ue 13
example p.1 Sonata in A Major, D. 959, Scherzo
a. Mm. 1–24
Allegro vivace
x
8va
7 8va
12
16
21
C major
example p.1 (continued)
b. Mm. 33–54
33
3
3
C minor
37
cresc.
43
cresc.
49 8va
be remembered. But this Scherzo recalls material from the earlier movements
in other ways that are less suggestive of improvisation. An extemporization
might begin with a pregiven motive, and the reference to the beginning of
the first movement (see ex. 8.2a) that opens the Scherzo represents as plau-
sible a source as any for such a motive. But the elaborateness of the refer-
ence, through which the downbeat motive (x) of the sonata’s first phrase
combines with the upbeat motive (y) of its second phrase to form the rhythm
of the Scherzo’s first four chords, seems too deliberately contrived to have
occurred spontaneously.14
The impulsive move to C major just after the double bar recalls the simi-
larly, although quietly, impulsive one that introduces the C major of the first
p rolog ue 15
movement’s development by simply echoing the last E-major gestures of the
exposition (see ex. 8.3, mm. 129¤.). This C-major passage lacks the distinc-
tive motivic references to earlier movements of the Scherzo’s A-major open-
ing and the C#-minor explosion, but it still subtly recalls the first movement’s
C-major music, not only in the unprepared way it emerges but also in the sta-
sis it produces by means of a sustained bass pedal. Through these abstract yet
palpable resemblances, these two C-major passages resonate with each other.
Thus this movement returns to material of the earlier movements in three
distinct ways: through the near-quotation of a striking musical gesture,
through a new configuration of explicitly recalled motives, and through the
recollection of tonal stasis in a chromatically derived, third-related key. In
each case it recalls the earlier material in its original key, highlighting the
recollection through the suddenness of the tonal move that introduces (or,
in the case of the tonic, reintroduces) it, so that each of these recollections
comes as a surprise, and hence as an interpretive provocation.
VIII
In its first fifty measures, the Scherzo accordingly gives almost equal weight
to three very di¤erent tonal regions: the A major of its opening theme, with
a tonic cadence at the double bar; the C major that begins forcefully just af-
ter the double bar, gradually quieting into static reverberation rather than
preparing to move to another key; and the C# minor of the violent de-
scending scale and the ensuing quiet dance. Apart from the passing digres-
sion to B minor in the opening phrase, the first harmonically articulated
transition in this Scherzo occurs only with the return of the A major of its
opening theme, and then only as if it were an afterthought. Understood in
one way, then, this music does not so much progress from one tonal region
to another as fall suddenly from the tonic into another region quite distant
from it, and then from that region into yet another.
Instead of sensing a continuum of tonal possibilities, one might appre-
hend the tonal space in which this music arises as stratified into dissociated
realms. As already indicated, both C major and C# minor seem to befall the
music; common tones and motivic resonances ensure the musical continu-
ity threatened by these sudden changes of key, but these are disjunctive
changes that throw into relief the remoteness of C major from A major and,
especially, of C# minor from C major. In this way Schubert invests these re-
mote keys with an aura of autonomy, as if the activity within them might
elude the control of the tonic. Can the same self who has lived through the
lonely terror recalled in the C#-minor explosion in the Scherzo still have ac-
cess to the pastoral tranquillity remembered through the C major that pre-
cedes it? What does either of these experiences contribute to the A-major
world into which they intrude? Can life in that world draw comfort from
the pastoral or win recovery from the terror, or must the protagonist who
has these experiences always remain an outsider to that world, gaining ac-
cess to pastoral enchantment only at the price of being subject to disori-
enting terror as well?
IX
The interpretation suggested here depends not only on hearing C# minor

as remote from C major, but on hearing C major—the lowered mediant
degree—as remote from A major. But for Schubert the modulation from
the tonic to the lowered mediant, along with various other tonal moves by
third, had become common. The pervasiveness in his music of motion by
thirds, often to chromatically altered degrees, has recently led to some re-
assessments of Schubert’s tonal procedures that disavow the structural role
of the tonic-dominant axis of the Classical style in his music. In a discussion
of the Sonata in Bb Major, D. 960, for example, Hans-Joachim Hinrichsen
argues that “the pervasive structuring of the exposition through descend-
ing major thirds” and the “numerous occurrences of circle-modulations”
relegate fifth relationships to a secondary position.15 Such an account thus
departs from the traditional one that would subordinate the moves to Gb ma-
jor (see ex. 1.3, mm. 20¤.) and F# minor (see ex. 9.2, mm. 47¤.), which
are so prominent in that exposition, to the eventual arrival of the domi-
nant at the exposition’s end. No longer deflections or postponements in a
motion from tonic to dominant, no longer excursions to remote keys tem-
porarily taking the place of nearer ones, these moves instead become ends
in themselves.16
Similarly, in such an account of the A-major Scherzo, the tonic triad and
p rolog ue 17
the dominant function would no longer underlie the moves to C major and
C# minor as they would in a Schenkerian analysis. These secondary keys,
like the Gb major and F# minor in the Bb-Major Sonata, would no longer
elaborate on or take the place of more fundamental progressions, as they
would in such an analysis. No longer heard as departures, they are simply
what they appear to be.
An explanation of Schubert’s tonality needs to build not only on an aware-
ness of the keys tonicized, and of their succession, however, but also on close
attention to the means of their tonicization. As in the passage after the dou-
ble bar in the A-major Scherzo, the lowered submediant within the Bb-Ma-
jor Sonata’s first theme, Gb major, comes without the preparation of an ar-
ticulated modulation. Later on, F# minor also emerges quite suddenly, once
again seeming to befall the music unexpectedly. The ensuing moves to A
major and D minor never become confirmed or stabilized. Only F major,
the dominant, makes a fully prepared entrance, emerging predictably from
a six-measure prolongation of its own dominant (see ex. 9.3a, which be-
gins with the last four measures of this prolongation). F major then controls
the following twenty measures, culminating in a full cadence. The tonic-
dominant axis has surely weakened, but such reinforcement of the domi-
nant betokens more than the nod to tonal convention that Hinrichsen ac-
cords it. Again, in the A-major Scherzo, Schubert’s articulation of the
secondary tonalities, C major and C# minor, avoids preparation or strong
cadential confirmation. He reserves these tonal strategies for the tonic.
The secondary keys in both of these examples may emerge more vividly
than the tonic and the dominant; but they never even momentarily win the
reinforcement or stability reserved for those primary keys. Moreover, their
instability is always palpable, directly sensed from their own character and
deportment, manifest within them rather than merely inferable from their
context. In the Scherzo, no cadential tonic triad occurs even momentarily
in either the C-major or the C#-minor music. In C major, the quiet dom-
inant pedal neutralizes tonal motion; in C# minor, the o¤beat accompany-
ing chords make it tentative and searching.
Because it underplays the qualitative di¤erences between Schubert’s ar-
ticulation of subordinate keys and his articulation of tonic and dominant,
Hinrichsen’s otherwise perceptive portrayal of Schubert’s tonal procedures
cannot account for the pervasive dramatic tension that I hear, especially in
his later music. Certainly, progressions by third, as well as by step and half
step, gain unprecedented prominence in this music. It sometimes “appears
to drift freely through enharmonic and oblique modulations,” as Susan
McClary asserts, “rather than establishing a clear tonic and pursuing a dy-
namic series of modulations.”17 The expansions that accommodate such tonal
procedures seem to undermine the tensions and formal hierarchies of the
classical style. According to Arthur Godel, “the hierarchy of formal com-
ponents of the classical sonata is dissolved into a democratic juxtaposition.”18
But because of Schubert’s manifest characterological di¤erentiation of
keys other than tonic and dominant from those fundamental keys, and be-
cause in his mature music he still accords to tonic and dominant their tra-
ditional structural roles, he does not simply relegate classical tonal and for-
mal procedures to a peripheral, frame-producing status. Instead he explores
his own idiosyncratic tonal paths and creates space for these explorations
against the persisting and palpable background of the tonic-dominant axis
as articulated by the various sonata forms. Much of the expressive poignancy
of his music arises from the tension it activates between its own, sometimes
seemingly wayward tonal and thematic course and the constantly felt—and
eventually always confirmed—presence of that tonal and formal background.
The characterizations of Godel, McClary, and Hinrichsen lose sight of this
tension. Schubert’s music o¤ers up a veritable tonal feast, a “pleasure gar-
den” of tonal possibilities, but it also is the setting for a protagonist, like the
Schubert of “Mein Traum,” who cannot simply revel in these possibilities
or take them on as aspects of self-definition. Schubert’s music can seem to
wander, but its wandering remains constantly and poignantly aware either
of its distance from home or (as an aesthetically intended e¤ect) of having
lost its way, and it continually searches for paths of return.
In some ways, especially with respect to tonal progression, Schubert usually

completes a return from such wanderings within individual movements. But
he often reintroduces the same outlying tonalities, and reconfigurations of
the material associated with them, in subsequent movements to assimilate
those tonalities and that material more fully with the tonal and motivic ideas
p rolog ue 19
associated with the tonic region. This is music that eventually achieves in-
tegration by recalling its tonal disjunctions and its most characterologically
elusive motives again and again, finding new settings and constellations for
these gestures that make them more flowing, more lyrical, and otherwise
more continuous with their surroundings than they were at first. Schubert’s
expansion of such musical wanderings, explorations, and homecomings be-
yond the confines of a single piece or movement into a set of pieces or an
entire sonata enlarges the scope of his explorations and his resolutions in
ways that each of the ensuing analytic chapters will explore in depth.
Schubert’s mature music only very rarely manipulates its forms in ways
suggestive of cyclic organization: outside of the three fantasies, it is appar-
ent only in the linking of the slow movement to the finale of the Sonata in
A Minor, D. 821, for arpeggione and piano, a piece without any other ob-
vious cyclic characteristics. The absence of such formal manipulation ex-
plains in large part why the many cyclic procedures that this music does bring
into play have gone unrecognized for so long. As the analyses in this study
will show, these procedures, even though they are mostly not marked for
recognition, account for much of the depth of this music—for the ways its
themes and movements resonate with one another. They also provide a ba-
sis in musical detail for articulating an analytic and dramatic understanding
of the complementary and respective roles of separate movements.
While little has been written about the impromptus, Alfred Brendel’s im-
portant article on the last sonatas has already made a strong case for a cyclic
understanding of these works.19 Brendel focuses especially on motives
shared not only by the separate movements of each sonata but also by all
three sonatas as a “family” of works. By identifying and tracing the most
pervasive patterns of recurring melodic contours and intervallic emphases
in these pieces, he draws virtually every thematic complex in all three sonatas
into networks of cyclic relationships. Possibly because he writes not only for
an audience of musical professionals and scholars but also for a wider audi-
ence of music lovers, Brendel does not investigate specific harmonic gestures
in particular detail. The melodic and intervallic patterns he identifies often
return in much the same harmonic and contrapuntal settings as before. By
bringing into focus just what changes and just what stays the same in these
returns, one can identify distinct stages of motivic evolution in each sonata
and thus draw from each an account not only of its cyclic coherence but also
its story, its cyclic course. Deep resonances between distantly separated mo-
ments within these pieces are engendered by the return of specific tonal re-
gions and of distinctive harmonic gestures within them. These returns do
not usually bring conscious recollection of the earlier events to the hearing
of the later ones; instead, they subtly reactivate and deepen the color or feel-
ing immanent in those earlier events, imbuing harmonic color with devel-
opmental potential.
One of the strengths of Brendel’s article is the awareness it conveys of
Schubert’s personal, musical, and cultural situation at the time that he com-
posed his last sonatas. But the possible relationship of these last instrumen-
tal works to Winterreise, and, through Winterreise, to “Der Wanderer,” is not
among those that he explores. I do not wish to claim that these relationships
explain any aspect of these pieces completely. But I am convinced that Schu-
bert’s identification with the Fremdling wanderers of these songs links these
protagonists, through the music they inspired, to the instrumental music of
his last year, and that exploration of that link may explain more cogently
than can any other line of inquiry some of the compositional paths on which
Schubert embarked after Winterreise.
XI
As I have indicated, overtly cyclic recollections—ones reminiscent of the

“Wanderer” Fantasy—occur relatively rarely even in the music of Schubert’s
last period. Far more pervasive, and hence more deeply significant, are sub-
tle cyclic developments of material from one movement or piece to another.
Schubert’s music gives substantial evidence of this kind of cyclicism well
before Winterreise, as I have also indicated and shall demonstrate. After the
song cycle, however, Schubert’s ways of recalling and developing material
from earlier movements increase in both diversity and extent, occasionally
coming into special relief through allusions—private though they may have
been—to “Der Wanderer” and its fantasy.
Even so, attention to the cyclic aspects of Schubert’s last pieces falls far
short of explaining everything that happens in them. Every movement has
p rolog ue 21
in many respects its own self-su‹cient and distinctive character and takes its
own (for the most part) intelligible course. Each can be told, and has most
frequently been told, by itself. Awareness of what returns from one move-
ment to another does not a¤ord the basis, then, for the only feasible telling
of these pieces. But it does provide a context for telling them again, for a
richer and newly focused retelling in which later movements return to and
elaborate on what has happened before. In the impromptus and the last
sonatas, moreover, specific musical allusions both to Winterreise and to “Der
Wanderer” bring further definition to this context, o¤ering clues of what
expressive valences the passages in which they occur might have held for
Schubert himself. I tell of what happens in these pieces as if they had minds
of their own, knew what they were doing, and experienced their own course
as the outcome of specific circumstances and choices within a wider range
of possibilities. An exploration of the implications of such a telling of mu-
sic deserves a book of its own, and indeed my references to protagonists may
have reminded some readers of one such book, The Composer’s Voice by Ed-
ward T. Cone.20 While I have been deeply influenced both by that book and
by several of Cone’s articles on Schubert, I have not undertaken to adopt
faithfully or to develop specifically his terminology. In particular, I almost
never speak in what follows of the “persona” of any of these pieces—of the
imaginary consciousness it generates and whose thoughts and experiences
it embodies. But I believe that the characterization of music underlying
Cone’s use of that term—admittedly intended to apply to an enormous range
of music—applies especially aptly to Schubert and to the aura that it en-
genders of a psychological quest or journey.
I do speak repeatedly, however, of protagonists: not of protagonists who
enter the music, but instead of protagonists who become individuated through
it.21 These protagonists are more like imaginary figures through which the
persona of the composition defines or identifies itself than like other char-
acters distinct from it. Like most such images or definitions of self, these
protagonists emerge only in particular contexts and recede in others. In some
cases, as in the “Wanderer” Fantasy, such a subordinate protagonist comes
into enough relief to become a “subordinate persona,” to produce a “split
persona,” embodying a conflict of identity that the subsequent music un-
dertakes to overcome. Schubert returns to such a conflict of identity in his
last sonatas, composed in the wake of Winterreise, partly by recalling aspects
of the fantasy. He incorporates passages suggesting a protagonist who feels
like an outcast into a framework of passages suggesting the possibility of in-
tegration, ultimately for the same persona that has earlier been individuated
as an outsider.
Presumably almost everyone has felt like an outsider at one time or an-
other and experienced at least some of the desolation of the Fremdling.Thus
almost any performer who comes to find such a protagonist in Schubert’s
music can draw on personal experience, on direct knowledge of such feel-
ings, and of the kinds of gestures that manifest them to intensify an imag-
ining of how this music might go. Realized again in performance, the mu-
sic that owes its shape and character in part to those feelings is renewed as a
setting for holding, assimilating, and transforming them. If I am right about
Schubert’s last works, composing them helped him to resist the alienated
and nihilistic vision of Winterreise’s lonely wanderer. Today, playing and lis-
tening to this music might still help to alleviate any tendency to the same
capitulation.
p rolog ue 23
c hap t e r 1
Resonant Beginnings
Schubert’s first impromptu, in C minor (op. 90, no. 1), and the finale of his
last sonata, in Bb major (D. 960), could hardly be more di¤erent. Yet these
two movements might strike a casual listener as beginning in much the same
way (ex. 1.1a–b). In each, a forcefully struck, seemingly portentous G sets
the stage for a C-minor melodic beginning that is marked motivically by re-
peated notes and keeps close to its tonic. In each, as well, the abruptness and
the gestural isolation of the opening G suggest something other than a sim-
ple beginning: the G commands attention, like a symbolic call to whose
meaning the ensuing melody provides the first clues; it invokes a setting from
which that melody is heard as an emanation.
In relation to these opening Gs, however, and to the initially undisclosed
meaning to which these Gs allude, the impromptu and the finale soon re-
veal themselves as opposites. In the second period of the impromptu, each
phrase seems to begin in Eb, the relative major, but then falls back into C mi-
nor for its cadence (ex. 1.1b, mm. 10–17). The music progresses—in a sense,
fails to progress—as if the opening dramatization of G, C minor’s dominant,
has revealed that dominant as invested not merely with its normal capacities
for tonal hierarchization and resolution but also with a power to hold the
music in its thrall.1 To be sure, the music digresses through a kind of echo
into a contrasting episode in Ab major (ex. 1.1c, mm. 40¤.)—this is the sec-
ond, or B, section of its five-part, ABA'B'A" form—but only with such con-
trasts of rhythm, texture, harmony, and phrase structure as to embody an
25
example 1.1
a. Sonata in Bb Major, D. 960, Allegro ma non troppo, mm. 1–10
Allegro ma non troppo.
b. Impromptu in C Minor, op. 90, no. 1, mm. 1–17

Allegro molto moderato.
x stacc.
14
example 1.1 (continued)
c. Impromptu in C Minor, op. 90, no. 1, mm. 33–46
33 (codetta)
39 B
43
escape into a di¤erent order of experience from the opening theme. This
music evokes a dream, or perhaps only the memory of a time when dream-
ing was still possible, in relation to the opening’s bleak reality. In the return
from Ab major to C minor, the G renews its force through agitated repeti-
tion (see ex. 5.5a, mm. 87¤.). Not only does G persist as a pedal through
much of the second A section; it also then overtakes the music of the B sec-
tion, which returns in the minor key of the opening G (see ex. 5.5b, mm.
125¤.), the escape once promised now denied. Clear echoes of the opening
G still haunt the impromptu’s final phrases (see ex. 5.6, mm. 194¤.).
In the finale of the Bb-Major Sonata, on the other hand, G loses its hold
almost immediately. After only two dancing measures the bass slips away from
this G, down through Gb to F, bringing the harmony from C-minor darkness
into Bb-major light. The meaning or setting that the G implies persists only as
a fleeting memory, one that the G summons again and again throughout the
movement but that never casts more than a momentary shadow over its course.
If one accepts the proposed implications of portent in these opening Gs,
r e s o na n t b e g i n n i n g s 27
one then normally draws inferences about these implications from the course
of the ensuing music. Beyond that music, however, each of these two be-
ginnings can also claim an intertextual field of reference to other music,
mostly Schubert’s own, of about the same period: the opening of the im-
promptu recalls some of the Winterreise songs; the opening of the finale res-
onates supposedly with Beethoven’s String Quartet in Bb Major, op. 130,
possibly with Schubert’s C-Minor Sonata and, most tellingly, with the first
movement of the Bb-Major Sonata to which it belongs.2 These resonances
may o¤er additional clues to the interpretation of these two openings as well
as of the relationship between them. I shall introduce some exploratory com-
ments on each with a citation from the Schubert literature.
II
Is the first impromptu of opus 90 “a kind of keyboard paraphrase of ‘Der

Wegweiser,’” as John Reed asserts?3 Reed’s claim would seem to depend on
the assumption that Schubert composed the impromptu after part II of Win-
terreise, in which “Der Wegweiser” occurs. In fact, the exact compositional
chronology of the opus 90 impromptus is uncertain. All of the impromp-
tus, however, do come after part I of Winterreise, completed by the spring
of 1827, and the first impromptu hearkens back to the opening song, “Gute
Nacht,” in several ways: its walking tempo, its constant momentum, its re-
peated chords and melodic tones, its two dotted figures (one shorter, one
longer), and its ambiguous turns to major at the end.
Other songs in part I return to the sense of walking motion, the repeated
notes, and some of the motives of “Gute Nacht,” but none so fully as “Der
Wegweiser” (see ex. 2.3a). Youens, Kramer, and Sto¤els all agree in regarding
this song as a station of culminating revelation near the end of part II.4 The
central image of “Der Wegweiser,” the signpost pointing to the protago-
nist’s death, whether actual or psychological, is already foreshadowed in the
poems of the first part. It is suggested by the wanderer’s self-description as
a “Fremdling,” a stranger; by his compulsion to see himself mirrored in el-
ements of the frozen landscape, first in his moon shadow and footsteps, then
in the wind-bu¤eted weathervane, then more pervasively in the barrenness
of the ice and snow, and ultimately in a tired cloud; and by his related com-
pulsion to attribute to the rest of humanity a collective consciousness so di-
minished by hostility that it can communicate to him only through the bark-
ing of dogs and the shrieking of ravens. Each of these images is a token of
his existential state, a foreboding, like the signpost itself, of his psycholog-
ical annihilation through obsession and inescapable isolation.
Because such tokens, such virtual signposts, already pervade the first part
of Winterreise, an instrumental piece written in response to these songs might,
in the absence of words, come into focus through the musical embodiment
of such a signpost. If Reed’s claim is meant to imply that the impromptu
paraphrases “Der Wegweiser” by mimicking it or following its formal or de-
velopmental course, this claim is almost certainly untenable. In any case, one
would have to be sure that Schubert composed the impromptu after the song
even to consider it seriously. If Reed means instead that Schubert has cre-
ated in this piano piece a musical metaphor for motifs pervasive throughout
Winterreise, then his claim merits consideration. The G, starkly struck at the
beginning and hauntingly reasserting its presence throughout, so overde-
termines the dominant that this music seems not merely in C minor, but
somehow confined within or consigned to that key. Schubert thus imparts
to the dominant the profile of a Wegweiser.
III
It has often been pointed out that the main themes of the finales of Schu-
bert’s Sonata in Bb Major and Beethoven’s quartet in the same key, opus 130,
have many points in common. These include the dance-like 2/4 meter, the
introductory G and its continuation as a pedal, the interpretation of this G as
V of II, and the ensuing establishment of the tonic. What is not often ob-
served is that the two movements have certain unusual formal elements in
common.5
Alfred Einstein, one of those who preceded Cone (here quoted) in com-
menting on this relationship between Beethoven’s and Schubert’s finales,
characterizes Schubert’s finale as “an echo of Beethoven’s,” even adducing
this resemblance as evidence for Schubert’s familiarity with the Beethoven
quartet (ex. 1.2).6
example 1.2 Beethoven, String Quartet in Bb Major, op. 130, Finale, mm. 1–12
Allegro. ten.
sempre stacc.
How close is the resemblance? Joseph Kerman aptly characterizes Bee-

thoven’s final movement, written to replace the Grosse Fuge originally in-
tended for the quartet, as “a sunny, gay, Haydnesque conclusion.”7 It is id-
iomatically written for the string ensemble, highly conversational, somewhat
angular, full of contrapuntal and motivic play, propelled by almost constant
motivically active rhythms at the eighth- and sixteenth-note levels. Schu-
bert’s finale, although also predominantly gay and at least intermittently
sunny, imitates Beethoven’s in none of these respects: its textures are pi-
anistically homophonic throughout, except in one short developmental
episode; its melodies ring out over their accompaniments, in which eighths
and sixteenths are often subordinated as textural elements. One especially
Haydnesque feature of Beethoven’s finale is the way it uses its deceptive open-
ing material to generate further deceptions: in the course of the movement
the opening ostinato often returns on a pitch di¤erent from the initial G,
sometimes only to make a willful modulation moments later. Schubert’s use
of his opening gesture could not contrast more strongly: it returns always
on the same G octave, always prepared (except in the immediate repetitions
of the theme) by a quiet modulation back to the C-minor region. It has the
persistence of an idée fixe.
Schubert’s gesture—the struck, held G—echoes nothing in the Beetho-
ven as strongly as it does the opening of the C-Minor Impromptu. One
might argue that in the impromptu the portentous G holds further echoes
of the mysterious, slow introductions of such Classical symphonic works
as Beethoven’s Fourth and Haydn’s “Drum Roll” Symphony.8 But the finale
of the Bb-Major Sonata invokes this serious, commanding gesture only in
order to subvert it. The very Schubertian Gb through which the G dissolves
into F also has no counterpart in Beethoven. With the finale of Beethoven’s
opus 130 as model, one is likely to understand the Gb only as a touch of
Romantic color applied to Beethoven’s opening formula, V of ii–ii E–V7–I.
But with Schubert’s C-Minor Impromptu as model, or at least as forebear,
the Gb takes on a dramatic role, releasing the music from the threat of the
obsession that the G invokes.
The form of Schubert’s finale does resemble that of Beethoven’s, as Cone
observes. It also resembles just as strongly the forms of a number of Schu-
bert’s own finales that were composed before Beethoven’s, as Cone also ob-
serves. However similar in form, finally, the two movements di¤er enough
in character to render implausible the supposition that Schubert modeled
his finale, or even its beginning, directly on Beethoven’s. In particular, Schu-
bert’s long-breathed, flowing second theme (see ex. 9.1b), written entirely
in quarter notes over chordal arpeggiations and o¤beat bass pizzicatos that
ring on through nearly seventy measures of light and shadow, resembles noth-
ing Beethoven ever wrote. The way this melody quietly breaks o¤, to be
succeeded by the abrupt violence of fortissimo chords (m. 156), is also com-
pletely at odds with the constantly active conversational play in Beethoven’s
finale. Moreover, the links between Schubert’s finale and his own music are
rich and complex enough to obscure any role Beethoven’s finale may have
had in its genesis.
IV
I have already mentioned, in my prologue, a substantial and provocative study

of Schubert’s piano music, the extended essay “Schubert’s Last Sonatas” by
the pianist Alfred Brendel, originally delivered as a lecture in 1989. Hear-
ing the three sonatas in some respects as a single cycle, Brendel remarks that
the fortissimo episode in the finale of the Bb-Major Sonata comes in F mi-
nor (m. 156), a key that “mediates” between Bb major and the C minor of
the first of these sonatas. Moreover, the movement “refers to the C-Minor
Sonata in yet another way: it simply insists, as it were, on opening in C mi-
nor. It does so, stubbornly, no fewer than nine times: only before the stretta
is the C-minor spell finally broken.”9 Here is another possible intertextual
source for the C-minor opening of Schubert’s last finale. It is true that no
gesture in the C-Minor Sonata resonates so fully with that beginning as does
the opening G of the C-Minor Impromptu. But as with the impromptu,
certain motives from the Winterreise songs seem to haunt the C-Minor Sonata.
Is the obsession that the last finale brushes aside each time it slips from C
minor into Bb major still an aftershadow, then, of Winterreise?
All of these contextualizations of the finale of the Bb-Major Sonata—Cone’s

elaboration on the tradition associating it with Beethoven’s finale for opus
130, Brendel’s linking of it with the C-Minor Sonata, my own interpreta-
tion of it in relation to the C-Minor Impromptu—bypass the question of
its relationship to its immediate context: the other movements of the Bb so-
nata itself. The tradition linking Schubert’s finale to Beethoven’s, in partic-
ular, seems wedded to a commonly held assessment of Schubert’s finales.
Godel’s book on the last three sonatas exemplifies this tradition in a sum-
mary statement about their concluding movements: “They make their own
task di‹cult, in that they do not simply bring to a logical conclusion what
has been built up in the earlier movements, but instead virtually abandon
their contexts and, entering the scene from outside, hazard a new start.”10
In its abruptness, certainly, the oft-repeated opening gesture of this finale
seems uncharacteristic of the sonata to which it belongs. It does not build
in any apparent way upon the glowing lyricism and mysterious undercur-
rents of the first movement, the melancholy serenity of the second, or the
ethereal dancing of the third. Brendel makes sense of this contrast in char-
acter by interpreting the finale as an overcoming of what he calls the sonata’s
“Dolens,” its troubled side, which he associates with the Gb of the mysteri-
ous trill at the end of the sonata’s very first phrase.11
Brendel also notes three significant recurrences of material from earlier
movements in the sonata: the theme of the first movement appears, trans-
formed, in the middle section of the Andante (see ex. 9.5a) and in the theme
of the Scherzo (see ex. 9.6), and a phrase from the last part of the Andante
recurs in the second theme of the finale (or so his musical examples imply)
(see ex. 9.1a–b).12 Konrad Wol¤ earlier characterized the opening of the
Scherzo through the image of playing a recording of the theme of the first
movement at double speed.13 Given Brendel’s attention to such cyclic mo-
tivic recurrences and his interpretation of the theme of the finale as a re-
sponse to the first movement’s Gb trill and its implications, it is surprising
that he does not acknowledge the source of that theme itself in the first
movement’s immediate response to the trill (ex. 1.3).
The trill first occurs at the end of the first phrase pianissimo, but so marked
rhythmically and registrally as partly to dissociate the Gb, as an intrusive el-
ement, from its surroundings. The second phrase, in response, incorporates
the Gb into a continuous progression in which the bass descends chromati-
cally (mm. 13–18), passing from the tonic down through Ab to Gn. The G
is prolonged for nearly two measures before the bass slips down through Gb
to F. The length of this Gb, in proportion to the Gs that precede it, is ex-
actly the same as in the opening bass progression of the finale. Also as in the
finale, C minor is tonicized over the G pedal, and the melody adheres closely
to this momentary tonic, confining itself to the same four pitches—D, C,
B, and Eb—in the same register.14 Again as in the finale, the phrase then
moves—or, in this case, returns—to Bb major. The two melodies articulate
the same pitches—now C, Bb, A, and D—although in a di¤erent order.
Schubert has thus seemingly generated the theme of his finale by lifting
not just a motive, a melody, or a progression, but a virtual musical block—
a complex of melodic, harmonic, contrapuntal, and textural elements—from
the second phrase of his first movement. But he has so transformed this ma-
terial in tempo and character that even serious students of this music have
example 1.3 Sonata in Bb Major, D. 960, Molto moderato, mm. 1–23
Molto moderato.
legato
13
17
21
not recognized its return. In this finale the sonata seems to venture into new
territory, but it makes this venture with its own resources, through a new
articulation of its own idiom.
VI
If accepted as a source for the theme of the finale of the Bb-Major Sonata,
this passage from early in the first movement surely ought to take prece-
dence over material from any other piece, no matter how strong that rela-
tion may seem. Presumably Schubert made this derivation deliberately, es-
pecially in the light of the thematic linkages of other kinds between the
di¤erent movements of this sonata that Brendel and Wol¤ have recognized.
In contrast, one can only speculate about the derivation of anything in this
sonata from any other piece.
Among the other pieces under consideration, the C-Minor Sonata has of
course the greatest claim to influence on this one. Schubert worked on both
sonatas, as well as the A-Major Sonata, at the same time, designating the one
in Bb as the “3rd Sonata” even in his preliminary sketch.15 The C-Minor
Impromptu, completed at least several months before Schubert began work
on these sonatas, comes into consideration primarily because of the near
identity of its opening gesture to that of the Bb-Major Sonata’s finale, and
because no other piece by Schubert makes this gesture in just this way. The
apparent relationship of both C-minor pieces, the impromptu and the sonata,
to Winterreise suggests the possibility, already raised in the prologue, of a ges-
tural or expressive domain common to at least some of the songs and in-
strumental pieces of Schubert’s last year or year and a half, a domain that
the Bb-Major Sonata might still explore. There may thus be an expressive
or gestural rationale for thinking through the relationships between the Bb-
Major Sonata and these two C-minor pieces in more detail, possibly along
with some of the other works of this last period.
Since we do not in fact know whether Schubert had the C-minor pieces
in mind as he composed the Bb-major finale, we can also only speculate,
even more tentatively, about how these possible intertextual references in-
teracted with his decision to draw the material for the finale’s theme from
the first movement. Might the possibility of a reference to one or both of
these pieces have stimulated this decision? Or might that decision, once made,
have brought with it a heightening of Schubert’s awareness of a terrain com-
mon to all of these pieces and to Winterreise, an awareness that he might
then have chosen to signal, if only for himself, through a gesture so remi-
niscent of the Winterreise-laden impromptu?
VII
This preliminary investigation of a network of musical associations to the

theme of Schubert’s last finale has led to a discovery that is remarkable be-
cause it has never been made, or, at least, made public. This theme not only
responds, in both pitch content and gesture, to the first movement’s trill (as
Brendel intuited), it also closely paraphrases, although with a marked change
of character, the initial response to that trill in the first movement. This cir-
cumstance raises the obvious question of the possibility of other such veiled
returns of blocks of material from earlier movements, a question that I shall
begin to address in the next chapter. It also raises the broader question of
the range and extent of cyclic procedures in Schubert’s multimovement com-
positions, and of how the return of a block of material might reflect or in-
teract with other kinds of motivic linkages between separate movements.
Simply combining this discovery about the finale, for example, with Bren-
del’s already cited observations about other motivic linkages between the
movements of the Bb-Major Sonata promotes the conclusion that each of
its four movements draws motivically from its opening thematic complex.
The first phrase group of the first movement contains the generative mate-
rial not only for that movement but also for the middle section of the An-
dante sostenuto and for the opening themes of the Scherzo and the finale.
Although Brendel is more alert to motivic resonances among all three of
the last sonatas than to a continuous compositional process running through
and culminating in any one of them, he cites enough thematic linkages be-
tween the movements of each of the sonatas to suggest that each of them,
by itself, may also engage in such a process.
If this is so, then Schubert may have planned the developmental unfold-
ing of these sonatas more deliberately and all-inclusively than even Brendel,
who still calls him a “sleepwalker,” would be ready to maintain.16 Uncov-
ering evidence for such planning in these sonatas accomplishes far more than
demonstrating their unity or conferring on them the increment of value tra-
ditionally associated with the achievement of such unity in nineteenth-cen-
tury music. To return to the example discussed, the derivation of the theme
of the Bb-Major Sonata’s finale from its first movement gives a specific ba-
sis for constructing a gestural or dramatic interpretation of that theme as a
response to its immediate musical environment, the sonata itself. Rather than
originating outside the sonata, as Godel suggests, the theme originates in-
side it and perhaps ventures outside, as if a C-minor beginning represented
either a threatening world or an obsession that the protagonist has learned
to keep at bay by gaining control of the Gb. The discovery of this deriva-
tion also necessitates a reevaluation of the possible indebtedness of this theme
to any earlier music, whether by Beethoven or by Schubert. It seems almost
inconceivable, for example, that Schubert had opus 130 in mind when he
composed the second phrase of the first movement. That the momentary
turn of that phrase to C minor holds memories of the C-Minor Impromptu,
or the C-Minor Sonata, or even Winterreise still seems a possibility, one that
will require careful and detailed consideration to assess.
c hap t e r 2
Fields of Resonance
Thus the G that opens the finale of the Bb-Major Sonata does not simply
mark a new beginning. Its resonance stirs a memory, highly specific even
though subliminal, of the first movement’s second phrase, its first response
to its own beginning. By the time it returns as the theme of the finale, a rich
and elaborate web of associations has been gathered from all the interven-
ing music, as I shall eventually show. When the G recalls that first response,
summoning it into self-definition as a theme, it establishes the thematic iden-
tity of the finale with roots that run deeply throughout the entire sonata.
Equally pervasive roots underlie the much more explicit return of the
opening phrase of the A-Major Sonata’s first movement in its finale. Here
the original phrase returns, in cancrizans, as the concluding phrase (see ex.
8.2a–b), in what Charles Rosen has called “only a framing device.”1 But as
Ivan Waldbauer has shown, the bass of this framing idea is also, fundamen-
tally, the bass of the Rondo theme itself.2 His observation can be richly elab-
orated. The theme of this Rondo (see ex. 8.1a) marks the culmination of a
gradual transformation, extending throughout the four movements of the
sonata, of its imposing opening idea into lyrical utterance. In contrast to the
Bb-Major Sonata, whose lyrical opening theme, “problematized” by the low
Gb trill, is its point of departure, the A-Major Sonata only comes to full lyri-
cal self-expression as its eventual goal.
The finale of the C-Minor Sonata also contains a block of musical mate-
rial that returns, in clearly recognizable form, from an earlier movement. Here
38
the returning material comes not at the beginning, as in the Bb finale, or at
the end, as in the A-major one, but in the middle. And this time the mate-
rial originates not in the first movement, but in the second. During the de-
velopmental central episode of the finale, a modulating progression from the
Adagio (ex. 2.1a, mm. 11–12) returns twice, its second return (ex. 2.1b, mm.
380–381) almost identical to its last occurrence in the earlier movement (see
ex. 2.5b, mm. 104–105). This progression returns without being highlighted
either as a theme or as a concluding fanfare, as in the other two finales; here
it is only a fleeting, albeit conscious, memory.3 In the Adagio di¤erent vari-
ants of this progression arise in each occurrence of the theme. When it re-
turns in the finale, therefore, this progression is already marked, as in the other
two last sonatas, by its own history, by the complexity of its own associations.
Such obvious quotations from earlier movements do not occur, or at least
have never been acknowledged, in any of Schubert’s works before Winter-
reise. As for veiled self-quotations like the one made by the theme of the Bb-
major finale, one would have to search assiduously to know whether they
occur elsewhere in these works. A veiled self-quotation of this kind does
occur in another work of this final period, the opus 90 impromptus. Once
again it is a returning block, a short passage from the second impromptu
that returns in the third.
What returns in this case is neither a theme nor a single progression, but
instead a segment involving an ending (or phrase articulation) and a subse-
quent beginning. The segment in question first occurs in measures 37 and
38 of the second impromptu (ex. 2.2a), in which a melodic fall from 4 to 3
in Gb major is supported by the harmonic progression VF–I, while an Ebb ap-
poggiatura in the tenor register strains within the dominant harmony. Es-
sentially the same music reappears in measures 54 and 55 of the third im-
promptu (ex. 2.2b), to conclude the transition from its B section back to its
opening theme. Here the dominant seventh comes in first rather than sec-
ond inversion, but its bass still leads by step to a Gb-major tonic triad in root
position. The melody falls once again from 4 to 3, and the same Ebb wells up
within the dominant harmony. Playing these two segments several times, one
after the other, makes their similarity both audible and palpable. In both,
melody and bass occupy the same registers, both moving fundamentally by
step while triplets fill in the octave below the controlling melodic register of
the right hand. In both, the Ebb to Db sigh, the most expressively distinctive
f i e l d s o f r e s o na n c e 39
example 2.1 Sonata in C Minor, D. 958
a. Adagio, mm. 1–22
A
13
18 B
b. Allegro, mm. 377–383
377
380
cresc.
example 2.2
a. Impromptu in Eb Major, op. 90, no. 2, mm. 36–43
36
40
b. Impromptu in Gb Major, op. 90, no. 3, mm. 53–56
53
55
gesture of the passage, brings the same fingers to the same pitches. Playing
the two segments in repeated alternation, one can easily lose a sense of which
passage belongs to which impromptu. That such a Schubertian passage oc-
curs in the course of the Gb-Major Impromptu is not surprising; that a vari-
ant of it occurs in the same key in the dancelike Eb-Major Impromptu is
somewhat more so. Can the anticipation of Gb major in the earlier im-
promptu function as a sign of other links between the two pieces?
Another return of a musical block deepens the association between two
of the culminating Winterreise songs, “Der Wegweiser” (no. 20) and “Das
Wirtshaus” (no. 21). For the setting of the first two lines of “Das Wirtshaus”—
“Auf einem Totenacker / Hat mich mein Weg gebracht” (To a cemetery /
my way has brought me)—the music makes a modulation, quite unusual for
the opening stanza of a hymnlike song, from the tonic, F major, up to the
supertonic, G minor (ex. 2.3b, m. 7). The piano introduction to this song
has already touched on G minor, deepening its resonance and its continuity
with the G minor of “Der Wegweiser.” In that preceding song, the repeat
of the second couplet—“Suche mir versteckte Stege / Durch verschneite
Felsenhöhn” (I seek hidden paths / through snow-covered rocky heights)—
involves fundamentally the same modulation in the same key, this time from
F minor back to G minor, by exactly the same means (ex. 2.3a, mm. 16–18).4
In songs, of course, the words can form a basis for an interpretation of
the music even in the most contrasting conceptions of the relationship be-
tween a text and its setting. But in untexted music, even a superficial ex-
planation requires more musical contextualization than it does in vocal mu-
sic. To work toward an understanding of the returns of the three musical
blocks I have introduced in this chapter, I shall accordingly begin in the next
section with the help of words. In the return of material from “Der Weg-
weiser” in “Das Wirtshaus,” a cross-referencing in the texts motivates a cross-
referencing in their settings.
As it happens, the texts of Winterreise can also suggest terms for the inter-
pretation of the returning passages in opus 90 and the C-Minor Sonata. In
the tonally extraordinary Eb-Major Impromptu, the major mode is threatened
by the minor and finally succumbs to it. In the Winterreise songs, which are
predominantly in the minor, the major mode is associated with texts about
fading memories, dreams, and illusions.The dramatized subversion of the ma-
jor in the Eb-Major Impromptu especially invites such associations. The Gb
major of the passage under consideration comes in response to the first turn
to Eb minor and the subsequent cadence in that key, as if to avert the threat
that the minor poses, however gently at first. In the Gb-Major Impromptu, Eb
minor persists as a troubling presence, especially in its agitated B section. The
return of the passage from the preceding impromptu signals the final quiet-
ing of that troubled music, an ultimate overcoming of the Eb-minor threat.
In the C-Minor Sonata, both the returning progression from the Adagio
and the musical context in which it first occurs carry distinct echoes of various
example 2.3 Winterreise
a. “Der Wegweiser,” mm. 10–19
10
su che mir ver steck te Ste ge durch ver schnei te Fel sen höhn? su che
15
mir ver steck te Ste ge durch ver schnei te Fel sen höhn, durch Fel sen höhn?
cresc.
b. “Das Wirtshaus,” mm. 5–9

5
Auf ei nen To dten a cker hat mich mein Weg ge bracht; all
hier will ich ein keh ren, hab’ ich bei mir ge dacht.
Winterreise songs, foremost among them the death-obsessed “Wirtshaus.”
The progression itself, its modulatory course brought to hesitation over a
subdominant made remote by its own minor subdominant, suggests a search
for something outside or beyond the theme in which it occurs. The
“Wirtshaus”-like atmosphere of the music brings associations of death and
transcendence to this “beyond.”
II
In “Der Wegweiser” and “Das Wirtshaus,” near the journey’s end, the wan-
derer comes to the clearest revelation of the nature of his journey and its
destination. “Der Wegweiser” begins:
Was vermeid’ ich denn die Wege,

Wo die andern Wandrer gehn,
Suche mir versteckte Stege
Durch verschneite Felsenhöhn?
(Why do I avoid the highways / that other wanderers travel / and seek out
hidden paths / through snowbound rocky heights?)5
In the second stanza, the wanderer recognizes that an irrational longing drives
him into the wilderness, and at the end he proclaims:
Einen Weiser seh’ ich stehen

Unverrückt vor meinem Blick;
Eine Strasse muss ich gehen,
Die noch keiner ging zurück.
(One guidepost I see / ever fixed before my eyes; / I must travel a road / by
which no one has ever returned.)6
One might assume the Wegweiser, the signpost, to be an emblem of death,

the wanderer’s unavoidable destination. And indeed, his journey brings him
to a cemetery at the beginning of the next song, “Das Wirtshaus”:
Auf einem Totenacker
Hat mich mein Weg gebracht.
Allhier will ich einkehren,
Hab’ ich bei mir gedacht.
(Into a graveyard / my way has led me. / Here will I stop, / I thought to my-
self.)
But the cemetery—the inn—is full. He cannot rest there, but must wan-
der on:
O unbarmherz’ge Schenke
Doch weisest du mich ab?
Nun weiter denn, nur weiter,
Mein treuer Wanderstab!
(O pitiless inn, / do you refuse to take me? / Then on, ever on, / my trusty
sta¤!)7
In Schubert’s setting of the first lines of “Das Wirtshaus” (ex. 2.3b), the
reference to the wanderer’s “Weg,” his way or route, motivates a momen-
tary return to the key of “Der Wegweiser” (ex. 2.3a). By juxtaposing F ma-
jor and G minor—the former the key of the cemetery where the wanderer
seeks final rest, the latter the key of the signpost, which signifies not simply
death but the obsession that brings him so close to death without granting
it to him—this progression already encapsulates the final message of “Das
Wirtshaus”: the turning away of the wanderer, against his will, from the gate
of the cemetery and his resulting consignment to his seemingly endless and
isolated path.
By bringing back a chord progression from “Der Wegweiser” rather than
merely referring to its key, Schubert incorporates a resonance, an aftere¤ect,
a “feeling memory” of that song into “Das Wirtshaus.” Even though most
listeners may remain unconscious of the reference, many must feel its res-
onance as an a¤ective richness, a layering of impressions, an emotional depth.
Through this return, music identified with the protagonist’s personal fate is
retained in and juxtaposed with music that, in its hymnlike character, might
be identified with our common fate. This juxtaposition brings into the mu-
sic the dilemma in this protagonist’s relationship to death: not collected
within himself, but instead lost in the winter landscape, he is not ready for
the death he seeks.
The sequence of these two songs, and the occurrence in each of them of
a progression that links their respective tonics, underscores the crucial and
complementary roles of the central images of each of these poems in finally
disclosing to the wanderer the full significance of his journey. The signpost
is a final, almost abstract symbol of the obsession that drives him into the
winter landscape, a landscape that he anthropomorphizes in order to lose
himself in it. The inn is an emblem of the comfort he would find through
release from that obsession in death. Schubert may thus have reserved this
“blocking technique” for a moment of special, summary significance.
III
The minor ending of the Eb-Major Impromptu is extraordinary, perhaps even

unique, for the time of its composition. The beginning of this impromptu is
also extraordinary. To repeat an opening phrase is common; to repeat it twice
is not. The music begins to take on the character of a perpetuum mobile, sug-
gesting a motion that forever returns to its own center rather than generating
any further progression. And indeed, instead of advancing to some new goal
after its third phrase, this music continues at first to adhere to its own center,
withdrawing quietly into its parallel minor in a first premonition, however in-
gratiating, of the music’s calamitous outcome (see ex. 5.4, mm. 25¤.).
The Gb-major passage that this impromptu shares with the following piece
comes just after its first Eb-minor cadence (mm. 33–35). In this tonal con-
text, the Ebb appoggiatura in the left hand of this passage becomes more than
a coloristic detail. In transforming Dn into Ebb, it neutralizes the leading tone
of Eb minor, drawing it as a vestigial shadow into the aura of Gb major. By
incorporating but transforming this leading tone, the progression sets these
two keys in dramatic opposition to each other. The turn to Gb major bal-
ances the turn of the preceding phrase from Eb major to Eb minor. This sub-
sequent move to Gb major may initially seem to be only an ingratiating ex-
ploratory digression, but it is also potentially a dramatic response: an attempt
to escape from the minor, to avert the threat posed by Eb minor to the im-
promptu’s opening Eb major.The threat—not averted, in the end—can plau-
sibly be regarded as the central compositional issue of this piece.
That Eb minor in the third impromptu is not merely a readily available
harmonic station, but still a site of dramatic conflict, is strongly suggested
by the harmonic move at its very beginning, from a Gb-major chord to an
Eb-minor one (see ex. 5.1). It is at the very end of the extended and turbu-
lent middle section in Eb minor, as already indicated, that Schubert recalls
the progression from the second impromptu (see ex. 2.2b). This progres-
sion, once again transforming Eb minor’s D into the Ebb of a sheltering Gb
major tinged with the minor’s dark memory, emblematizes in sound the per-
sistence of Eb minor as a troubling presence, a tonal threat, in the third im-
promptu. Gb major represents a station of recovery from that threat.
IV
In the C-Minor Sonata, as already indicated, the progression that returns

in the finale already has a complicated history in the Adagio, its movement
of origin. This progression, which Godel characterizes as the Adagio’s
“Schlüsselstelle”—its key moment—occurs there six times, twice within
each statement of the theme.8 In the second and third of these statements
it undergoes significant changes, giving rise to new tonal explorations (see
ex. 2.5a–b). Understanding how this progression motivates these explorations
requires attention to its specific character and placement in relation to the
thematic complex within which it is embedded. Only after considering its
evolving role in the Adagio, moreover, can one assess its role in the finale,
for it returns there in the last form it has reached in the Adagio.
The foregoing discussions of the two Winterreise songs and the two im-
promptus move directly from descriptions of the progressions that return to
interpretive summaries of the relationships, encapsulated in these returns,
between the two songs or pieces. In the two songs, the interrelatedness of
the texts illuminates the interrelatedness of their settings. In the two im-
promptus, the emergence in each case of the progression within a move away
from Eb minor to Gb major, along with the strength and persistence of Eb
minor in both pieces, makes it easy to identify a role for these progressions
in response to a recurring Eb-minor “threat.” In the C-Minor Sonata, on
the other hand, the context within which the progression under consider-
ation returns to the finale shares no easily recognizable features with the Ada-
gio. And in the Adagio itself, the e¤ect of this progression on the form and
resolution of the thematic complex in which it occurs is subtle enough to
require careful assessment.
The progression first occurs as the cadential part of the theme’s third
four-measure subphrase (I shall henceforth call it the “focal progression”)
(see ex. 2.1a, mm. 11–12). One can clearly divide this subphrase into two
principal gestures (mm. 9–10, 11–12), the first of them a pianissimo return
to the opening of the theme. While harmonically much richer than the
first gesture, the second one, the focal progression, is much simpler rhyth-
mically. Its even eighth-note chords contrast with the varied and contra-
puntally di¤erentiated rhythms of the first gesture. Venturing here into new
harmonic territory, the theme grows rhythmically quiet, or “pure,” as if in
heightened attentiveness. At this focal moment, both melody and bass ar-
rive on Db (m. 12), and a plagal extension with a fermata confirms this chord
as the goal of harmonic as well as melodic motion. The fermata does not
restrain a motion that would otherwise continue on to a strongly implied
further goal; it marks instead a temporary suspension of motion. This hes-
itation in Db major-minor momentarily neutralizes further tonal implica-
tions, whether of returning to Ab or of moving on to other keys. What
causes the music to stop?
The two cadential measures that follow (see ex. 2.1a, mm. 13–14) depart
for the first time from a regular articulation of motion into four-bar sub-
phrases and thus disrupt the conclusion of a regular phrase group.9 The third
subphrase, the one containing the focal progression, begins by repeating the
first but then ends by expanding the Db—which originally was merely a
neighboring eighth note—through a cadential extension of its own.The Gb-
minor chord in this extension, bringing in Bbb, the most foreign tonal ele-
ment so far, coincides with the extension of the eighth-note rhythm beyond
its former span at the end of the first subphrase.The rhythmic extension marks
the introduction of the Bbb, and the ensuing fermata has the e¤ect of turn-
ing the focal progression into a question: what will become of the Db har-
mony or the Bbb? Do these elements register the presence, in the background
of awareness, of something outside, something missing from the theme?
Thus the cadential idea in measures 13 and 14, while in some ways a sat-
isfactory conclusion for measures 9 through 14 taken as a single six-measure
phrase, works less well as a conclusion for the periodic design of the theme.
This six-bar consequent does not balance the weight of its eight-bar an-
tecedent. Instead of building, as one might expect, from the material of the
second subphrase of the antecedent (see ex. 2.1a, mm. 5–8), its cadential
idea merely concludes an expanded paraphrase of the first subphrase, elab-
orating on the C and Bb of measure 4. One might therefore expect the fol-
lowing four measures (mm. 15–18), in extending this group, to achieve fuller
closure for the theme. In that they compensate for the brevity of the ca-
dential idea and also repeat it in a codetta-like fashion, they do so. But by
merely repeating the two gestures last heard, and by registrally displacing the
focal progression, these measures in another sense underscore the incon-
clusiveness of the cadence, leaving the end of the theme hesitant and un-
sure of itself in the aftermath of the question.
The diversion of harmonic movement into the subdominant, the dis-
tancing of this subdominant through its own minor plagal extension, the
stalling of movement on the thus enshadowed subdominant through the fer-
mata; the somewhat abrupt return to Ab major for the shortened cadence,
and the abdication by that cadence from the function of rhyming, consequent
resolution prepared for it by the antecedent—all these characteristics of the
focal progression and of the music’s immediate response to it point to a dis-
quieting intrusion upon the theme.
When the new theme of the B section emerges in Db minor (see ex. 2.1a,
m. 19), the focal progression immediately acquires new associative resonance:
it has not only anticipated the arrival of Db as a tonal center but also fore-
shadowed its minor mode. This progression has, as it were, thought of the
Db region—possibly major, possibly minor—without really going there.The
thought trails o¤, like an unanswered question, into the fermata. Ab major,
the home key, returns somewhat abruptly and very briefly, as if stunned af-
ter a disturbing or disorienting thought. These metaphors suggest that the
fermata is not simply a halting or hesitation in the music, but a rift or break
in its surface.
Through the focal progression, Db, whether major or minor, intrudes into
the music and makes it lose its way for a moment; it can continue only in
an uncertain fashion. The focal phrase, in asking its question, either searches
for something or begins to remember something—or even both—without
yet knowing just what it seeks. The theme needs to incorporate something
that remains outside it in order to reach resolution. Instead of reaching a
fully convincing cadence, the music of the A section recedes behind the en-
suing revelations about what motivates the search or what needs to be re-
covered: the music of the B section.
The focal progression of the Adagio of the C-Minor Sonata holds a distinct
echo of Winterreise. In “Gefror’ne Tränen,” the third song, the music that
introduces the question—“Ob es mir entgangen, dass ich geweinet hab?”
(Has it happened to me, that I have cried?)10—shares with the focal pro-
gression its repeated notes, its stepwise descent in the bass, and its chromatic
motion in the inner voices (ex. 2.4a). But the progression in the song might
be said to take an opposite direction from the progression in the sonata. In-
stead of culminating in a Db-major triad, it takes this triad as its point of de-
parture for a modulation from an F-minor opening to Ab major, and instead
of rising from a repeated C to Db, the melody falls from a repeated Db to
C.11 One could, in fact, incorporate the progression from the song (as in ex.
2.4b), played at an appropriate tempo, into the Adagio of the sonata as a re-
sponse to the focal progression.
In “Gefror’ne Tränen” the wanderer’s way of posing his question already
incorporates its probable answer: he has indeed wept; he still has feelings.
Even though the first stanza’s question answers itself, the second is still a ques-
tion. Only the third stanza reveals the intensity of the wanderer’s feelings:
Gefror’ne Tropfen fallen

Von meinen Wangen ab:
Ob es mir denn entgangen
Dass ich geweinet hab’?
Ei Tränen, meine Tränen

Und seid ihr gar so lau,
example 2.4
a. Winterreise, “Gefror’ne Tränen,” mm. 7–17
Ge fror’ ne Trop fen fal len von mei nen Wan gen ab:
12
ob es mir denn ent gan gen, dass ich ge wein et hab’? dass ich ge wein et hab’?
decresc.
b. Hypothetical continuation from mm. 9–12 of the Adagio of the Sonata in C Minor with mm.
12¤. of Winterreise, “Gefror’ne Tränen.” The latter has been renotated in B.
Dass ihr erstarrt zu Eise
Wie kühler Morgentau?
Und dringt doch aus der Quelle

Der Brust so glühend heiss,
Als wolltet ihr zerschmelzen
Des ganzen Winters Eis.
(Frozen tears fall / from my cheeks: / and does it only now come to me /
that I have been weeping? / Ah tears, my tears / are you then so lukewarm
/ that you turn to ice, / like cool morning dew? / And yet you gush from
the well / of my glowing hot breast / as though you would melt / all the ice
of winter.)
The wanderer’s feelings are so painful that he is compelled to numb them,

to turn them out into the winter cold. He recovers their full bitterness, the
full answer to his questions, only in the final stanza.
In contrast, the focal progression, the fermata, and its too slight cadential
sequel in the sonata imply a question that can have no readily identifiable
answer. The two progressions can thus be heard as complementary oppo-
sites: both as questions, one carrying its own answer, the other open and
enigmatic, suggesting a realm of experience still unknown or unacknowl-
edged.The progression in the Adagio foreshadows the tonality of the move-
ment’s B section, disrupting the closing of the theme in ways that allow the
emergence of the B section to seem at first like a quiet intrusion from the
realm of thought or memory. The music of the B section must hold part of
the answer, then, or at least o¤er some clues to the conditions giving rise to
the question.
This new music also holds echoes of Winterreise, especially of the open-
ing song, “Gute Nacht.” One echo is the upper neighbor figure in dotted
rhythm, especially when it occurs on the second scale degree of E minor
within a half-diminished supertonic harmony (cf. m. 29 with mm. 24 and
26 of the song). It leads immediately to a stepwise ascent reminiscent of the
opening melody of “Auf dem Flusse” and some of the cadences of “Der
Wegweiser” (see ex. 2.3a, mm. 16¤.). In the first three stanzas of “Gute
Nacht” the dotted motive marks a retreat in the text from description or
narration into lonely reflection.12 This episode in the Adagio could thus sug-
gest a return to winter desolation, an attempt to reflect on it again without
becoming as lost in it as before.
From the thematic complex that contains these echoes emerges an agi-
tated episode (mm. 32¤.) built on an ostinato of triplet chords that are rem-
iniscent of the accompanimental buildup of “Auf dem Flusse” and, even
more, of the chordal crescendo dramatizing the words “Als noch die Stürme
tobten” (When the storms were still raging) in “Einsamkeit,” the final song
of part I. The dotted rhythms of this episode (mm. 32¤.), arising from vi-
olently struck long notes evocative of dark shapes looming up in a winter
storm, also echo the opening gesture of this sonata’s first movement (see ex.
7.1a). The long notes themselves, in their dynamic and registral separation
from the dotted figure that follows, further belong to the same gestural do-
main as the stark opening G of the C-Minor Impromptu.
The context for all of these echoes of Winterreise is, of course, the open-
ing theme of the Adagio, the theme from which the disturbing focal pro-
gression originates. As I have suggested, this theme also holds such echoes,
perhaps the most recognizable of them all. In its very slow tempo, its con-
junct melodic movement, its hymnlike chordal texture, and its occasional
but not all-pervasive chromaticism, this theme occupies the same topical
territory as “Das Wirtshaus” (see ex. 2.3b). We may accordingly imagine
in the Adagio a protagonist again at the entrance of such an inn, reopen-
ing his contemplation of what he must reckon with in order to gain admis-
sion there and find rest. The plagal close that extends the final Db-major
chord of the focal progression is, of course, a variant—albeit a troubled,
questioning variant—of a final “Amen.”
These musical allusions to Winterreise allow and even encourage us, in in-
terpreting this Adagio movement, to draw on the imagery of death and the
symbolic death of winter, on the search for final rest or transcendence, and
the possibility of their denial. By producing a rift in the music, the focal
progression opens not only dark memories but also the possibility of over-
coming them and no longer having to live in their shadow. At the same time,
a reawakening of these memories recalls the possibility that a way to such
transcendence may never be found: the wanderer may become lost again in
eternal, restless wandering and di¤usion of self, as in the death-in-life of
Winterreise.
example 2.5 Sonata in C Minor, D. 958, Adagio
a. Mm. 51–64
from A'
51
56
60
B'
63
VI
In the second A section (mm. 43–61; ex. 2.5a begins with m. 51), the en-
tire subphrase containing the focal progression comes back etherealized, an
octave higher than before, and much more di¤erentiated texturally from the
two opening subphrases (cf. ex. 2.5a, mm. 51–54 with ex. 2.1a, mm. 9–12).
In a new turn of events, its last four notes are echoed two octaves lower but
a half step higher, as if in intimation of a distant, oracular voice. The short
cadential idea also comes a half step higher, in A major (the enharmonic
reinterpretation of Bbb), transforming the Db—now a C#—from a neighbor
tone into a primary tone in the new tonality.
b. Mm. 94–115
94 A'' a tempo
98
3 3
101
105
un poco cresc.
110 3
3
This upward shift of a semitone has an enigmatic e¤ect. The inclusion of

the low echo in measure 55 as its “cause” makes it seem the work of a mys-
terious, vaguely apprehended being, one that is possibly comforting, possi-
bly threatening.13 Measures 58–61 (ex. 2.5a) parallel measures 15–18 (see
ex. 2.1a), but they remain a half step high, holding the end of the theme
under the spell of Db/C#, as if wishing to prolong indefinitely the memo-
ries first recovered through the Db. This leads to a second, more agitated B
section that begins in D minor instead of Db minor (ex. 2.5a, mm. 62¤.).
The upward shift conveys a sense of potentially limitless openness, of realms
of the imagination opening into further realms with no assurance of their
containment or of the absorption of these realms into the real. The volatil-
ity of these events reflects back on the ending of the first A section, only
reconfirming, in retrospect, its inconclusiveness.
In the second B episode, the music immediately begins an exploratory
sequence, filling in the ascent from minor to relative major (D minor–Eb
minor–F minor–F major), dramatizing this ascent rather than simply allow-
ing it to happen, as in the first B section. Especially a¤ecting is the emer-
gence of F major in measure 73, its quiet subdominant chord taking the
place of the powerful F-minor triad that is expected from the preceding pro-
gression. This subdominant—another plagal, hymnic allusion—comes like
a moment of grace in an awe-inspiring setting as if in a return to the ter-
rain of Winterreise.14
The rest of this B' section remains a half step higher than it was before,
bringing back the wintry, stormlike music at this level, and only at its very
end sliding back into Ab major (m. 93). Whereas the first B section leads seam-
lessly into the first return of the theme in measure 43, this return unobtru-
sively but unmistakably highlights the descent from A minor to Ab major as
a disjunctive one. It thus signals again that the music of the B sections inhabits
an extraordinary realm, a realm of thought or imagination encompassing dark
memories at one extreme and dreams of release from them at the other.
In the third and last occurrences of the focal progression (A", ex. 2.5b),
the entire subphrase that contains it (mm. 102–105) appears first in its orig-
inal registral disposition, but in shadowy pianissimo and increasingly mi-
nor coloration. The focal progression itself begins, this last time, with an
Ab-minor harmony, from which the bass descends entirely, and somewhat
uncannily, by whole step, taking it through Fb major to Dbb/C major. The
entire phrase seems drawn in this way into the shadowy play of the two
“echoes” that follow: a high one and a low one, each rising by half step.
In this, its last occurrence, the opening gesture of the theme almost dis-
sipates in a kind of ghostly fading. The sadness of the theme weakens, and
the memories it awakens recede. Perhaps the protagonist imagines his own
death. A major, a realm of imagination in this movement, emerges from this
shadow one last time, although the short cadential gesture is not allowed to
resolve this time in this key. Instead, A major dissipates into silence, and Ab
major replaces it in full voice, extending the short cadential progression into
a fully major plagal close, followed by another authentic one over a tonic
pedal. In this last progression, Db and its triad no longer lead away from Ab
major but are instead fully incorporated into it. But in the immediate after-
math of so much discontinuity, this incorporation seems to embody not so
much an achievement of integration or transcendence as an acceptance,
tinged with melancholy, of the impossibility that memories can ever be com-
pletely remade.
VII
The focal progression conveys a floating, even disembodied feeling in its pi-
anissimo dynamic, its even, legato character, and its entirely stepwise, largely
chromatic motion. Later I shall discuss a theme in the development of the
first movement (see ex. 7.3, mm. 119¤.) that, without anticipating it mo-
tivically, mysteriously anticipates its character. In the finale, as already men-
tioned, the focal progression returns in its last, shadowy form, the form most
suggestive of disembodiment or even death. Not quite all of the progres-
sion appears, but there is enough for clear recognition (mm. 365–367; mm.
380–382, see ex. 2.1b). Here it neither culminates in a plagal close nor brings
the music to a point of hesitation; instead it is twice swept up into the enor-
mous sequential climax of an obsessive tarantella (mm. 359–395), possibly
a dance of death, bringing the music from Db major back through Ab ma-
jor to Eb major, each region closer to the C-minor tonic. C minor’s domi-
nant crashes against Eb major (m. 395), surging up in three great waves to
bring the developmental journey to a grim conclusion.
This dark, driven, cumulative music, by fleetingly recalling the Adagio’s
focal progression, may seem to recollect its hope of release or transcendence
only as a distant memory. But as I shall later argue, as a dance of death this
finale is not consigned to signifying only a meek surrender to death. It may
also embody a confrontation with death, an assertion of self in the face of
death that the lonely wanderer of Winterreise has never attained. The sepa-
rate return of the goal of the focal progression, the plagal gesture in Db with
its minor subdominant chord (see ex. 7.6, mm. 97–100) suggests such self-
a‹rmation especially. In the finale it comes as a herald for the second theme
(ex. 7.6, mm. 113¤.), whose opening i–iv–i progression it anticipates. It,
too, brings the music not to questioning hesitation but to energetic asser-
tion of a theme that takes hold, with fatalistic stoicism, of the Db-minor re-
gion (notated as C# minor). In the absence of an answer, the question itself
becomes hypostatized as a theme. I shall argue (in chapter 7, section VII)
that this theme at last brings clear self-definition to the protagonist who has
sought that answer.
VIII
As in the A-Major and Bb-Major Sonatas, the recurrences of components of

the focal progression of the Adagio in the finale of the C-Minor Sonata be-
long to a much wider network of motivic, gestural, and tonal linkages that
covers its four movements. Although these three sonatas do not manipulate
formal conventions in ways that invite hearing them as full-fledged cyclic
works, the cyclic relations between their movements are rich and complex,
involving not only themes but also harmonic-contrapuntal complexes and
recurring key areas. Brendel’s discussion reveals many of these relationships;
and there are many more. As the above analyses of cyclically recurring pro-
gressions have begun to show, these relationships o¤er interpretive clues about
how one movement or piece in a Schubert sonata or cycle responds to an-
other.The Scherzo of the A-Major Sonata, for example, gathers together the
most disparate memories from the preceding two movements, as if in a first
attempt to reconcile them, to bring continuity to the self that has experi-
enced them. It prepares for a finale in which these memories are more fully
integrated. The last movement of the Bb-Major Sonata transforms a phrase
that originates as a gentle, searching response into an assertive, self-su‹cient
theme. In the C-minor finale, two components of a hesitant, questioning
progression return in two di¤erent places, one driven and fleeting, the other
imposing, as if finally to proclaim an answer to the progression’s original ques-
tion. In each sonata the finale thus acquires resonance, depth, and even dra-
matic motivation from the background of the earlier movements.
Where do such cyclic features originate in Schubert’s music? I have al-
ready proposed that some of them grow from, or are at least intensified
through, his preoccupation with Winterreise throughout most of 1827, prob-
ably more for poetic or psychological reasons than for musical ones. The
particular cyclic technique on which this chapter has focused, the return-
ing block, may have originated in the song cycle, specifically in “Der Weg-
weiser” and “Das Wirtshaus.” It may just as well have originated in the Eb-
Major and Gb-Major Impromptus of opus 90; the compositional chronology
of these works is uncertain. But this procedure arises in the company of
others that have their origins, for Schubert, well before Winterreise.The next
two chapters will explore some of those origins in the works of his early
maturity.
c hap t e r 3
The Wanderer’s Tracks
The “Wanderer” Fantasy sets itself apart from most of Schubert’s instru-
mental music not only because of its unusual form and virtuosic character
but also because of the place it occupies in his compositional career. At the
time of its composition, late in 1822, he had not completed a large-scale in-
strumental piece in three years. He turned to it, as already mentioned, from
his work on the “Unfinished” Symphony, which he had brought closer to
completion than any other instrumental work in several movements since
the “Trout” Quintet and the Piano Sonata in A Major, D. 664, of 1819.1 In
the intervening three years he had occupied himself primarily with dramatic
music, but without much public success.
We shall probably never know why Schubert began to return his primary
focus to instrumental music at the end of 1822. This return coincides, at least
approximately, with the onset of his syphilitic infection. It also comes only a
few months after the writing of “Mein Traum.” In the prologue I have dis-
cussed the story’s themes of alienation and banishment, reconciliation and
salvation. These themes correspond aptly with the expressive range of both
the symphony and the fantasy. We shall probably never know if Schubert had
recognized the signs of his illness by October or November of 1822. If he
had, the expressive range of these two pieces might reflect his need to return
from texts by others to the text of himself, to collect and strengthen himself
in the face of mortal danger. Such speculation aside, we can fairly regard the
fantasy as the first completed large-scale instrumental work of Schubert’s ma-
60
turity; it is also the first such work that he succeeded in publishing. It was is-
sued early in 1823, very soon after he completed it, as opus 15.
Like the “Trout” Quintet, the fantasy includes a set of variations on one
of the best known of his songs in his own time. But unlike the quintet, the
fantasy makes easily recognizable references to its song throughout: the open-
ing motives of each movement are clearly derived from the repeated notes,
the ascending stepwise melodic figures (both diatonic and chromatic), and
the long–short–short rhythm of the song. Although one can sometimes trace
motivic relationships between the movements of Schubert’s earlier pieces,
including the “Trout” Quintet, the fantasy is the first piece in which he makes
such relationships so explicit. More surprisingly, however, it also seems to
be the last in which he does so in such a consistent and thoroughgoing way.
Although the “Wanderer” Fantasy is clearly Schubert’s prototype for his
return to the fantasy genre after Winterreise, neither of the two later fantasies
presents a network of such obviously interrelated motives. Nor do any of
the works in sonata form evince this kind of patently cyclic motivic organi-
zation. In the Eb-Major Trio, as already noted, the return of the slow move-
ment’s theme haunts and finally transfigures the finale, and I have also noted
the various kinds of cyclic elements in the A-Major Piano Sonata. But none
of Schubert’s other instrumental music after the “Wanderer” Fantasy comes
any closer than do these two pieces to an unmistakable cyclic motivic or-
ganization. He simply did not make its explicit motivic cyclicism into a par-
adigm for any of his later music.The subtler motivic procedures linking sep-
arate movements observed in the preceding chapters do not seem traceable
to the “Wanderer” Fantasy; as I have suggested and shall show in the next
chapter, they do have another antecedent in the fantasy’s companion work,
the “Unfinished” Symphony.
Each of the two later fantasies, to be sure, does owe more than its way of
forging a single movement from four separate ones to the “Wanderer.” The
Fantasy in C Major, D. 934, of 1827 for violin and piano, like the “Wan-
derer,” once again has at its center a set of variations based on one of his
better known songs, “Sei mir gegrüsst.” Although the song functions as a
source of motivic material for this fantasy, it does so only in subtler ways
than in the “Wanderer.” But the song does make its influence felt through-
out in another way: by playing a decisive role, through its own refrainlike
focal progression, in the fantasy’s overall tonal organization.2 The Fantasy in
t h e wa n d e r e r ’s t rac k s 61
F-Minor, D. 940, for piano, four hands, composed in 1828, has no song at
its center, but like the “Wanderer” Fantasy it strongly emphasizes the en-
harmonic equivalent of its minor Neapolitan key. The wrenching turn from
F minor to F# minor for its inner movements has no clearer antecedent in
Schubert’s instrumental music than the equally wrenching intrusion in the
“Wanderer” Fantasy of the C#-minor stanza of the song into its C-major
surroundings. The earlier fantasy also provides an antecedent for the fugal
finale of the F-Minor Fantasy.3
Do any of the other later instrumental works build on antecedents from
the “Wanderer” Fantasy? The String Quartet in D Minor, D. 810 (“Death
and the Maiden”), of course, has as its center once again variations on one
of Schubert’s best-known songs. Christoph Wol¤ has convincingly identified
a complex of mutually opposed motivic elements (initially associated with
the fearful maiden on one hand and the figure of death on the other) that
are carried over from the song into the other movements.4 The song thus
casts its spell over the entire quartet, just as in the “Wanderer” Fantasy and
the C-Major Fantasy for violin. Unlike any of the fantasies, however, the
quartet owes its cyclic feeling partly to the almost monolithic unity of its
tonal plan, with three movements in D minor (the original key of the song)
surrounding the G-minor variations.
So much for the “motivic” and formal influence of the “Wanderer” Fan-
tasy. Do any of the other later instrumental works resemble the “Wanderer”
Fantasy in their tonal plans? Do any of them, for example, have inner move-
ments in keys so distant from their tonics? Schubert’s preoccupation with
distant keys and unusual tonal relationships is one of his distinguishing char-
acteristics: the first subordinate themes of his three-key expositions are only
the best known and most easily identifiable of such explorations. But he
does not normally extend such explorations into key relationships between
separate movements. Only three of his completed mature instrumental works
in sonata forms, the Grand Duo of 1824 for piano, four hands, the String
Quintet in C Major, D. 956, and the Bb-Major Sonata, have movements—
in all three cases, slow movements—in keys not closely related to their ton-
ics. The most tonally remote of these three is the C#-minor Andante
sostenuto of the Bb-Major Sonata. Even when enharmonically rewritten as
Db minor, this key is six flats away from the Bb major of the surrounding
movements; its tonic triad shares no tones with the Bb-major scale. Remote
as it may be, the choice of C# minor for this slow movement emerges, as
Brendel and others have noted, from the tonal events of the first movement,
where the development section begins in this same C# minor (see ex. 9.3b,
mm. 118¤.). This C# minor is closely associated with the F#-minor second
(or transitional) theme of the exposition (see ex. 9.2, mm. 48¤.), and that
area is in turn associated with the low Gb trill at the end of the opening
phrase (see ex. 1.3). As Brendel has also noted, the Scherzo (see ex. 9.6b)
returns to these same areas, and the opening G of the finale still embodies
a response to the Gb that has in a sense given rise to them.
In these ways this last sonata gives evidence, along with the subtly cyclic
motivic features already brought into consideration in chapter 1, of cyclic
tonal organization. It shows a pattern of preoccupation with a particular group
of remote pitches and keys, with Gb (associated with Gb major and F# mi-
nor), and with its dominant, Db (associated, in turn, with Db major and C#
minor). The “Wanderer” Fantasy, in the way it dramatizes the emergence of
its C#-minor song yet also integrates it into its C-major surroundings (in a
process spanning its four movements), provides a model for this kind of tonal
organization. It also o¤ers, through the song, a key to its interpretation.
II
The choice of C# minor, the key of “Der Wanderer,” for the slow move-
ment of a piece in C major is, of course, extraordinary. The way Schubert
introduces the song into the fantasy makes this choice a source of dramatic
conflict. Toward the end of the opening C-major Allegro, from measure
143 to measure 166, a grand prolongation of dominant harmony heralds
the return of C major and perhaps even promises a recapitulation of the
opening material. The suddenness of the E# diminished seventh chord in
measure 167, linked to a C# dominant seventh two measures later, annihi-
lates these expectations. A new scene abruptly opens here, built of the same
rhythmic and melodic materials as the earlier scenes of the Allegro but so
contrasting in tonality and soon afterwards in texture and tempo that it
seems even to contradict those earlier scenes, to make them seem less real
in retrospect.5
Thus the song that now begins (ex. 3.1) does not so much follow the
example 3.1 Fantasy in C Major, “Wanderer,” D. 760, mm. 189–200
189 Adagio.
5
193
5
197
199
dim.
Allegro as displace it, or at least displace the confirming conclusion for which
it has prepared. In this way the C# minor of the Adagio, the wanderer’s song,
forcefully intrudes upon the C major of the Allegro. The transition to the
Adagio denies the Allegro its gesturally and tonally prepared ending, and
thus presents the experience embodied in the Adagio as not only di¤erent
from but also in conflict with the experience embodied in the Allegro.
The conflict is dramatically, even violently presented; but it is not un-
prepared. E major and Db major, both keys closely related to the song’s C#
minor, make striking appearances in the course of an opening movement
as remarkable for its instability as for its vigor. One can interpret even the
first cadence in the Allegro (ex. 3.2, mm. 16–17)—a fortissimo A-minor
11
15
17
semicadence followed abruptly by silence and a pianississimo return of the

originally fortissimo C-major opening—as either a source or a sign of this
instability. A “second theme” soon arrives, not in the G major prepared for
it, but through an appropriation into E major of G major’s lingering third
degree (mm. 45¤.). The E-major harmony of this theme does not lead to a
further goal, but instead simply recedes quietly back into C major (mm. 66¤.).
Like a distant rumbling, a tremolo marks the return of C major, calling the
music back home from an E major only imagined rather than fully possessed.
Dynamic or textural discontinuities thus articulate both the A-minor semi-
cadence and the E-major lyrical theme, marking them as disturbances, one
forceful, one quiet, within the C-major music of the opening pages. These
two disturbances share an emphasis on the E-major triad—in the first as dom-
inant, in the second as tonic—but in both cases they are directly followed,
without functional harmonic mediation, by returns to C major. In that E
major links itself much more closely, in traditional harmonic discourse, with
C# minor than with C major, its presence in these opening pages might be
taken as a foretoken of the eventual emergence of the song’s C# minor. At
the same time, the connection of E major to C major through the common
tone, E, helps the emergence of the E-major sonorities to seem part of the
same stream of consciousness as their C-major surroundings.
Arising from the initially quiet but then surging C-major tremolo (mm.
67¤.), the opening music of the fantasy returns, this time leading directly
into a stormy A-minor episode. At a climactic moment (m. 108), the A-mi-
nor frenzy is suddenly dissipated through a dominant seventh of Eb.The new
music beginning in Eb major, both songlike and dancing in its evasion of the
storm’s threat, culminates in a flamboyant fanfare in Db, and from there it
moves majestically back to the dominant of C. It thus arrives at a key much
more closely related, by traditional criteria, to the song’s C# minor than to
the composition’s opening C major.
In one way, the theatrical arrival of Db major and its subsequent reinter-
pretation as a Neapolitan in C prepare for the later arrival of the song’s C#
minor. But in another, the final subsiding of the hammering alternation of
Abs and Gs into an already much-prolonged, in this way already established
G (m. 165) seems like a long-anticipated resolution: a resolution contradicted
by the disorienting, fortissimo resurgence of the Ab as a G# only two mea-
sures later. In the subsequent progression the recent memory of the seem-
ingly festive Db-major music, which was somewhat given to bravado, has
surrendered its place to melancholically brooding music that moves into C#
minor, as if reflecting a protagonist who generates great energy and charisma,
but who also feels a consuming inner despair. Although foreshadowed by
the E-major sonorities in the Allegro’s first pages and by the Db-major fan-
fare later on, this C# minor still seems lonely and foreign: in part because of
the contradiction-of-resolution that introduces it, in part because of the ex-
treme contrast of the Adagio with all the preceding music in both tempo
and texture.
III
The variations that follow, alternating between minor and major and incor-
porating two torrential interludes, find within this initially C#-minor terri-
tory the most extreme possible contrasts of gesture and mood. They suggest
586
591
an exploration in imagination of the relationship between terror in a lonely

confrontation with nature and the possibility of revelatory consolation in its
midst. Unlike the stormy interlude in the opening Allegro, these storms ac-
tually subside like storms lived through; the second one makes a transition,
through a kind of shadow variation of the song, into the Ab-major Scherzo.
Thematically this Scherzo recapitulates the opening phrases of the fantasy,
but tonally it remains closer to the C#/Db region than to C. When the Scherzo
returns after the trio, the stormy interlude that it, too, has incorporated takes
a new direction, becoming a transition to the finale. Harmonically this tran-
sition links Ab major to C major by transforming the Ab major triad, through
the addition of F#, into a German sixth chord (ex. 3.3, mm. 586–594). It
thus also reinterprets, in relation to C, the same harmony that has earlier
served as the dominant seventh of C#/Db. This harmony functions, finally,
as a link between C major and C# minor, the two principal but mutually
distant tonal regions of the fantasy.
Augmented sixth chords—German sixths like this climactic one, and also
French sixths like the one leading to the fantasy’s very first cadence (see ex.
3.2, mm. 16–17)—figure prominently in the shared thematic material of all
four movements and in all the transitions between these movements (for the-
matic occurrences of these chords, see mm. 200–201, 271–273, 399–401,
656–658; for transitional ones, see mm. 176–181, 244 (when D# changes to
Dn), mm. 549¤., and the already noted ex. 3.3, mm. 586–594).6 Along with
the repeated melodic tones in dactylic rhythm, the augmented sixth chord
(originally a French sixth) is one of the motivic elements that the fantasy
takes from the song. It plays an essential role not only in presenting and then
resolving the fantasy’s central tonal conflict but also in imparting a common
harmonic color to each of the four movements.
IV
One can thus understand many, indeed most, of the tonal events in the “Wan-
derer” Fantasy either as preparing for its central tonal conflict between the
C major of the fantasy’s virtuosic opening and the C# minor of the somber
song at its heart, or as resolving that conflict once the song’s variations have
ended. Before the song, especially, the emergence of such diverse tonal cen-
ters as E major and Eb, Ab, and Db major may seem improvisationally way-
ward, yet all of these keys come into association with the C#/Db minor re-
gion at the fantasy’s center. Moreover, when the Ab major of the Scherzo
generates an augmented sixth chord, it becomes an agent of mediation be-
tween C#/Db and C major, integrating the fantasy’s divided tonal cosmos.
One might finally characterize this cosmos as C major under the spell of
C#/Db minor. The fantasy is an exuberant, virtuosic instrumental work un-
der the spell of a melancholy song, whose melancholy it ultimately over-
comes.7
The song’s text and its musical responses to that text o¤er unambiguous
clues for interpreting these tonal and dramatic conflicts in the fantasy. The
Adagio melody at the heart of the fantasy (see ex. 3.1) is fundamentally the
same C#-minor melody that lies at the heart of the song (ex. 3.4a, mm. 23¤.),
and that melody reaches its melodic high point, C#, on its key word,
“Fremdling” (m. 29). The F#-minor subdominant harmony that supports it
becomes immediately “entfremdt” (estranged) from itself as a pivot chord
to the E-major cadence of “überall” (everywhere). Although most of the
rest of the song remains in E major—it even ends there—the opening three
stanzas have given their weight to C# minor, and this key never quite relin-
quishes its tonal hold over the song.8 Perhaps the cadence of the second stanza
(ex. 3.4a, mm. 20–22), a repeated semicadence in C# minor buttressed by
its augmented sixth, is what establishes this hold so strongly. I have already
commented on the importance of the same progression in the fantasy, be-
ginning with its very first cadence (see ex. 3.2, mm. 16–17)9 and culmi-
nating in the return to C major for the finale and in the finale’s climaxes.
In the song, this second stanza (ex. 3.4a, mm. 16–22), from which the sec-
ond phrase group of the fantasy’s Adagio derives (see ex. 3.1, mm. 197¤.),
begins in E major for “Ich wandle still, bin wenig froh” (I wander quietly,
am scarcely happy), bringing its protagonist into focus in quiet reflection.
The music then draws back into C# minor for “und immer fragt der Seufzer:
wo, immer wo?” (and always asks my sigh: where, always where?), as if to
capture the desolation that he experiences in that quietness. The same words
and music return just before the last stanza (ex. 3.4b, mm. 63–64), disturb-
ing the E major of the two preceding ones and leaving their unsettling im-
pression on the final return to E.
The words of that conclusion—“dort wo du nicht bist, dort ist das Glück”
(there, where you are not, there is happiness)—almost demand musical in-
conclusiveness (ex. 3.4b). E major in this song is the key of wandering, of
“überall,” of searching and of the hallucination of finding one’s true home-
land. The song clearly ends in E major, but this tonality reemerges only am-
biguously and never has time to reconfirm itself fully. In reality, the song’s
protagonist is left in C# minor, a Fremdling to the E-major world of which
he dreams. In the song, then, the simple contrast between a major key and
its relative minor su‹ces to reflect the disparity between enraptured illu-
sions of belonging and a desolate awareness of actual isolation.
In the absence of words, a tonal contrast of this moderate degree is un-
likely to suggest such a disparity. But the contrast on which Schubert bases
the tonal structure of the “Wanderer” Fantasy, especially as the composition
dramatizes it, easily suggests a contrast, even a conflict or a contradiction,
between disparate and even incompatible experiences or ways of being. One
could relate this tonal and gestural conflict between the C-major music and
the C#-minor music in the fantasy to any number of stereotypes of conflict
in di¤erent spheres of life. Within the realms of art, it might mirror a conflict
between the epic and the lyric poet, or even between the instrumentalist
and the singer in music itself. The derivation of the fantasy’s C#-minor mu-
sic from the stanza of “Der Wanderer” that introduces its Fremdling, how-
ever, suggests a specific range of interpretations—ones that set happy, even
joyous, feelings of inclusion against desolate feelings of alienation.The musical
example 3.4 “Der Wanderer,” D. 489
a. Mm. 16–31
16 (stanza 2)
Ich wan dle still, bin we nig froh, und im mer
20 (stanza 3)
3 3
fragt der Seuf zer wo? im mer wo? Die son ne dünkt mich
24
3
hier so kalt, die Blü the welk, das Le ben alt, und was sie re den
28
3
lee rer Schall, ich bin ein Fremd ling ü ber all. Wo
b. Mm. 62–72
62
3 3
fragt der Seuf zer wo? im mer wo? Im Gei ster hauch tönt’s mir zu rück:
67
Dort wo du nicht bist, dort ist das Glück.
contrasts within the fantasy, not only tonal but also gestural and textural, be-
speak such a conflict much more powerfully than do the contrasts in the
song. But in its unambiguous, exuberant C-major conclusion, the fantasy,
in contrast to the song, also resolves its central tonal conflict, as if in a utopian
overcoming of the alienated state of the song’s protagonist.10
Insofar as such a telling is possible, the “Wanderer” Fantasy tells a story
of such a Fremdling—in its case a story with a happy ending—in purely
musical terms. Because of the fantasy’s basis in the song, one might want to
claim that it draws on a residual text to tell this story. It does tell its story
clearly enough that one might easily imagine something similar for it, even
without the song’s poem. I have already explored, and shall return to, the
possibility of imagining such a story for some of Schubert’s later instrumental
pieces, a story of a di¤used or divided self that seeks or finds integration.
The continuing self-identification as an outsider that can be assumed in part
to have motivated his preoccupation with Winterreise also found further ex-
pression in his instrumental music, especially in the year that remained to
him after completing the song cycle. The kinship of the tonal configura-
tions of the Bb-Major Sonata with those of the “Wanderer” Fantasy enacts
a continuation in the sonata of the Fremdling’s story of a lost but eventually
recovered self.
I have already identified motives and gestures in the C-Minor Impromptu
and the C-Minor Sonata that may link these pieces to Winterreise. In the re-
maining sections of this chapter I shall also explore some possible motivic
and gestural links between the earlier “Der Wanderer” and other passages
from the impromptus and last sonatas. These allusions, although only mo-
mentarily explicit in the music, are prominent and characterful enough to
function as concrete evidence that Schubert’s preoccupation with the alien-
ated wanderer in Winterreise may have recalled for him his musical realiza-
tions of that figure’s earlier soul mate in “Der Wanderer.” This wanderer
di¤ers from his later counterpart in his ability to imagine, as Winterreise’s
wanderer cannot, the fulfillment of finding a “Heimat”—a homeland, or
an inner sense of place. The allusions to “Der Wanderer” corroborate the
possibility that the prototypes of tonal conflict and resolution explored in
“Der Wanderer” and the “Wanderer” Fantasy (although not especially in
Winterreise) o¤ered Schubert ways to bring the Fremdling’s conflicts to a
utopian musical resolution, a return to life.
Much as the first impromptu of opus 90 shares its mood and some of its mo-
tives with such Winterreise songs as “Gute Nacht” and “Der Wegweiser,” so
the fourth, the Ab-Major Impromptu, holds echoes of “Der Wanderer.” The
opening of its trio (ex. 3.5a) is a variant of the song’s central melody. It shares
with that melody its C#-minor tonality, an opening melodic gesture confined
to the fifth scale degree and its upper neighbor, its repeated melodic em-
phasis of this scale degree, and its almost immobile opening harmonic pro-
gression, i–VI–i. Also as in “Der Wanderer” and especially in the fantasy, an
augmented sixth harmony has great prominence in this trio, as the most regis-
trally and dynamically marked harmony of its dramatic middle section (ex.
3.5b, mm. 127–128, repeated in 135–136). As in the setting of “wo, immer
wo?” in the song, the melody of this climax, resonating with the trio’s open-
example 3.5 Impromptu in Ab Major, op. 90, no. 4
a. Mm. 105–110
105 decresc. Trio.
108
b. Mm. 122–129
122
126
ing neighbor motion, lingers on a D# that is intensified by an upper neigh-

bor. After the climax, the “Wanderer” melody appears in the major (m. 139),
thus recalling the two maggiore variations in the fantasy. In spite of its di¤er-
ent form, then, this entire trio holds enough resonance with the “Wanderer”
theme to feel like a new, composite variation on it.
The shared key, registral disposition, and melodic and harmonic emphases
make it appropriate to characterize this trio as beginning not merely with a
reference to “Der Wanderer” but with a virtual quotation of it, particularly
as Schubert reconceived it for the fantasy. At first this quotation may sim-
ply mystify: the music surrounding the trio in this impromptu makes no ap-
parent complementary reference to either the song or the fantasy. But this
allusion encourages a rehearing of this familiar music that can remind us of
how unfamiliar, how entfremdt, Schubert might have intended it—or at least
its beginning—to be (ex. 3.6).
The Ab-Major Impromptu unfolds at first in unbalanced six-measure
phrase units. It begins with a descending arpeggiated figure of two mea-
sures, immediately repeated in the following two. It thus suggests, at least
gesturally, the type of theme (known as a “sentence”), that opens so many
Classical sonatas. In such a theme, a four-measure continuation normally
follows the repetition of the two-measure basic idea, often extracting and
developing motivic elements from that idea.11 But in this impromptu the
continuation lasts only two measures, and its fragmentary melody and sim-
ple chordal accompaniment contrast almost too markedly with the opening
idea to be appropriately identified as a continuation. In consequence, the
return of the opening arpeggiation in measure 7 suggests a new attempt to
begin, a search for a truer beginning, without quite knowing how (ex. 3.6).
This impression is reinforced by the abrupt, although quiet, modulation to
Cb of the chordally accompanied melody in its return (m. 11). The arpeg-
giation now recommences in Cb major, and the two-measure chordal idea
again follows its repetition. Perhaps the music is ready to stabilize in Cb, the
relative major—but no: the parallel minor of Cb, notated in sharps, imme-
diately takes its place (m. 19). After this third beginning, this B-minor at-
tempt, the chordal idea finally comes more than once. It first looks even far-
ther afield, to D major, but then returns through B/Cb minor to the opening
Ab minor. Here the contrasting idea takes on, at least in part, the role that
was initially withheld—that of a continuing idea.
Only now, after thirty measures, does the music finally emerge into Ab
major. The repetition of the opening arpeggiation becomes fourfold and
finally yields to the kind of motivic liquidation that might have occurred
in an opening sentential phrase (ex. 3.6, m. 39). The resulting shorter, one-
measure arpeggiated figures, their progression repeated to confirm the ex-
pansion of the opening six-measure units into more balanced eight-measure
ones, now become the accompaniment for the impromptu’s first true
melody, brought by the left hand (m. 47).
Thus the Ab-Major Impromptu can be said to begin with a search for its
example 3.6 Impromptu in Ab Major, op. 90, no. 4, mm. 1–50
Allegretto.
A minor
C major
13
16
C minor
20
(continued)
24
decresc.
31
A major
35
39 5 6 7 8
43
cresc.
47
(“Horn theme”)
own conditions of beginning: for its key (or at least its mode), its phrase
structure, and the theme that comes to it only after it has found that key and
the phrase rhythm to stabilize it. The allusion to “Der Wanderer” in the trio
supports an interpretation of the impromptu’s opening as wandering, and
thus evoking this search for a tonal home, for a consequent sense of direc-
tion, and for thematic identity.
Once found, Ab major never again loses its hold over the music of the A
section. The tonicizations of Db major, its subdominant, and even the mo-
mentary Db-major climax in measure 64 only strengthen this hold. In spite
of the chromatic Gb that they necessitate, these brief tonicizations of Db do
not destabilize Ab major; on the contrary, they reinforce the subdominant
as a stabilizing component of this hitherto withheld tonic. The Db-major
climax sets the stage for a new, more fulfilled variant of the melodious Ab-
major theme in the right hand (mm. 72¤.) and thus in a familiar melodic
register. The strong emphases of the subdominant compensate for the pro-
longed tonal imbalance of the impromptu’s search through light and shadow
for its mode and even, in a sense, its tonic. Because this impromptu begins
not with an assertion of a stable theme or tonality, but with a quest for them,
their arrival brings to the music a sense not only of joyous release but also
of lingering uncertainty.
The trio’s fall into C# minor plays on this uncertainty. Because Ab major
is not given from the start but is instead only achieved, and because C# mi-
nor can be heard as a negation of Db major, the constituent of Ab major on
which the music has especially depended for its assertion, the music of the
trio suggests a denial of that achievement. On one description, the music—
or its main protagonist—begins outside of Ab major; it eventually gains ad-
mittance to that region, but in the trio it finds itself outside again, a
Fremdling, as at the beginning. There are few other pieces in such simple
ternary form in which the return of the opening material takes on so much
new resonance from the section that precedes it; when it returns in this im-
promptu, the opening music emerges from the trio as if still in its shadow.
Insofar as one musical passage can account for another, the trio explains, at
least in part, why the Ab-Major Impromptu begins as it does. In the lan-
guage of “Der Wanderer,” the protagonist of the impromptu is a Fremdling
in search of a home; the reference of the trio to that song helps both to ar-
ticulate and to substantiate such an interpretation.
VI
Not only is the Andante sostenuto of the Bb-Major Sonata in the “Wan-
derer” key, it also resonates, at least distantly, with the “Wanderer” theme.
It begins with exactly the same treble and bass notes, and with a melody that
once again opens on the fifth scale degree. The scale degree is prolonged in
this case by a double neighbor figure—rather than the single neighbor tone
of the “Wanderer” theme—that especially stresses the upper neighbor (as at
both of the first two cadential articulations, in measures 8 and 12). More-
over, it once again has an almost immobile bass: a tonic pedal for the first
eight measures, a dominant pedal for the next four.
In the first section of this chapter, I noted that the C# minor of this move-
ment is neither unprepared in the first movement nor altogether forgotten
in the subsequent movements. As I already indicated, C#/Db is linked very
closely with F#/Gb in this sonata. F# minor and C# minor both make their
first appearances as sudden tonal deflections at points of formal articulation
(the end of the first group and the beginning of the development), in ways
that highlight these remote keys and emphasize their remoteness (see fig.
9.1). Like the song in the “Wanderer” Fantasy and the trio of the Ab-Ma-
jor Impromptu, the music in these keys here suggests the presence of an
outsider as lost and in search of a home as the protagonist of “Der Wan-
derer,” as the lonely wanderer of Winterreise, or as Schubert’s banished dream
persona in “Mein Traum.”
With the first turn to F# minor comes a new theme (see ex. 9.2, mm.
48¤.), in which the left hand at first predominates in a melodic and rhyth-
mic elaboration of the long–short–short pattern of “Der Wanderer.” The
association of this new rhythm with “Der Wanderer” might at first seem
far-fetched, but the evolution of this rhythm in this movement makes the
allusion unmistakable. It leads to another virtual quotation of “Der Wan-
derer,” this time of its introduction, a quotation that is just as clear as the
one in the Ab-Major Impromptu (see ex. 9.4, mm. 159–160, 163–164). In
the first stage of this evolution the long–short–short rhythm, now un-
adorned, emerges in the left hand as the leading motive of the F-major sub-
ordinate theme (see ex. 9.3a, mm. 80¤.). This rhythm then pervades much
of the development section, first in the left hand, then as the head motive
of an ostensibly new theme in the right, initially coming in Db major (see
example 3.7 ”Der Wanderer,” D. 489, mm. 1–7
Sehr langsam
3 3 3 3
ex. 9.4, mm. 151¤.). After the emergence of this theme, the rhythmic mo-
tive returns to the left hand (mm. 159–160), now in A minor but in a melodic,
harmonic, registral, and textural disposition that is almost identical to that
of the very opening of “Der Wanderer” (ex. 3.7).12 Toward the end of this
development, the same rhythm returns again to the right hand as the twice-
repeated head motive of a D-minor theme (see ex. 9.4, mm. 174¤.) that
eventually calls back the trill and then, in its wake, the memory of the open-
ing theme. The quotation of “Der Wanderer” is short: it lasts for two mea-
sures, but it comes almost at the midpoint of an extended passage (mm.
131–185; ex. 9.4 begins with m. 149) that is continuously under the spell
of the very same rhythmic motive, arising again and again in much the same
upward triadic arpeggiation.13
This development begins with recollections of the sonata’s opening theme
in C# minor and F# minor, followed by recollections of the F#-minor theme
that bring the passage back to C# minor. I have already characterized these
keys, the keys with which “Der Wanderer” opens, as a foreign territory in
the tonal cosmos of the Bb-Major Sonata. From this Fremde, through the
deceptive cadence in measure 131 (see ex. 9.3b), emerges the long, tonally
exploratory passage just described. In its constant, wondrous modulations
and its great textural and dynamic range, this passage richly evokes the per-
ils and enchantments, the terrors and consolations, that might befall a lonely
wanderer in search of a homeland.
VII
In thinking about the legacy of “Der Wanderer” for Schubert himself, we

must also consider the probable significance for him of C# minor, the key
itself of “Der Wanderer.” Of the very few songs in this key, this one was by
far the best known in Schubert’s time, and it remains so today.14 Schubert
might well have regarded C# minor as “the wanderer’s key.” It is notewor-
thy that apart from the “Wanderer” Fantasy, the last three sonatas are the
only of Schubert’s completed multimovement instrumental works to ex-
plore this key extensively, linking it with its close relative, F# minor. In the
C-Minor Sonata, the contrasting episode of the Adagio, already much dis-
cussed, begins in this key, as does the second theme of the finale. In the A-
Major Sonata, the wild central episode of the F#-minor Andantino is also
in this key, which then returns powerfully in each of the subsequent move-
ments. The preoccupation of the Bb-Major Sonata with C# minor is thus an
ongoing one, one common to all three of these sonatas. Because of the ways
Schubert sets o¤ its occurrences, it is also a strange key, an outside key, in
all of these contexts. Even in the A-Major Sonata, in which F# minor and
C# minor might figure as closely related keys to the A-major tonic, Schu-
bert makes them sound remote in the Andantino by almost completely with-
holding from the first movement the triads and the sonorities that are most
associated with them. He also reinforces the impression of C# minor as a
strange and outside key through its violent intrusion upon C major in the
Scherzo. In drawing on the “Wanderer” key in the last sonatas, then, Schu-
bert may have drawn yet again on its meaning as articulated by the relation
of the music to the poetry in “Der Wanderer.” He might still have been fol-
lowing the wanderer’s tracks, searching for new and subtler ways to rejoin
the wanderer’s footsteps, to release the wanderer from oblivion and turn those
footsteps homeward.
c hap t e r 4
Retelling the “Unfinished”
In the Andante con moto of the “Unfinished” Symphony only a thread of

sound connects the first thematic group to the second (ex. 4.1, mm. 60–63).
This thread—a pianissimo G# in the first violins, left sounding when the
other instruments fall silent—may be the Andante’s barest moment. It is
the very stillness of this transition, its seeming incorporeality, that imbues
it with dramatic tension. Suddenly without harmonic or textural support,
the line becomes expectant and searching: it steals its way into darkness.
The violins begin to draw a melodic gesture from this pitch by taking it up
an octave. They then pass down, still pianissimo, through a C#-minor triad.
When they reach the C# itself, they are joined by the second violins and
violas in a syncopated ostinato recalling a very similar pattern from the first
movement. The ostinato has originated in that movement as the accompa-
niment for the second theme, and it is first introduced there, as here, by a
single sustained pitch (see ex. 4.4, mm. 38–41). But later that ostinato has
come again, at a moment of dramatic crisis in the first movement’s devel-
opment, when the music is wrenched from B minor into C# minor (see ex.
4.5, mm. 146¤.) to reintroduce it without the theme it is meant to ac-
company. It is this return, specifically, that the transition in the Andante
now recalls.
In the Andante, the G# of the transition emerges, in unanticipated shadow,
from the final E-major chord of the first group. In the Allegro moderato,
by contrast, the turn to C# minor marks the climax of the first stage of the
81
example 4.1 Symphony in B Minor, “Unfinished,” D. 759, Andante con moto, mm. 58–92
58
1.
Clarinets
in A
Bassoons
Horns in E
Violin I
Violin II
Viola
Violoncello
pizz.
Bass
67 1.
Cl. in
A
1.
73
Cl. in
A
78 morendo
1.
Cl. in
A
(continued)
84 1.
Ob.
89 1.
Fl.
1.
Ob.
development, the culminating shock in a rhythmic, dynamic, and textural
intensification of thirty measures (see ex. 4.5). In its last stage before this
harmonic turn, the music arrives at a dominant ninth of B minor that it
then obsessively reiterates, with growing agitation, for twelve measures (mm.
134¤.). The harmony only breaks away through its precipitous turn to C#
minor. Now the melodic line descends two octaves through the C#-minor
triad, as if onto a barren expanse through which the ostinato of the second
theme reverberates as an emblem of absence. Not only does the second theme
not return here, it cannot. The return without it of its accompanimental
pattern marks it as something lost.
This is the crisis that the transition in the Andante quietly remembers,
melodically articulating the same C#-minor arpeggiation that descends from
G# and reintroducing through it much the same syncopated ostinato figure.
The music of the Andante explicitly returns to this traumatic moment, as
if to seek recovery by living through it again.
II
This remembrance of a moment of the Allegro moderato in the Andante

con moto is only the most explicit of such remembrances. Subtle and elab-
orate references to the Allegro permeate the Andante, making this slow
movement a veritable Wordsworthian recollection, predominantly in tran-
quillity, of its predecessor. The tragic first movement, in never breaking the
hold of its haunting and melancholy opening phrase, powerfully sets the stage
for such a response.
The movement begins, in Peter Gülke’s words, “with an oracular, whis-
pering unison of the ’celli and basses, which is left hanging as an open ques-
tion on its fifth degree.”1 In spite of the upward surge of the opening mo-
tive of its first two measures, this mysterious first phrase fundamentally
descends by step from prolonged tonic to prolonged dominant (ex. 4.2). It
is a quietly tortured elaboration, incorporating most of a descending B-mi-
nor scale, of a ground bass pattern traditionally associated, from the begin-
ning of the Baroque onward, with the lament. Articulated here neither
as a slow introduction nor as a main theme, it retains its associations to both
and gains from these combined associations a quiet power that neither
rete lling the “unfinishe d” 85

example 4.2 Symphony in B Minor, “Unfinished,” D. 759, Allegro moderato, mm. 1–22
Violoncello
Bass
Vln. I
Vln. II
pizz.
Vla.
pizz.
Vc.
pizz.
Cb.
13 1.
Ob.
1.
Cl.
in A
pizz.
pizz.
pizz.
16 1.
1.
19 1.
Fl.
1.
Ob.
“sudden call”
Bsn.
Hn.
in D
arco pizz.
arco pizz.
arco pizz.
introduction nor theme could ordinarily hold by itself. Its veiled allusion to
a ground bass pattern, a pattern ever present in the background of aware-
ness, only enhances that power.This “oracular” phrase does not merely open
the movement; it implicitly underlies all that will follow. It is a bass that is
never reduced to functioning explicitly as one. We immediately sense that
rather than literally playing out this role it will instead inescapably pervade
the music that ensues from it.
III
Several commentators have noted the a‹nity between the layered accom-
panimental texture that now arises and that of “Suleika I,” D. 720, composed
in the preceding year (ex. 4.3). Against the background of the symphony’s
somber opening phrase, the quiet agitation produced by this texture might
still suggest something like the questioning and the underlying pain of
Suleika’s opening lines, but it could hardly still reflect anything like the op-
timistic anticipation in them:
Was bedeutet die Bewegung?

Bringt der Ost mir frohe Kunde?
Seiner Schwingen frische Regung
Kühlt des Herzens tiefe Wunde.
(What does this stirring mean? / does the East Wind bring me good news? /
The fresh touch of its wings / cools the deep wound in my heart.)2
The song, like the symphony, begins in B minor; but unlike the sym-
phony it scarcely tarries there. The second couplet is already fully in D ma-
jor, confirmed by a full cadence (mm. 16–17). The immediate repetition of
this couplet brings a turn back to B, but to B major, the key of the song’s
eventual climax and ending. The poem tells of the healing power of nature
and of love; the opening minor mode of its setting ultimately becomes only
the background, the musical representative of the question eventually an-
swered and of the pain eventually healed. Only 26 of the song’s 143 mea-
sures remain in B minor, and all but two of them are in its first third. The
example 4.3 “Suleika I,” D. 720, mm. 1–17
Mit Verschiebung.
Was be
sempre legato
deu tet die Be we gung? Bringt der Ost mir fro he
11
Kun de? Sei ner
14
Schwin gen fri sche Re gung kühlt des Her zens tie fe Wun de
song is really in B major, a major that derives its healing significance from
its origin in its parallel minor.
The first theme of the symphony plays out exactly the opposite rela-
tionship to its own B minor, a B minor that is made ineluctable by the open-
ing phrase and one from which, accordingly, the ensuing theme cannot break
free. The cadence of its very first phrase not only dramatizes but even epit-
omizes this relationship. The phrase is articulated as an eight-measure sen-
tence, beginning with a repeated, two-measure basic idea followed by a four-
measure continuation and cadence (see ex. 4.2, mm. 13–20).3 In its falling
fifth from F# to B and its unison of clarinets and oboes, the basic idea re-
sponds as a complement to the symphony’s opening unison descent from B
to F# in the low strings. It is as if the line reaches down to complete and
come to terms with that quiet but powerful opening idea. The continuation
of this new theme twists away from B minor to venture a full cadence in D
major (m. 20). But a sudden call of the horns and bassoons—an o¤beat figure
whose initiating dominant ninth is exacerbated by a sforzando—pulls the
music back into B minor.This call makes explicit, for the first time, the power
of the sustained dominant, the three-measure F# that concludes the sym-
phony’s opening phrase.4 The very first fully articulated semicadence of the
symphony thus already enacts a conflict, subverting a full cadence in D by
abruptly superimposing on it a semicadential gesture in the opening B mi-
nor and by forcing in this way a reinterpretation of the theme’s first sen-
tential phrase as the antecedent of an extended period.
The again sentential consequent once more ventures away from B minor.
But that opening key, having already overtaken the first cadence, again over-
takes the second, insisting on itself through another dissonantly interjected
semicadence (m. 29). The continuation of the second phrase now comes
again, this time sequencing by itself into B minor, as if assenting, however
tormentedly, to remain in that key. Only the hammering syncopations of its
cadence bring the querying agitation of its layered ostinato to a halt.
IV
In sonata allegro movements, the transition to the key of the second group
often arises from the thematic material of the first group, as if embarking
on a tonal excursion from within the territory of the main theme. In this
Allegro moderato, every phrase of the main theme suggests the possibility
of such an excursion, but each of its ventures away from B minor is thwarted.
This music can be heard as striving to break free of the control of that key
as articulated by the opening phrase without ever succeeding in doing so.
The first emphatic full cadence comes when B minor overrides the other
keys introduced within the main theme for the third consecutive time.
The transition that follows (ex. 4.4, mm. 38–42) is but a moment. It con-
denses the transitional process—the departure from the tonic and the es-
tablishment of a second key—into four measures, three of them given over
to a single note, the D sounded in unison by the horns and bassoons. This
D is already literally present in the fortissimo cadential B-minor triad that
immediately precedes it; it is played by one of the horns and one of the bas-
soons, plus a trombone. By suddenly coming alone on the second beat of
the measure, in such rhythmic and textural contrast to the hemiola of the
full orchestral cadence, this D also intrudes upon that cadence, giving the
impression of an unprepared entrance. The predominance of the horns as-
sociates the D with hunting calls and forest sounds, with something com-
ing from a distance.5 Like a stimulus that activates a memory, this unison D
seems to come both from outside and from within, from both near and far.
Again like such a stimulus, the D changes meaning as it sounds, metamor-
phosing from 3 of B minor into 5 of G major, the key of the second theme.
Accordingly, the second theme emerges in the manner of a halcyon mem-
ory. Its opening descending fourth responds to the opening fifth of the main
theme, and the earlier theme’s first moves away from B minor have antici-
pated its motivic short-long rhythm. This new theme responds to the main
theme as if it were what that theme has been searching for. At the same
time, the brevity and utter simplicity of the transition keep the first and sec-
ond themes separated from each other as a longer and more graduated tran-
sition never could. Even though G major is not literally remote from B mi-
nor, the way this transition sets it in relief makes it sound remote. If the
somber bass pattern of the opening phrase imbues the ensuing main theme
with an aura of loss or dispossession, then the G-major second theme re-
covers what has been lost, but only as a memory.
Even within the second group itself, the vulnerability of the new theme
soon becomes apparent (mm. 61–63). “It abruptly falls silent,” in Gülke’s

(transition)
36 B
Fl.
Ob.
Cl.
in A
Bsn.
Hn.
in D
Tpt.
in E
Trb.
Timp.
in B, F
Vln. I
Vln. II
Vla.
Vc.
pizz.
Cb.
43
Cl.
in A
words, “as if in the face of a horror, as which the first tutti of the orches-
tra breaks in after a general pause.”6 This first crisis that befalls the second
theme proves short-lived. The music of the second group wins its way back
to G major after a brief episode of strife, reaches a full and exuberant ca-
dence and then, to close, returns to the second theme in a retrospective, im-
itative setting.
As abruptly as it began, the G-major music now ends, its withdrawal marked
by the same second-beat accent that has introduced it (cf. m. 104 with ex. 4.4,
m. 38). A new, creeping pizzicato transition leads back to the ominous open-
ing phrase in the bass, first—if the repeat is taken—in the opening B minor,
then the second time in E minor, to begin the development (ex. 4.5, mm.
124¤.). The entrance of this phrase in a new key is in itself a dramatic event.
In alluding to a ground bass pattern, and in having set the stage for a theme
that cannot easily break away from its tonic key, this phrase feels not merely
in its tonic, but essentially, even elementally, linked to it. If its entrance in

114
Fl.
Ob.
Cl.
in A
Bsn.
Hn.
in D
Tpt.
in E
Trb.
Vln. I
Vln. II
Vla.
Vc.
Cb.
122
a2
Bsn.
cresc.
cresc.
cresc.
cresc.
cresc.
cresc.
130
Ob.
Cl.
in A
a2
Bsn.
a2
Hn.
in D
Trb.
(continued)
1.
138
Fl.
cresc.
Ob.
cresc.
Cl.
in A
Bsn.
a2
Hn.
in D
cresc.
Trb.
Timp.
in B, F
cresc.
cresc.
cresc.
cresc.
cresc.
146
Fl.
Ob.
Cl.
in A
Bsn.
a2 1.
Hn.
in D
Tpt.
in E
Trb.
E minor thus reflects an elemental disturbance, its continuation does so even
more.This brooding, one-step-per-measure drop specifically invokes the even
rhythm of the lament bass at the very moment that it moves away from its
harmonic pattern. In its depth and near-stillness, and in the arrest of its mo-
tion on C, the unstable sixth degree, this passage evokes a descent into a mys-
terious, threatening realm—or, perhaps, a venturing forth to an outer limit.
Over the trembling C, the violins take up the ascending opening motive
(ex. 4.5, mm. 122¤.). They reach up, expanding the motive as if in an at-
tempt to possess it lyrically, to a B–A# appoggiatura figure. Soon detached
from the opening motive, the appoggiatura figure rises sequentially over a
chromatically ascending bass (mm. 130¤.) without ever finding consonant
resolution. This sequence anxiously recalls, in slower motion, the rising,
tonally exploratory sequences in the main theme (cf. mm. 128–134 with
mm. 26–27 and 31–33). Like those sequences, this one returns to B minor.
When the bass reaches F#, the upper voices leap up to G, recalling and greatly
intensifying the same dominant ninth that blocked the first theme’s first move
away from that key (cf. ex. 4.5, mm. 134¤., with ex. 4.2, mm. 20–21).
For twelve measures the music remains ensnared in this harmony and in
the obsessive circling of the melody back to the dissonant G. When the G
finally breaks free, moving abruptly up to G# (ex. 4.5, m. 146), it brings the
C# minor already described above. The arrival of the G# is climactic, marked
as such not only by the sudden change of harmony after so many measures
without one but also by the equally sudden changes to a much thinner tex-
ture and to a triadic falling melody. This climax throws into special relief the
barren return of the second theme’s ostinato. In this passage, dramatizing
the break away from B minor, the second theme is lost even as a memory.
Because the climax brings no theme, but only the absence of one, it is not
a true arrival; it introduces only a new sequence that ascends stepwise through
three stages—like successive vistas of a wasteland—back to the E minor with
which the development began.
Thus the descent, at the beginning of the development, into the terri-
tory represented by the opening phrase does not lead to its lyrical posses-
sion. Instead it brings recognition of lyrical dispossession, of the irretriev-
ability in this territory of the second theme. With the ensuing return to E
minor, the opening phrase comes back powerfully to initiate a series of strife-
ridden developmental sequences, like confrontations with an environment
hostile to lyrical self-expression or realization. For a moment, at the devel-
opment’s end, some kind of mastery or catharsis seems possible: a tri-
umphant D-major fanfare blazes forth from an ambiguous harmony akin
to that introduced by the trembling C near the beginning of the develop-
ment (cf. mm. 194–201 with mm. 122–128).7 But the triumph is illusory.
Both cadential D-major triads immediately fade into the quiet, ever-wait-
ing dominant of B minor.
VI
In the recapitulation, both first and second themes gain some exploratory
flexibility, although not enough to alter their characterological relationships
to each other or to the opening idea. The coda begins with a final return
to that opening phrase, at first exactly as it appears at the beginning of the
movement. But in the last two measures of that phrase (mm. 334–335), its
prolonged F# at last becomes the actual bass of a cadential dominant, melod-
ically articulated by the 5–#7–8 figure that was generated at the cadence of
the first theme. This figure has marked other important cadences in the
course of the movement, but only now, as Cone has demonstrated, does it
become linked with the opening phrase in its original form, as if its ulti-
mate purpose were to complete and clarify that phrase, both harmonically
and rhythmically.8
After a momentous cadence, another culmination in the 5–#7–8 figure
(mm. 350–352), the opening three-note motive wells up six more times,
finally pervading every register against the background of alternating tonic
and subdominant harmonies. In this coda, as in the development, the un-
derlying power of the opening phrase again becomes explicit. As befits it as
an emblem of dispossession or death, and hence of ultimate and invincible
control, it holds sway over the movement’s ending.
VII
Schubert’s piano sketch of the last pages of the symphony’s first movement
shows a much shorter coda. Barely more than a return of the opening phrase

with its new melodic cadential articulation followed by an additional, more
emphatic cadence, this original coda ends with a plagal neighbor motion
over a tonic pedal, resolving into a final B-major triad.9 Fortunately Schu-
bert did not leave the movement’s ending this way; it is far too abrupt to
make a fittingly dramatic final manifestation of the power of the opening
phrase. If he had retained this coda, it would have prepared the E major of
the Andante through E major’s own dominant triad. Even without such
specific preparation, however, this E major grows from the harmonic am-
bience of the first movement, as defined by its opening and closing mo-
ments and as dramatized by its development. The ostinato that precedes and
then underlies the main theme of the Allegro (see ex. 4.2, mm. 13¤.) al-
ternates tonic and subdominant harmonies four times before moving on to
other harmonies. The coda, in its final version, sets each chord of its plagal
progression against the ascending opening motive, and then twice repeats
the entire progression with di¤erent scorings (mm. 352¤.). E minor is both
the point of departure (see ex. 4.5, m. 114) and, later on, the most empha-
sized point of arrival in the development. The movement is haunted by this
subdominant harmony almost as much as by its opening phrase.
The way the Andante articulates its tonic key also elaborately sets the stage
for the moment with which I began this account of the symphony: the vir-
tual quotation, in quiet transformation, of the C#-minor crisis from the first
movement. No other key would allow this return to take place so naturally
in its original key, in such complete stillness. Moreover, the C# minor brought
into such relief by this return is already the source of the most pervasive
tonal undercurrent of the first group, one that generates its own counter-
current.This return thus only makes explicit, however quietly, a tonal conflict
already repeatedly implied within the theme itself of the Andante (ex. 4.6,
mm. 3¤.). Because of the way it brings into the foreground a subordinate
tonal emphasis already strongly felt within this movement’s E major, the C#
minor that makes this return so literal has su‹cient importance to motivate,
by itself, the choice of E major for this movement.
This most explicit motivic reference to the first movement thus not only
brings retrospectively into relief the event that it remembers; it is also the
moment that most clearly demarcates the C# minor that pervades the An-
dante as a tonal antipode to E major. As I have indicated, this marked mo-
ment of remembrance occurs against the background of other less literal
example 4.6 Symphony in B Minor, “Unfinished,” D. 759, Andante con moto, mm. 1–29
Andante con moto.
Bassoons
Horns in E
Violin I
Violin II
Viola
Violoncello
pizz.
Bass
11
Fl.
Ob.
Cl.
in A
1.
Bsn.
Hn.
in E
pizz.
arco
arco
(continued)
21
1.
Fl.
Ob.
Cl.
in A
Bsn.
Hn.
in E
remembrances, which bring resonance and depth to it. Before developing

an account of the tonal drama thus brought into focus, I turn first to some
other memories that this drama reanimates.
VIII
The opening motto of the Andante comprises three timbral choirs: the
horns, the bassoons, and the basses. Each of these instrumental parts reartic-
ulates, in transformation, a separate idea from the first movement. As Gülke
points out, the quiet opening call of the first horn is a recall—a recollec-
tion in tranquillity, as I have suggested—of the first movement’s opening
and concluding upward melodic surge from tonic to third degree.10 Just be-
neath it, the first bassoon sounds the motive 5–7–8, the motive for which
Cone has identified a crucial dramatic role in the first movement. The com-
bination of horns and bassoons, moreover, recalls the orchestration of the
transition to the second theme in the first movement, the suddenly isolated
D (see ex. 4.4, mm. 38–41).The double basses support these low winds with
a pizzicato descending E-major scale, complete except for its third degree.
While this pizzicato calmly refers to the uncanny pizzicato transitions of the
first movement (mm. 104¤. and 322¤.), their initial stepwise descent from
8 to 5 transforms the lament bass pattern, the structural basis of the sym-
phony’s opening phrase, into the major mode. Furthermore, the pitches of
their second measure, B–A–F#, are exactly those that initiate the descent in
the third and fourth measures of that opening phrase. The first movement’s
opening, too, involves a nearly complete scalar descent from the tonic: a
scrambled, tormented scale whose memory the opening bass progression of
the Andante, through veiled reference, brings to rest. Unlike that original
descent, this one simply fulfills its role as a bass line.11
As I have already implied, the transitions from the first to the second the-
matic groups of these two movements resonate tellingly with each other.
Each isolates a single pitch, 3 in the home key, which is then transformed,
as if by the associative power of its own resounding, into 5 of the subme-
diant (cf. ex. 4.4, mm. 38–42, with ex. 4.1, mm. 60–64). I have already dis-
cussed in some detail how this transition in the Andante combines this rec-
ollection with the more explicit recollection of the sudden and dramatic
turn from B minor to C# minor in the development of the first movement.
It thus synoptically recalls from that movement both the entrance of the sec-
ond theme and its subsequent irretrievability in the development.
The second theme of the Andante (see ex. 4.1, mm. 66¤.), which climbs,
even strives upward from 1 to 6 in C# minor before falling back to 5, makes
no full motivic reference to either of the themes of the first movement. But
like both of those themes, it strongly emphasizes its fifth degree. Moreover,
the scoring of the melody—first for clarinet, then for oboe over a string ac-
companiment—and the pairs of even, measure-long notes that begin it re-
call both the coloristic and the gestural character of the first movement’s main
theme, while the syncopated ostinato of the accompaniment incorporates a
distinct memory of the second theme. This mingling of memories sets the

stage for a spectacular moment of motivic synthesis. In its second phrase,
now in the major, the ascent of this new theme culminates in a new figure,
6–5–6–5–3–1, beginning forte but immediately fading away through echo-
ing repetitions (see ex. 4.1, mm. 90¤.). As Cone mentions, this figure de-
rives from the first theme of this Andante (see ex. 4.6), incorporating its en-
tire opening 5–6–5–3–1 motion.12
But Cone does not mention its extraordinary fusion of thematic elements
from both movements. By recalling the first theme of the Andante it also
recalls the fall from 5 to 1 in the first theme of the first movement (see ex.
4.2). Far more articulate, however, is its recollection not only of the melodic
form but also, in diminution, of the rhythm of the 6–5–6–5 motive first
heard in measures 20 and 21 of that movement. The dotted rhythm is also
one of the rhythmic motives of the first movement’s second theme; there
it fills in an ascending third whose outline is recalled, both melodically and
rhythmically, in this new thematic complex (see ex. 4.1, mm. 70¤.). Finally,
as Gülke points out, the imitative episode that follows the C#-minor com-
plex, beginning in measure 111, recalls the imitative closing music of the
second theme of the first movement, even returning to the keys most asso-
ciated with that theme.13
IX
In the gentle, processional E-major music of the Andante, the turmoil of

the first movement—manifest in its minor mode, its layered syncopations,
its sudden dynamic contrasts and powerful climaxes—is seemingly forgot-
ten. The Andante’s serenity is drawn from the same motivic wellsprings as
those of the first movement, however: it is won by bringing to rest the very
elements that are implicated in the earlier conflict and torment.
These motivic references alone are enough to make the Andante resonate
with the first movement as a specifically appropriate sequel to it. But as I
have begun to suggest, the tranquillity of this sequel is not undisturbed, and
the disturbances themselves arise as memories of the first movement. The
disturbances that accompany the motivic references to that movement re-
enact the ways that harmonic progression from one key to another is framed
and restricted. Through its own thematic contrasts, the Andante evolves its
own tonal drama, one that articulates its E-major tonic as a haven from the
barren and inhospitable tonal world of the first movement.The haven, how-
ever, is not invulnerable. In their references to the motives of the first move-
ment, the new thematic oppositions contribute to an experiencing of the
dramatic conflicts of the Andante as elaborations of those already played out
in the Allegro moderato, o¤ering the hope of a reversal of their outcome.
Unlike the opening phrase of the Allegro, the opening motto of the An-
dante is not ambiguous in intent. It is clearly a short refrain, and it returns
as such many times in the course of the movement. The motives that it in-
corporates and transforms—its three-step ascent from the tonic in the first
horn, its fuller descent from the tonic in the basses, and its 5–7–8 line in the
first bassoon—all derive either their basic shape or their ultimate significance
from the symphony’s very first idea. This refrain thus answers to that open-
ing phrase by transforming it, recalling it in order to stand as its opposite.
While the symphony’s first phrase imbues its B-minor tonic with an atmos-
phere of desolation from which full release is never possible, the refrain that
opens its slow movement imparts to its E major an aura of protective seren-
ity. The evenness of its rhythms, the diatonic simplicity of all three of its
voices, and the closed tonic–dominant–tonic progression that it articulates
combine to envelop the ensuing theme in an extraordinary calm.
Like the main theme of the first movement, this main theme repeatedly ven-
tures away from its tonic, but it returns every time to E major before the
tonal digression ever fully attains its goal. The first of these returns to E ma-
jor, in particular, comes extraordinarily close to reenacting, with opposite
e¤ect, the first return to B minor in the Allegro (see ex. 4.2, mm. 20–22).
Like that moment, which is the first manifestation of tonal drama in the first
movement, this one subverts a cadential arrival in a secondary key through
an abrupt return to the primary key (see ex. 4.6, mm. 12–16). Moreover,
the gesture that restores the tonic echoes not only the half-step appoggia-
turas that occur throughout the first movement but also, more specifically,

the one that in its abruptness marks that first return to B minor as a mo-
ment of tonal conflict (see ex. 4.2, mm. 20–21). As in the first movement,
this first thwarting of a progression to a new key also involves the first dis-
turbance of a just-established phrase rhythm.
The first phrase of the Andante’s theme follows the opening three-
measure refrain in elision; it is antiphonally contrasted with the refrain
through its scoring for strings alone. The ending of this first phrase is am-
biguous. Heard in one way, it is a five-measure phrase, ending with an im-
perfect authentic cadence. But at the tonic resolution of this cadence the
refrain returns, again in elision (see ex. 4.6, m. 7), and the elision obscures
the resolution, leaving the phrase in e¤ect a four-measure phrase ending in
a semicadence. Another elision links the end of the second refrain to the
beginning of the second phrase (m. 9), which begins like the first but then
moves to C# minor in its fourth and fifth measures (mm. 12–13). In a con-
tinuation of the same phrase rhythm, a return of the refrain, transposed to
C# minor, would coincide with the arrival of that tonic triad in measure 13.
Such a regular continuation would befit the processional character of this
music, bringing the second phrase into a rhyming accord with the first, again
giving it the e¤ect of ending with a semicadence, quietly transposed to the
relative minor, in its fourth measure (m. 12). Two more processionally
rhyming phrases could then bring the theme back to E without fundamen-
tally disturbing its purity. In this event, the digression to C# minor would
only have the ultimate e¤ect of bringing out the undercurrent of longing
already imbued in the C# of measure 4 by the subdominant harmony.
But if this first harmonic turn to C# minor can be said to give rise to
what follows it, it must be heard as disruptive rather than merely expressive.
Although the basses begin again to underscore this new tonic with their even
pizzicato rhythm, now ascending, the horns and bassoons of the refrain do
not return with them. The melodic resolution to C# as tonic is left exposed
in a way that allows the second phrase, in contrast to the first, to emerge
provisionally as a five-measure phrase with a full cadence. This is the ca-
dence that the following measure immediately retracts by extending the
phrase through a sudden chromatic descent to a C that is dynamically, col-
oristically, and harmonically marked as an intrusion. The C simply resolves
as a lowered submediant to the dominant of E major, introducing in turn a
cadential garland of sixteenth notes.
The intrusion of the C is like a shudder of recognition, an anxious thought
or memory that suddenly comes into awareness but then quickly passes. The
harmony that accompanies it and the gesture that it initiates refer to the first
movement, making the C quite literally into a memory—or an emblematic
composite of memories—from that movement. The harmony, a dominant
seventh on C that functions here as an inverted German sixth of E, is basi-
cally the same harmony that begins the development (mm. 122¤.) and enig-
matically returns so near the development’s end (mm. 194¤.). Moreover, in
both of these contexts it is linked with half-step appoggiaturas, ones that cry
out for, but never achieve, the kind of resolution now granted to this C.
The intrusion and resolution of the C also recall, both in gestural character
and in specific tonal function, the moment of cadential disruption and redi-
rection that occurs so early in the Allegro and that it structurally parallels
(see ex. 4.2, mm. 20–21). There, too, the interjection emphasizes a melodic
motion from 6 to 5 and home dominant harmony. But while there the re-
turn to B minor makes apparent a conflict, here the return to E major re-
members that conflict in order to suggest recovery from it.
Although the melodic and harmonic emphasis of C# and then C# minor
amplifies the expressive range of the opening phrases of the Andante, C#
minor emerges too smoothly as a key to forewarn in any way of the dis-
turbing C that follows it. How C# could give rise to such a disturbance only
gradually becomes apparent in the course of the movement. For its next
phrases (see ex. 4.2, mm. 18¤.), the theme finds itself in a seemingly alto-
gether di¤erent sphere, in G major. This is the key of the second theme in
the Allegro, but nothing about the way it returns to the Andante initially
alerts us to this. Indeed, this move has impressed more than one writer as
exemplifying the free, quasi-improvisatory tonal exploration characteristic
of Schubert.14 The G-major phrases closely adhere to the rhythm and melody
of the preceding E-major ones—so closely, in fact, that the C in measure
19 owes much of its feeling to the C# that it replaces. This C, in referring
to the C#, specifically circumvents it. G major, the key of the first move-
ment’s second theme, thus returns to the Andante as a countercurrent to
the C# minor associated later in the first movement with that theme’s ab-
sence. Through this circumvention, the theme of the Andante is led in a
new tonal direction, one that in seeking to avert the pain or longing of the
C# still retains that feeling as an a¤ective component. Like the second phrase

of the first phrase group, the second phrase of this G-major group moves
to its relative minor (mm. 26–27). Instead of leading to a disruption as C#
minor did, this E minor is easily assimilated into the thematic and tonal con-
tinuity of the music. Simple cadential gestures in E major follow (mm. 28¤.);
thus the G major of the first movement’s second theme is more easily as-
similated here than is E major’s own relative minor.15
XI
Soon comes the transitional thread, bringing C# minor yet again (see ex.
4.1). This key emerges this time as quietly as the revelation of a secret. That
secret is not the presence of C# minor in this tonal environment—that pres-
ence is already too apparent. Instead the revelation might involve the real-
ization that the strangely accentuated Cs are not the only elements of the
Andante to originate in the first movement: so, essentially, does the C# mi-
nor that has twice given rise to them. The memory of the Allegro in the
Andante is therefore not restricted to the shudder of recognition brought
by the intrusive Cs. The transition to its second group can have the e¤ect
of a recognition that this memory has pervaded the Andante theme from
its very beginning, in spite of the sheltering tonal distance of E major from
B minor, and that reckoning with this memory requires a more explicit re-
turn to the scene of its origin in the Allegro.
As I have indicated, the opening rhythmic gesture, the orchestral texture,
and the accompaniment of the new theme all contribute to the impression
of such a recollective journey.Together they reestablish what one might sim-
ply call the “atmosphere” of the first movement by mingling elements of
its first and second themes to create a dreamlike stage for recollection. The
new theme is clearly related to the themes of the first movement and, in its
upward striving, just as clearly contrasted with them. It conveys an impres-
sion not of a simple memory but of an e¤ort to remember. When it reaches
A, its high point, the floodgate of memory begins to open: like the held
notes that have initiated the transitions of both movements, this A meta-
morphoses as it sounds (see ex. 4.1, mm. 72–74), first from 6 of C# minor
to 5 of D, then on from 5 of D to 3 of F. The harmony then returns through
D minor to C# minor, the German sixth in measure 79 resonating with the
one that brought the C# minor crisis of the first movement (see ex. 4.5, m.
146). The memory has not yet quite come into focus; it awaits the change
to major that initiates the renewed ascent of the ensuing phrase.The melody
climbs this time to A#/Bb instead of A and now brings the magical fusion
of all the symphony’s themes, both a “moment musical” of remembrance
and an Arcadian dream of catharsis through remembrance. The memory
fades through its own echoes, and the theme returns to the minor. This time
the culminating harmony is prolonged, finally yielding to a full phrase in D,
an imitative flowering of the same melodic material (mm. 109¤.).
Some commentators regard the ensuing imitative passage, which modu-
lates from D through G to C, as a development, but in at least one essential
respect it is not.16 No cadential closure has come to the C#-minor second
theme. Instead the harmony has finally broken away into the D major that
has already momentarily colored the sustained melodic A of its first phrase
(see ex. 4.1, m. 72). Partly for this reason, this fuller turn to D major feels
not like the opening of a new scene, but instead like a new evolution within
an ongoing scene, a fuller emergence of the memories sought in this setting.
XII
As in the first movement, the music of both thematic groups in the An-
dante becomes somewhat more tonally flexible in recapitulation. In the forte
episode based on the refrain (mm. 174¤.), a turn to the subdominant in
measure 178 allows the theme itself to reemerge in that key. It remains in
A for its cadence and concluding refrains. This time the violins steal in on
E, the fifth of the cadential tonic triad, rather than on the C# third that would
parallel the earlier transition (cf. m. 201 with ex. 4.1, m. 60). For the first
time, the isolated, transitional pitch retains its initial meaning, and the sec-
ond theme comes without a change of tonic, in A minor. As in the first
movement, these thematic groups retain their characterological opposition
in spite of these tonal changes. But the gulf between them has narrowed
enough to allow cadential material from the first group to infiltrate the sec-
ond (mm. 256¤.) and bring it to the cadential closure that was denied be-

fore. In this way, the serenity of the first group finally comes to contain and
quiet the agitation of the memories brought by the second.17
In the coda (mm. 268¤.)—in the deeper serenity that follows this reso-
lution—the refrain grows into a phrase in its own right. A lone, quiet pitch
still emerges from the final chord of this phrase; it is a B, once again the
fifth, rather than the third, of that chord. For the first time, this thread of
sound does not lead to a return of the second theme. Instead, through a
sudden deflection of the B up to C, the first theme returns in an other-
worldly pianississimo scored for the horns, bassoons, and trombones in the
distant key of Ab. Also for the first time, this return of the theme’s first
phrase combines with the cadential garland, with which the strings enter
in the fourth measure of the phrase, bringing it to full tonic resolution in
the fifth. The C of the connective thread returns at this cadence, but it en-
ters too quietly for the elision to obscure the Ab tonic resolution. After the
thread drifts back from C to B, the theme comes one last time in this final
form; now its opening phrase is permitted to resolve by itself, and the in-
herent disturbance of its C# is finally quieted.The threat posed by the mem-
ory of the first movement has passed: both the C# that has stimulated that
memory and the C that has stood for it come to final rest in this conclud-
ing passage.
XIII
It may have occurred to some readers that the tonal antipodes of this An-
dante con moto, the E major of its first group and the C# minor of its sec-
ond, are those of “Der Wanderer.” These keys might not in themselves war-
rant an association between the “Unfinished” Symphony and that song were
it not that the theme itself of the Andante (ex. 4.6) explicitly recalls the
song. It is a virtual quotation, in its original key, of the 5–6–5–3–1 melody
that opens the second verse of “Der Wanderer” (see ex. 3.4a, mm. 16¤.), a
setting of the line “Ich wandle still, bin wenig froh” (I wander quietly, am
scarcely happy). This association lends support to the attribution of pain and
longing to this theme from its very beginning, long before the emergence
of the second theme makes these undercurrents explicit.
Bringing the “Unfinished” Symphony into association with “Der Wan-
derer” also corroborates an interpretation of the break away from B minor
to C# minor in the first movement as a crisis of expulsion or banishment,
and of the return of C# minor in the second as an expression of Fremdling
alienation in the context of a dream of homecoming or even salvation.These
interpretations resonate, in turn, with the alternating scenes of home and
exile and the underlying dream of homecoming and reconciliation in “Mein
Traum.” In particular, the C# minor that inevitably arises from the E major
of the Andante suggests the sorrow that always haunts the love of “Mein
Traum,” while the various emergences of major-mode music from the C#
minor of the second group suggest, in their turn, the story’s love born of
sorrow—or at least memories of love. On another level, the form of the
Andante mirrors that of the story. Although often analyzed as an instance
of sonata form, this movement, with its peaceful theme and more agitated
contrasting episodes, much more readily gives the impression of a five-part
form; and its parts correspond, at least roughly, to the succession of scenes
of home and exile in the story. While the theme of this Andante, from its
beginning, may evoke the concluding scene of salvation in “Mein Traum”
more aptly than its earlier scenes of childhood and homecoming, the Ab-
major emergence of this theme in the coda is especially evocative of that
final transfiguration.
As it happens, I am not the first writer to link the “Unfinished” to “Mein
Traum.” In one of his last hermeneutic ventures, Arnold Schering set forth
his conviction that Schubert intended “Mein Traum” as a literal program
for the symphony. Schering divides the story into two parts.The first, “earthly
su¤ering,” incorporates the first four parts in my description of it; and the
second, “heavenly vision,” my last part, the final scene around the tomb of
the dead maiden.18 Each of his parts then corresponds to one of the move-
ments of the symphony, the first movement incorporating the scenes of ex-
ile as its development and coda, and the second movement completely given
over to the final scene of redemption.
Schering’s interpretation, which depends on too many forced corre-
spondences to be convincing, is almost completely forgotten today.19 But
one well-known Schubert scholar, Arnold Feil, while rejecting Schering’s
view of “Mein Traum” as an explicit program for the symphony, does take
seriously the possibility that the two were linked for Schubert. Feil proposes,
moreover, that the correspondence of the Andante with the end of a story

that suggests no earthly sequel might have made it di‹cult for Schubert to
continue with the symphony beyond the ending of that movement.20
In a recent article on the “Unfinished” Symphony, Maynard Solomon,
who has himself written about “Mein Traum,” characterizes Schering’s read-
ing as “outlandish.”21 While his specific reservations about Schering’s ac-
count are all reasonable, his extensively researched speculations about the
symphony itself, and about Schubert’s own conduct with respect to it, make
it plausible at least to hypothesize that Schubert may have come to regard
the symphony as complete, as implicitly telling some kind of story that
needed no further continuation. In the Andante’s ending Solomon hears “a
deep impression of closure that defines the sense of an ending . . . [and] a
state of repose that calls for nothing beyond silence and inner reflection.”22
Moreover, nothing in his comments about Schering necessitates the con-
clusion that Solomon would reject, out of hand, a di¤erently, more mod-
erately articulated association between the story and the symphony.
Schering finds a resolution for the musical realization of “Mein Traum”
in the “Wanderer” Fantasy—not so much an earthly sequel for Schubert’s
story as a di¤erent, worldly conclusion for it. As repeatedly mentioned, Schu-
bert turned to the fantasy just after abandoning work on the symphony. He
thus worked on both the symphony and the fantasy just a few months after
writing the story, emerging through these two pieces from an extended pe-
riod of unproductivity (although not inactivity) as an instrumental composer.
Citing the Fremdling stanza of “Der Wanderer” and the generative role of
its setting in the fantasy, Schering notes its relationship, as I have, to the scenes
of exile in “Mein Traum.” In consequence, he hears the fantasy as a “fan-
tastical portrayal of what the youth experienced or pictured himself as ex-
periencing in a far away region as a ‘wanderer,’ i.e., as a ‘Fremdling’ ex-
pelled from home.” This musical portrayal incorporates a “turn to a new,
carefree life, to the joys of the here-and-now, to the determination to mas-
ter fate at any cost,” a determination embodied in the final fugue.23 Scher-
ing also notes the occurrences of the “Wanderer” keys, E major and C# mi-
nor, in the Andante of the symphony, but he does not mention the
resemblance of the Andante theme to the second stanza of the “Der Wan-
derer” or to similar E-major music that also makes its way into the slow move-
ment of the fantasy (see ex. 3.1, mm. 197¤.). These resemblances strongly
corroborate the network of relationships among song, story, symphony, and
fantasy that Schering proposes.
XIV
I began this discussion of the “Unfinished” Symphony with the transition
between the two thematic groups of the Andante and with the crisis in the
first movement’s development that this transition so explicitly recalls. The
specificity of this link between the two movements makes it an essential clue
for understanding the cyclic relationships between them. Because it is so
specific, and because it occurs in the “Wanderer” key, this link may also be
an equally essential clue for understanding how the “Wanderer” Fantasy re-
sponds, in the compositional issues it raises, to the symphony. I have shown
how the symphony’s second movement answers to its first as part of a sub-
tly and elaborately cyclic conception, a conception that Schubert obviously
did not bring to the completion he initially envisaged for it. Possibly he could
not, perhaps because he could not imagine a finale that would both engage
the memory of the earlier movements and match them in expressive range.
Or possibly he decided, at some point, that any continuation would do vi-
olence to the music he had already composed—would begin to “untell” a
story he had already told fully enough.
Taken as a bit of teleological evidence, this clue, the most explicitly cyclic
moment in this conception, looks ahead not only to the thoroughly overt
cyclicism of the fantasy but even to its emphasis of C# minor to articulate
a tonal conflict. This articulation is, once again, more overt—and more
radical—in the fantasy than in the symphony. By making both motivic unity
and the central conflict of the tonal drama more obvious in the fantasy, Schu-
bert developed a cyclic conception for the fantasy that he could fully carry
out. He unambiguously finished a large-scale instrumental piece for the first
time in three years and soon got it published.
The fantasy appears to stand apart, in both musical character and com-
positional technique, from the rest of Schubert’s music. But that appearance
is deceptive. In many ways the fantasy only makes explicit the most perva-
sive compositional preoccupations of the symphony in ways that could mo-

tivate a triumphant conclusion. The exuberance of the fantasy only exem-
plifies, on one level, what Schubert must have felt in completing it. By finish-
ing it he surmounted an obstacle that he never again had to face in the same
way; its manner apparently became too obvious for him. With respect at
least to motivic development, the symphony, more than the fantasy, became
the model to which he returned in his later cyclic endeavors.
c hap t e r 5
Expanding the Scope of Schubertian Tonality

The Opus 90 Impromptus as the Stations of a Tonal Quest
Every once in a while one still encounters a piano student either playing or
wanting to play the third impromptu of Schubert’s opus 90, but bearing an
edition in which it appears not in Gb major but in the slightly heavenward
transposition to G. Having to tell that student that the piece is really in Gb
always somewhat numbs their pleasure over the prospect of playing it. To
what circumstances do we owe this faintly unpleasant necessity?
Schubert wrote out the four pieces that we know as the opus 90 im-
promptus in a single manuscript and first submitted them for publication in
this form. Karl Haslinger initially published just the first two, the C minor
and the Eb major, late in 1827, himself providing the title for them. Only
thirty years later were the other two pieces from the manuscript incorpo-
rated into a new edition of opus 90 by Karl’s son Tobias, the fourth in its
original Ab major, but the third in this already mentioned levitation from
Gb to G. It is possible that it was simply the key, Gb major, that originally
impeded the publication of the third piece; at any rate, this key remained
too idiosyncratic even in 1857 to go unchallenged.The Gb-Major Impromptu
is not merely Schubert’s only instrumental movement in this key but one of
the first pieces ever written in it. Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven, for ex-
ample, never wrote any. So why did Schubert?
Surely this question allows for no simple, fully explanatory answer. But
as I have already strongly implied in Chapter 2, it finds an obvious partial
one in the ending of the preceding piece.1 Whether or not the second
115
example 5.1 Impromptu in Gb Major, op. 90, no. 3, mm. 1–14
Andante.
I vi
3
ii6 V7 I6 vii 4 /V V
3
5
cresc.
I vi V7 /vi
7
9 IV ii V7 I
V V4 /ii ii
3
11
cresc.
IV/IV IV6 V4 /IV IV

3
13
dimin.
impromptu is the first instrumental piece in a major key ever to end in mi-
nor, it is surely the first well-known one to do so. Its tonal course, its way of
being in its key, is therefore just as extraordinary for its time as is the key it-
self of the third impromptu. Because of the Eb-minor ending of the second
impromptu, the Gb major of the third arises from its own relative minor, a
source that it immediately acknowledges by returning to an Eb-minor triad
in its first harmonic move (ex. 5.1).
II
The harmonic linking of the ending of the Eb-Major Impromptu to the

beginning of the Gb-Major one immediately assumes a significance a¤ect-
ing far more than the moment of linkage itself. It strongly suggests that the
idiosyncratic choice of Gb major for the third impromptu comes about
through a correspondingly idiosyncratic tonal plan that also embraces at least
the second impromptu. Other linkages between these two pieces confirm
this impression. The opening tonic to submediant progression of the third
impromptu does more than recall the concluding harmony of the second;
it also anticipates the piece’s overall tonal structure, with its dramatic Eb-
minor middle section (beginning at m. 25). The Gb major of the third im-
promptu is thus su¤used with the Eb minor that has overtaken Eb major in
its predecessor. But it is also su¤used with another, counterbalancing tonal
emphasis: that of its own subdominant, Cb major, a common function that
it highlights to an uncommon degree. Although the preceding impromptu
does not emphasize Cb-major harmony at all, its entire middle section, as
well as the beginning of its coda, is in Cb minor, notated as B (ex. 5.2, mm.
83¤.). Moreover, the way in which the Cb-major harmony first appears in
the third impromptu makes it plausible to associate it with memories aris-
ing from the second.
The subdominant occurs for the first time in the third impromptu at a
focal moment in the opening period: not only does it come at the midpoint
of the consequent and on a downbeat in the midst of heightened activity,
it also immediately follows Eb minor’s dominant, as if Eb minor were yield-
ing to it (see ex. 5.1, m. 7). Because this Cb-major triad initially averts a pos-
sible extension of Eb minor through this dominant, it enters the Gb-Major
s c h u b e r t i a n t o na l i t y 117
example 5.2 Impromptu in Eb Major, op. 90, no. 2, mm. 80–90
80 B ben marcato
86
Impromptu potentially as an agent of recovery from the Eb-minor crisis of

the Eb-Major Impromptu’s ending and from the agitated B-minor music im-
plicated in that crisis. The following eight-measure phrase of the third im-
promptu reaches its dynamic and registral climax over this subdominant (m.
12), and, unlike the opening period, it is repeated, with its bass progression
now reinforced to bring the climactic subdominant harmony into even
greater relief.
The middle section wins its first respite from its Eb-minor agitation
through a sudden quiet turn to this same Cb major (m. 32). In its second
half, the parallel moment of calm comes in Eb major (m. 48), the hitherto
forgotten opening key of the second impromptu. B minor itself finally re-
turns in the coda (ex. 5.3, m. 75), like a troubled memory finally laid to rest.
The subsequent and final phrase of the coda, in which the B-minor har-
mony is replaced by an even more jarring minor Neapolitan sixth (m. 80),
distinctly recalls the 7 to 8 gesture that first introduced that B minor in the
second impromptu (see ex. 5.2, mm. 82–83). This concluding phrase thus
reinforces the impression that the recurrence of B minor in this coda links
the B-minor episodes of the second impromptu to the Cb-major passages,
both climactic and restful, of the third. It becomes plausible to interpret the
Cb major that, along with Eb minor, so determines the tonal ambience of
the third impromptu as specifically recalling the driven Cb minor that so
strongly reinforces the ultimate minor coloration of the second.
example 5.3 Impromptu in Gb Major, op. 90, no. 3, mm. 74–86
74 (coda)
c r e sc e ndo
I V4 /iv iv V4 /iv
2 3
76
iv 6+ V6 V7
78 4 5
3
cresc. cresc.
I V4 /iv iv 6 V4 / ii
80 2 2
ii 6 6+ V6 V7
4 5
3
82
dim.
I
84
Shared melodic gestures and textural configurations further link these two
pieces.The particular voicing, texture, and articulation of the Gb-major triad
in the opening measure of the third impromptu (see ex. 5.1) refers unam-
biguously to events in the second. Except for the Db in the tenor, the pitches
and their registers within this opening Gb sonority exactly reproduce those
of the chord immediately preceding the earlier impromptu’s middle section
and, again, its coda (see ex. 5.2, m. 82, m. 250). Meanwhile, the figuration
in the inner voice of the right hand of the third impromptu, in its arpeg-
giation of those pitches, begins with the same kind of upward triadic mo-
tion in close position triplets, again in the same register, as in that earlier
middle section (ex. 5.2, mm. 83¤.). Moreover, the melody, in its sustained
repeated notes, makes a clear reference to the melody of that episode. The
downward leap of a major third in the second measure enlarges on this ref-
erence by recalling the similarly pronounced and unadorned fall by a third
from the apex of that earlier melody (ex. 5.2, mm. 87–88). That third, in
turn, is a response to the rising third from Gb to Bb, also bare and unadorned,
that immediately precedes that middle section (ex. 5.2, mm. 81–82), a third
to whose same pitches the opening melodic gesture of the third impromptu
returns, reversing their order and seeming import.
That two pieces of such ostensibly contrasting character share such
melodic gestures may seem surprising. The sharing of these gestures places
the returning block of musical material already discussed in a context of
shared motivic, as well as harmonic, concerns. In chapter 2, section III, I
show how this material, by incorporating the leading tone of Eb minor but
neutralizing it as Ebb within a Gb-major context, sets these two keys in dra-
matic opposition, helping to articulate Gb major as a station of potential re-
covery from an Eb-minor threat. The music of the second impromptu suc-
cumbs to that threat; the music of the third brings recovery from that crisis.
III
I have claimed that the second impromptu articulates its key in an extraor-
dinary way, a way that may give rise to the equally extraordinary choice of
Gb major for the third impromptu and that may motivate in large part its tonal
and dramatic course. I have based my claim about the second impromptu
example 5.4 Impromptu in Eb Major, op. 90, no. 2, mm. 1–29
Allegro.
3
3
3
legato
10
15
20
25
primarily on its minor ending and on the way the B-minor tonality of the
middle section imparts additional force to that ending. But to convey the
feeling of an unusual relationship to its own tonic, a piece should also begin
in an exceptional way. Whatever its gestural and textural charms, the open-
ing phrase of the Eb-Major Impromptu is in itself not tonally exceptional (ex.
5.4). What is exceptional about it—as I have argued—is its immediate rep-
etition, not once, but twice.The second repetition suggests various metaphor-
ical equivalences: a blithe innocence, a somewhat maniacal exuberance, or
the turning of a kind of musical gear that cannot become fully engaged.
To say that the Eb major that begins this impromptu proves to have been
illusory is, of course, to extend the scope of the metaphors that I have al-
ready employed. I have summarized the unfolding of these two impromp-
tus, for example, as a scenario of endangered innocence and loss of inno-
cence in the second impromptu and recovery from that loss in the third.
This new elaboration of those metaphors draws support from the already
mentioned texts underlying the major-mode passages in Winterreise, passages
whose words deal almost exclusively with illusions, fading memories, and
unfulfilled dreams. The highlighting of these texts through the major mode
lends credence to the hypothesis that Schubert might have associated such
images with the setting of the major mode in relief against the minor in his
instrumental music.2 Among these, the overpowered major of the second
impromptu especially calls forth such associations. The innocence and loss
of innocence already proposed might thus be more broadly articulated as
illusion and disillusionment.
IV
Clearly the kinds of relationships I have described between these two pieces
are normally associated with cyclic procedures. In the case of these two im-
promptus, the relationships are especially rich and unusual, involving not
merely shared motives, textures, and harmonic elements but also a thor-
oughgoing tonal plan in which the exceptional tonal course of the second
impromptu can largely explain the exceptional choice of key for the third.
To what extent might this multifaceted cyclic design also embrace the first
and last impromptus of opus 90?
Although often performed as a cycle, opus 90 has not been traditionally
described as one.The seeming absence of a controlling tonal center, for one,
has impeded its conceptualization as a cycle, even though both of Schubert’s
song cycles also lack such a center. Moreover, the sequence of keys in the
set—the C minor–Eb major–Gb major–Ab major succession indicated by the
key signatures—has suggested no compelling tonal unity or logic, or at least
so various Schubert scholars have claimed.3 In particular, Gb major has seemed
an inadequate link for a tonal chain connecting Eb major to Ab major. But
these key signatures tell lies: the second impromptu is not simply in Eb ma-
jor, but in Eb major-minor; and the fourth impromptu is not simply in Ab
major, but in Ab minor-major. Like Eb minor, Ab minor is much more closely
related than its parallel major to the third impromptu’s extraordinary key.
Once again, an ending and a subsequent beginning are musically linked in

a way that corroborates this tonal relationship. The last melodic gesture of
the third impromptu—the F–Eb–Cb–Ab curve welling up in measure 83 be-
tween its penultimate tonic Gb and its final reiterated one (see ex. 5.3, m.
83)—anticipates the descending Ab-minor triad with which the fourth im-
promptu opens (see ex. 3.6). This last impromptu reaches and confirms its
Ab major only after tonal digressions recalling not only the Cb major so promi-
nent in the third impromptu but also the Cb/B minor so prominent in the
second (fig. 5.1). Once again, the tonal instability of this opening suggests
an idiosyncratic relationship of this music to its own tonic, an initial insta-
bility that is also reflected in its irregular phrase rhythm and its lack of the-
matic definition. In chapter 3 I explored the interpretive context for these
irregularities: the unmistakable allusion of the trio of the fourth impromptu
to “Der Wanderer,” once again suggesting a search for home, or a quest for
identity, on the part of a journeying Fremdling.
I have also mentioned how the opening exploration of the last impromptu
of opus 90 recalls keys that are emphasized in the earlier impromptus before
finding its way to Ab major: first the Cb major so highlighted in the third
impromptu; then the B minor of the middle section of the second. The ar-
rival in Ab major extends these recollections back another step: it is the key
figure 5.1 The Opus 90 Impromptus as a Cycle
Impromptu
number Key Form
No. 1 Cm A B A' B' A"
Echoes of Cm AbM Cm Gm Cm→ M?

Winterreise: Seemingly Echoes of G as an “absolute” Climax breaks the
“Gute Nacht” inescapable, in the “Erlkönig”: hold of the G
and “Der thrall of the Escape? → Escape was
Wegweiser” opening G illusor y
No. 2 EbM A B A (B) Coda
Ends in Ebm EbM →m B/Cbm EbM →m B/Cbm → Ebm

Subversion of an Driving bass
“illusory” EbM rhythm takes over
No. 3 GbM ∗ A B A (B) Coda

A station of GbM Ebm GbM GbM
recovery from Suffused with Ebm With moments of Remembers
Ebm and with a release into B/Cbm
counterbalancing CbM and and G/Abbm
EbM
CbM
No. 4 Abm A B A
Emerges into Abm C#/Dbm Abm →M

AbM CbM Reference to Now emerging
“Der Wanderer” → from the
B/Cbm
Wanderer’s
AbM shadow
∗ First published in G major in 1857.

of the B section of the first impromptu. Unlike the Cb major and minor left
on the horizon of awareness after the third impromptu’s coda, however, this
Ab major is a remote memory. Many will be tempted to deny it any
significance because the link is so unlikely to be heard, but in the mid-nine-
teenth century, and even well into the twentieth, most music lovers came to
know opus 90 not simply by listening to it but also by playing it. Seeing Ab
major in the notation and feeling it under their fingers, they might have rec-
ognized it as a tonality that returns to the fourth impromptu from the first.
Indeed, the ways in which Ab major articulates itself in the first im-
promptu—the quiet suddenness of its emergence, the transformations it
brings to the opening theme, the subsequent annihilation both of it and of
its e¤ects—cry out for a later return of the key, or at least for a return of
some of those e¤ects. The impromptu begins with the powerfully struck G
in double octaves that sets the stage for a quiet marchlike melody of ex-
tremely narrow range and repetitive rhythm (see ex. 1.1b). As I have sug-
gested, its sense of motion, although not exactly that of any of the Winter-
reise songs, seems closely linked to them.The contrast between the fortissimo
introductory dominant and the initially unaccompanied melody suggests
loneliness or even, as McClary has argued, confinement.4 Rhythm, melody,
and harmony all reinforce this sense of confinement. With one exception,
every quarter-note beat of this theme is marked, almost oppressively, by
rhythmic activity. The exception is in the first half of the second measure,
where an augmentation of the opening dotted rhythm (into a dotted quar-
ter, an eighth, and a quarter) first occurs. Both rhythmically, in the one mo-
ment of hesitation that it occasions, and melodically, in its sighing descent
from the melodic peak of the phrase, this motive (henceforth designated x)
engenders a central focal point for the theme—a heart for it, to speak
metaphorically. At the same time, it provides a gestural contrast for the
theme’s other, more marchlike elements. The eight opening phrases, which
are rhythmically almost identical, group into pairs, each pair a parallel pe-
riod. The first pair of phrases remains unambiguously in C minor, but each
phrase of the second pair (ex. 1.1b, mm. 10–17) begins by suggesting the
relative major, Eb, and could easily cadence in that key. I have stressed how,
instead, the cadences return again and again to C minor.
Many a Classical introduction concludes with such a portentously, if more
quietly, struck dominant, prolonged like this opening one by a fermata. A
main theme then always ensues, usually articulating the tonic as its first har-
mony. But in this impromptu no introduction precedes the G. Not yet hav-
ing played out its introductory role, this G now insists retroactively on that
role by becoming the harmonic background, in place of the tonic, for vir-
tually the entire theme. Thus when the theme, in its second period, gestures
toward Eb major, it all too quickly returns to C minor, as if still in the thrall
of the G—the G-as-dominant—that has set the stage for it. This music be-
gins to seem not merely in C minor, but somehow confined to that key, in
a way that has suggested to me the characterization of the G as a Wegweiser
that ineluctably determines the music’s course.Thus in its own way this open-
ing impromptu, like the second and the fourth that follow, establishes at its
outset an idiosyncratic articulation of its own tonic.
VI
Against this background, the turn to Ab major for the B section comes as an
escape. At the end of the fourth period (see ex. 1.1c, m. 34) a codetta ini-
tiates an imposing ritual of C-minor closure. The cadential phrase has be-
gun again, as if in an echo, when a sudden inflection introducing Db, the
Neapolitan (m. 40), opens the opportunity for a deflection to Ab major. The
closing of the first A section is thus never fully completed, but is instead
elided with the beginning of a contrasting B section, suggesting one way
that reverie, whether as reminiscence or fantasy, can intrude upon other kinds
of awareness. The theme of this new section (mm. 42¤.) begins with the
same upbeat figure in dotted rhythm followed by repeated quarter notes as
in the A theme. This initial motivic resemblance imparts to the new theme
the feeling of a variation on the A theme, and mitigates, at first, the other-
wise extreme contrasts between the A and B sections. Rhythmically, after its
initiating upbeat, the first phrase of the new theme—the phrase that estab-
lishes its character—includes no dotted figures, but only quarter notes and
half notes. Texturally, its envelope of legato arpeggiated triplets contrasts
markedly with the often accented, mostly nonlegato chords that accompany
the A theme. Harmonically, the phrases are no longer paired together into
periods; instead, each phrase reaches a full authentic cadence. Moreover, the
harmony is no longer held to a single tonal center, but instead moves as if
in free exploration from Ab major, through modally mixed harmonies to Cb
major, and back.
The phrases of the B section also contrast with those of the A section in
length. Since both the A and B themes begin with the same rhythmic and
similar melodic motives, one can hear the five-measure melody of the B
theme as an expansion of an already established four-measure prototype. A
condensation of the first phrase of the B theme into four measures identifies
the four half notes in the middle of the phrase as the locus of expansion (see
ex. 1.1c, mm. 43–44), and both the stepwise melodic fall from the high point
and the way this descent takes center stage invite their more specific inter-
pretation as an expansion of motive x. If that motive, in its original form,
suggests a longing for escape, then perhaps the new theme incorporates its
transformation, whether imagined or remembered, in a state of freedom or
fulfillment. What the sudden turn to Ab thus brings about is not so much a
new theme as a liberating metamorphosis of the opening theme.
VII
The B section has its own codetta (ex. 5.5a, mm. 75¤.), which gently echoes
that of the A section and reaches full cadential closure. Whereas A’s
deflected cadence has led to reverie, B’s full cadence now occasions some-
thing like catastrophe.The persistence of the same texture after this cadence,
along with the recurrence of the head motive that is shared by both A and
B themes, may initially obscure the extraordinary nature of the phrase that
follows (mm. 83–87). After a single measure of repeated quarter notes and
accompanying triplet chords, the Abs of both melody and bass fall together,
in stark parallel motion, to G. This sudden fall extinguishes, in a single nul-
lifying moment, the aura of Ab major. The entire five-measure phrase pro-
ceeds in closely conjunct parallel octaves, expanding upon and confirming
the power of the impromptu’s opening G, which reinforces itself at the ca-
dence of the phrase with agitated, “Erlkönig”-like repetition.
Beneath the hammering Gs now comes a shadow of the opening theme
(ex. 5.5a, mm. 88–95). The Eb of motive x now descends directly through a
minor sixth to repeated Gs.The melody, fused with the bass, is under the con-
trol of the repeating Gs, which continue to reverberate with the memory
example 5.5 Impromptu in C Minor, op. 90, no. 1
a. Mm. 75–95
(codettas of B )
75
77
80 (“retransition”)
83
cresc.
87
91
3
3 6
b. Mm. 116–128
116
119 (transition)
decresc. dim.
123 B'
126
of “Erlkönig.” The descending melodic sixth recalls, in grim parody, the

similar melodic motion of the B theme and the B codetta, as well as the Eb-
major moments of the A theme. This new left-hand melody, already fore-
shadowing the actual return of the A theme, thus also echoes the B themes
as a musical emblem of the inescapable persistence of specific memories.
The escape to Ab major has proven as illusory, and perhaps even as dan-
gerous, as the Erlking’s enticements in Goethe’s ballad. If a dream is un-
fulfilled, or a memory lost, its repression may only intensify its energy. As if
enacting a response to such a repression, the second A section builds to an
agitated and powerful climax in its codetta (an especially unevocative term
in this case), which this time is brought to full gestural closure (ex. 5.5b).
The incorporation into this climax of the Db, the element that previously
o¤ered escape from C minor as a Neapolitan (m. 114; ex. 5.5b, m. 118),
only magnifies the confining power of this key, in that it implies that even
this way out is now closed. In a kind of aftershock, the Db comes again, now
turning in e¤ect into C# (m. 120) to initiate a shuddering, chromatic tran-
sition that recovers the music of dream or memory—the B section—in G
minor. This G minor does, of course, represent another move away from C
minor; but in bringing back music previously heard in Ab major, it has more
the e¤ect of negating that Ab-major music, both through the change to mi-
nor and through its now agitated textures, than of opening a new avenue
of freedom or exploration. Thus in this second B section we witness an un-
successful struggle to recapture and relive the experiences remembered in
the first B section. The G, from the outset an overdetermined dominant,
now reveals itself as a kind of absolute, an inescapable presence with the
power not merely to obstruct any escape from C minor but to ensnare ma-
terial from the major within the minor’s purview. In the return of the
codetta, at least, the struggling protagonist is rewarded with the nostalgic
return of the major mode, with a moment of peaceful reflection before the
agitated Gs return, renewing the ominous echoes of “Erlkönig.”
VIII
The G minor of the B" section, the G major of its codetta, the return of
the hammering G as the dominant of C minor—this succession throws the
major into relief, but at the same time it highlights its transitory, even illu-
sory character within the tonal drama of this impromptu. Again and again
in the final A section the major mode will resurface, but it will never break
altogether free of the minor. The second of the shadow phrases, which im-
mediately follow the hammering G (mm. 161¤.), also turns major at its ca-
dence (m. 167). A vision of the A theme in would-be C-major fulfillment
now follows, its melody now soaring up to G, but lasting for only one two-
phrase period. In its afterglow, the ensuing C-minor antecedent withdraws
into a higher register (ex. 5.6, mm. 177–180). For the first time the phrase
that now follows this antecedent is not a consequent; instead it is another
antecedent, beginning in the relative major like the third phrases of the earlier
example 5.6 Impromptu in C Minor, op. 90, no. 1, mm. 176–204
176
decresc.
(first antecedent)
180
cresc.
(second antecedent)
183
x
x x
186 x
190
194 Coda
199
cresc.
A sections, and leading, like them, to another half cadence in C minor (mm.
181–184). This succession of two antecedents, along with the registral dis-
placement of the first of them, suddenly renders unfamiliar this music that
has seemed, from the very beginning, obsessively overfamiliar.
The greatly expanded phrase (ex. 5.6, mm. 185–193) for which these
two antecedents set the stage departs in many respects from all that has pre-
ceded it. It is, for one, nine measures long—nearly twice the length of any
earlier phrase. The downward rush of its first two measures, from G to A in
the bass, and the V of ii harmony that the A supports, have no precedent.
Neither have the following registral displacements, parenthetical echoes that
bring a fourfold repetition of motive x, the sighing motive that has occurred
once in virtually every phrase of the A sections, but never more than once.
The bass continues to descend chromatically, with unprecedented weight,
from the A. With its arrival on F#, the rhythmic character of the melody
changes: motive x, just heard four times in a row, now audibly metamor-
phoses into a smoother expansion, a half note followed by two quarters.
Smooth rhythms prevail for the rest of the phrase.
This longer, culminating phrase, in the expanding rush of its outer voices
to a fortissimo exclamation of the straining x motive over a powerful A in
the bass, finally breaks away from the overcontrol of the G. In its insistence
at this climax on the x motive, this A theme seems finally to escape from its
confinement or isolation; in its final measures, the rhythm of x transforms
itself (ex. 5.6, m. 190), taking on the rhythmic character of the B theme. In
the following measure, the minor’s Eb yields directly to the major’s E in the
tenor, while above it G is incorporated into a melodic line that then ca-
dences in the a‹rming rhythm of B’s codetta. It is only in this breaking out
of A’s confinement and in the resulting fusion of A’s and B’s rhythmic el-
ements, of dream and reality, or of memory and present experience, that
release into the major is at least partly won.
Again, as in Winterreise, the “pure” major mode throughout this im-
promptu remains an apt metaphor for the unrealized, for imaginary realms,
for the mingling of memory with dream and illusion. The major never be-
comes as fully established as it might if what it embodied were real, but in-
stead remains essentially linked to the minor. The coda summarizes the im-
promptu’s points of departure and arrival by conjoining a two-measure
condensation (ex. 5.6, mm. 194–195) of the very first three measures with
a similar condensation of the definitive closing measures just heard (cf. mm.
196–197 with mm. 190–193). Even here, at the end of the impromptu, the
major never regains a complete phrase of its own. Instead, it emerges these
last times from the minor, like the image of a freedom or fulfillment never
achieved, or of a love that can still be born only of pain.
IX
A Winterreise-haunted scene, upon which the memory of “Erlkönig”

intrudes—this memory makes itself felt not only in the transformation of
the stark opening G into hammering triplets but also in the emergence be-
neath them of a stepwise melody outlining a minor sixth from G to Eb. It is
also deepened by the way this transformation immediately follows a seem-
ingly self-contained lyrical episode in the major, an episode that contrasts
with its surroundings in the same ways that the Erlking’s seductive singing
contrasts to the cries of the boy in Schubert’s most famous song.
What sense can be made of this intrusion? Certainly the windswept noc-
turnal setting of Goethe’s ballad has a‹nities with some of Müller’s winter
scenes, but much other Sturm und Drang and Romantic literature shares
these a‹nities. Can we infer from this mingling of memories in the C-Mi-
nor Impromptu a deeper thematic or psychological connection, for Schu-
bert, between Goethe’s ballad and Müller’s cycle?
In Goethe’s poem a father rides through the windy night, clasping his
son in his arms; his child—and possibly only the child—sees and hears an
Erlking who tries to seduce him, to lure him away with the enticements
of his kingdom. In Müller’s cycle a lonely outcast without home, love, or
family—who was probably never a father and in e¤ect is no longer a son—
trudges on through an ever more barren winter landscape, all its enticements
withered away. Although he seeks death he is still too driven by an insatiable
desire to be able to die. The exceptional power of Schubert’s settings for
these texts—one of his most miraculous early songs and the late cycle that
is for many his greatest achievement—suggests that he strongly identified
with both of them. In my introduction I have already argued that, in the
case of Winterreise, the episodes of exile in Schubert’s story “Mein Traum,”
along with the circumstances of his life that left him alienated in many ways,
give grounds for presuming his identification with the cycle’s Fremdling
wanderer. This winter journey, without any homeland either of origin or
of destination, takes the idea of exile to a nihilistic extreme. But with what
or whom did Schubert identify in “Erlkönig” in such a way that the first
impromptu’s memory of Winterreise might have brought that of “Erlkönig”
in its wake?
Once again, “Mein Traum” may hold the most powerful interpretive clue
to this linkage. Schubert’s story gives a fuller explanation for its protago-
nist’s exile than does Müller’s cycle: Schubert’s protagonist rejects the feast
in the pleasure garden to which his father twice takes him in the course of
the story, while the wanderer of Winterreise was already a Fremdling before
he came to the town he leaves behind in the opening poem. Moreover,
Goethe’s ballad, like Schubert’s story, involves a father, a son, and a plea-
sure garden as well—in this case the Erlking’s domain. Can we presume that
this is a pleasure garden not of the father’s imagining, but only of the son’s?
If so—because it is then not encompassed by paternal imagination—its en-
ticements are demonic and hence mortally dangerous. We cannot automat-
ically or unambiguously ascribe the workings of such a paternalistic logic
to Goethe’s poem, although we may well infer them. But what of the read-
ing of the poem that Schubert’s setting implies?
As Christopher Gibbs has clearly shown, Schubert’s setting of “Erlkönig”
has so dominated the subsequent reception history of the poem that it has
led to assumptions not necessarily implicit in the poem itself, including, for
example, that the father rides hurriedly from the outset, that the reason for
his haste is that his son is ill, and, most provocatively, that only the son sees
the Erlking and hears his enticements, which the father dismisses as fever-
ish hallucinations.5 In this terrifying setting almost all the music in the ma-
jor, and all the most tonally stable music before the final cadences, belongs
to the Erlking. This uncanny figure finally usurps the father’s control. Schu-
bert invests this demon’s descriptions of his kingdom with the allure of a
melodious, dancing major: we hear them as probably only the son, never
the father, could hear them.The child, of course, does not immediately suc-
cumb, but instead cries out repeatedly, in terror, to his father. It is precisely
the allure of the Erlking’s enticements that make them so frightening: they
have enough power over the son’s psyche for him to experience them as life
threatening.
Whatever Schubert’s own “feasts” or “pleasure gardens” may actually have
been, there is ample evidence that his father would not have accepted them,
or even imagined them at all fully. What is certain is that these aspects of
Schubert’s life were in fact life threatening: they led to his syphilitic infec-
tion sometime in 1822 and to full-fledged illness and confinement early and
again later in 1823. It seems almost inconceivable that this mortal illness
would not have deepened whatever sense of alienation, of being a Fremdling,
Schubert already felt. It would have linked his identification with the boy
resisting and then succumbing to the Erlking’s wiles to his identification with
Winterreise’s homeless and fatherless wanderer twelve years later. “Mein
Traum” foretells the possibility of such a linkage; without resorting again
to words, the first impromptu may confirm it.
Both the structural cadence of the first impromptu—the moment when the
minor yields directly to the major—and the last strain of its coda integrate
and highlight G in their culminating melodies (see ex. 5.6). The coda also
recalls the portentous opening gesture, the G-as-Wegweiser, as an o¤-the-
beat, syncopated accompaniment for the final synoptic recollections of the
impromptu’s theme, first below it, then above. The melody’s first notes now
precede the first G, as if to give expression to a state of consciousness that
is no longer so completely under the G’s dominion. But in their gestural
isolation, these Gs still haunt that consciousness as vestigial, fateful calls.
In the same high register in which it is highlighted three times in this
coda, G returns as the focal melodic pitch of the second impromptu’s open-
ing (see ex. 5.4). Meanwhile, the accompanimental figure, in the syncopated
e¤ect of its second-beat half-note Bbs, arises as if through a rekindling of
those syncopated fateful calls of the first impromptu’s coda. What other piece
begins in this way, with a melodically and harmonically self-contained phrase
that comes three times in a row? Repeated once, the first phrase could serve
as the first half of a short dance in binary form; the second half might then
even begin in the parallel minor, like the fourth phrase of this impromptu,
returning to the major just in time for a final cadence. But here the motion
of the dance is suspended, taken o¤ track, defamiliarized. It is extravagant
to entertain the notion that this might be the nightly dance of the Erlking’s
daughters—but might it, at least, be an alluring dance emanating from some
other pleasure garden, one to which Schubert’s father could never have led
him? And might not joining in this dance—succumbing to its seductions—
lead to the kind of catastrophe that befalls the Eb-major music of this im-
promptu when it so utterly succumbs to its parallel minor?
XI
This drama of subversion in the Eb-Major Impromptu may bring to mind a

similar tonal drama in another of Schubert’s piano pieces: the undermining
of the major mode in the Moment musical in Ab major, op. 94, no. 6, as de-
scribed by Cone in his well-known article “Schubert’s Promissory Note.”6
In Cone’s account, the subversive element, the “promissory note,” is an E
that slides down chromatically into Eb instead of resolving to the F that has
been projected for it. Initially just a chromatic detail, this pitch is then a stim-
ulus for exploration, but it eventually becomes a pervasively undermining
element. In the Eb-Major Impromptu, the subversive pitches—Gb and Cb—
first occur not as momentary chromatic deviations but as components of an
Eb-minor passage to which they diatonically belong. But in their increasing
dominion and dramatic importance, these pitches have much the same func-
tion as does Cone’s E in the sixth Moment musical. They, too, eventually pre-
cipitate a devastating climax. The Gb overtakes the climactic confirmation
of the tonic in measure 71. This reversal of mode is reinforced by the sud-
den return of the opening motive and by a hypermetrical shift to the three-
measure grouping already fleetingly suggested at the end of the first Eb-mi-
nor episode (mm. 33–35). The Cb, of course, becomes the tonic of the
middle section (see ex. 5.2), in which the accompanimental pattern of the
A sections, in another dramatic reversal, dominates the melody. Not only,
then, does the Eb minor arising in this impromptu overtake its Eb major; the
accompanimental motive, first gesturing toward thematic identity in the first
Eb-minor episode (mm. 25–33; ex. 5.4 contains mm. 25–29), fully gains such
an identity by taking control of the middle section thematically and then
confirms its subversive role by returning in this form at the end to drive the
memory of the impromptu’s first innocence, its seemingly ethereal open-
ing dance, into oblivion.
In the sixth Moment musical, nothing follows what Cone calls the “final
empty octave”; there is no opportunity for recovery from this bleak con-
clusion. In any event, the probable composition of this and the first of the
two F-minor Moments musicaux, op. 94, no. 3, several years before the oth-
ers complicates any attempt to understand the Moments musicaux as a cycle.7
It is striking, however, that each of these two earlier pieces ends one of the
“halves” of the set. But regardless of whether these two pieces were ulti-
mately implicated in a cyclic conception, Schubert probably did not com-
pose them as components of one.
In opus 90, on the other hand, the richness and specificity of the tonal
and motivic material shared by the Eb-Major and Gb-Major Impromptus pro-
vide, of all the linkages between the separate pieces, the strongest evidence
for such a conception. The Eb-minor triad within the Gb-major theme reg-
isters not only its dependence on the ending of the preceding piece but also
the vulnerability that this dependence implies. As already pointed out, this
Eb-minor triad also looks ahead to the turbulent Eb-minor central episode:
it anticipates, in exactly the same voicing, the chord from which the first
phrase of that episode will unfurl (cf. mm. 2 and 25). Although simply and
gently expressive, this initial progression encapsulates both the tonal struc-
ture of this piece and its tonal relationship to the preceding one. It con-
cretizes in music the way a particular emotionally charged image, embod-
ied in a single progression, can gather and hold together the memories and
anticipations of experiences separated in time.
Within the context of the Gb-Major Impromptu itself, the turn to Eb mi-
nor for the middle section simply “composes out” the opening progression,
unleashing the disturbing power of an element already present in the theme.
In its direct emergence from the cadential Gb-major triad of the theme (mm.
24–25), this first Eb-minor chord of the middle section negates that Gb chord,
swallowing it up. In the broader context incorporating the second im-
promptu, this turn perpetuates the crisis never resolved, or resolved only in
a cataclysmic manner, in its predecessor. The agitated three-measure phrase
that initiates this middle section (mm. 25–27), which responds to its own
first hammering whole notes with breathless streams of quarter notes, con-
veys an anxiety appropriate to the return of such a harrowing memory. The
two accented long notes only gain in dramatic force through their associa-
tion with the wild middle section of the second impromptu, to which they
refer even more clearly than does the opening theme of the third.
The coda begins with a momentarily darkening return, now of course
in Gb, of the transition that linked the B section to the return of the A theme
(see ex. 2.2b). Beneath the long, swelling repeated Gbs in the melody, the
bass descends one last time by step to Cb (see ex. 5.3, mm. 74–76), twice
tonicizing its minor triad—the minor subdominant, as in that earlier re-
transition. By now, Cb major, the “proper” subdominant, has fully played
out a dramatic role in this impromptu. In one way, this concluding empha-
sis of Cb minor lays that proper subdominant to rest while also recovering,
in order to lay it to final rest as well, the memory of the Cb-minor episodes
of the Eb-Major Impromptu. In addition, after the prolonged emphases
throughout the Gb-Major Impromptu of Eb in both Eb-minor and Cb-ma-
jor contexts, Cb minor brings about a complementary prolongation of the
Ebb, the negation of Eb minor’s leading tone. From the resolving tonic triad,
the same phrase begins again (see ex. 5.3, m. 78), this time breaking open
at its climax into a minor Neapolitan sixth (Abb, notated as G, in m. 80). One
role of this potentially devastating harmony is to reinforce the Ebb with even
greater intensity, retaining it through all three measures that precede the Ger-
man sixth. Another is to recall, for one last time, the aura of the Eb-Major
Impromptu’s middle section (see ex. 5.2).8 A third role, admittedly far more
hypothetical, may be to recall G minor itself from the second B section of
the first impromptu (see ex. 5.5b) in anticipation of the soon-to-be-heard
recollection of the Ab major of the first B section as the key of the ensuing
and final impromptu.9
XII
After the opening G of the first impromptu, all four of the opus 90 im-
promptus begin quietly; but only in the last does the character of this quiet-
ness draw upon silence (see ex. 3.6). The initial melodic gesture from 3 to
5 may recall the opening of the second impromptu, but in introducing a si-
lence, this opening generates an opposite e¤ect: instead of releasing itself
into a luminous stream of sound, buoyed up by a dancing accompanimen-
tal pattern in every measure, the fourth impromptu begins as if searching
tentatively, even if rhythmically, to illuminate the space into which it ven-
tures, and so to find its way forward. Perhaps what it searches for is the lost
innocence of the second.
Each discrete two-measure gesture, after surging in its first measure, with-
draws into silence by the end of its second. Even the chordal gestures (which
first appear in mm. 5–6; see ex. 3.6), although not ending with rests, are
separated from the ensuing arpeggiations by the silent spaces necessitated by
shifts of harmony and register. In their quarter-note rhythm, mostly in re-
peated notes or conjunct motion, these chordal gestures once again reach
back even beyond the memory of the second impromptu to that of the first.
The gestural articulation arising from the silences brings into relief the asym-
metry of the groupings, in which two arpeggiations, always of an ephemeral
tonic falling into its dominant, are followed by a single, harmonically more
exploratory chordal gesture. Only the fourth of these three-gestured groups
leads to a new continuation (described in chapter 3, section V). This longer
chordal passage, extended by the semicadence to eight measures, strongly
suggests tonal stabilization in Ab, but not yet in the major. The ensuing first
measures in the tonic major reinforce the newly established hypermetrical
pattern of four-measure groups for the following music. In the two such
groups that immediately follow (see ex. 3.6, mm. 39–46), a shorter figure
derived from the opening arpeggiation articulates a harmonic change in every
measure. The high points of the shorter arpeggiated figures, rising measure-
by-measure from 5 to 8, bring back in a high register the tenor melody of
the second impromptu’s opening measures in a recovery of what there proved
only illusory.
The recall in these same measures of the left-hand rhythm of the second
impromptu, here reiterated in every measure for the first time in the fourth,
makes the possibility of an intentional reference especially plausible. From
the rhythmic and harmonic pattern of these four-measure groups, enlivened
by this subliminal memory, emerges a melody in the tenor register, evoca-
tive of distant horns and bringing a recognizable theme for the first time
into the way-seeker’s awareness. Repeated, the melody extends itself, rising,
growing louder and thus nearer, and climaxing in the subdominant. Both
in the emergence of the major from the minor opening and in the evoca-
tion of horn calls, this impromptu once again recalls “Suleika I” (see ex.
4.3). Unlike the “Unfinished” Symphony, however, this music perfectly mir-
rors the e¤ects of the healing power of love in that song’s text.
As I have already implied, the initial search in the fourth impromptu for
both tonality and theme and the first emergence of that theme as a distant
horn call create an apt context for the return of “Der Wanderer” in the im-
promptu’s trio. In the opus 90 impromptus, Schubert’s first instrumental
work composed under the spell of Winterreise, an association between the
winter cycle’s protagonist and that of “Der Wanderer” thus already becomes
apparent. The echoes of “Der Wanderer” in the trio of the Ab-Major Im-
promptu suggest a return to loneliness and alienation—not to the utter des-
olation of Winterreise, but instead to the kind of loneliness still activated by
personal feeling from which the “Wanderer” Fantasy has shown a way out.
In relationship to the alienation of Winterreise, that of “Der Wanderer” is
animated as if in a return of spring, a thawing of the frozen landscape that
allows for a resurgence of conscious feeling. In this way, the last of the opus
90 impromptus, in drawing on the gestures and textures of “Der Wanderer,”
throws o¤ the aura of Winterreise that still pervades the first.
c hap t e r 6
Displacing the Sonata

The Opus 142 Impromptus
In his review of Schubert’s second set of impromptus, published as opus

142 in 1838, Robert Schumann wrote:
Few authors leave their seal so indelibly stamped on their works as he; every
page of the first two impromptus whispers “Franz Schubert”—as we know
him in his numberless moods, as he charms us, deceives us, captivates us again,
so we find him here. Yet I can hardly believe that Schubert really entitled these
movements “Impromptus.” The first is obviously the first movement of a
sonata; it is so thoroughly developed and rounded out that there can scarcely
be any doubt of it. I consider the second impromptu the second movement
of the same sonata. In key and character it exactly fits with the first.1
Schumann is willing, although reluctant, to regard the last impromptu of

the four as the finale of the sonata: “though the key would tend to
confirm . . . [that it is the finale], the superficiality of its entire conception
argues against it.”2 He does not grant the third impromptu a place in this
scheme, however; instead he dismisses it as “undistinguished variations on
an undistinguished theme” (see ex. 6.8a). But for Alfred Einstein, writing
just over a century later, all four of these impromptus have gained admission
to the sonata of Schumann’s imagining.3 Their inclusion depends on some
reappraisals of their form and character: the second (see ex. 6.6) becomes a
saraband, taking the place of a minuet; the variations can now serve as the
141
slow movement; and Einstein hears the fourth (see exx. 6.9–10) as a rondo,
thus instantiating a form often chosen by Schubert for his finales. Walther
Dürr, writing much more recently, closely agrees with Einstein’s assessments.4
Schumann acknowledges his appraisal to be presumption, a conjecture
that only examination of the original manuscript of opus 142 could verify.
Today we, unlike Schumann, have access to a manuscript, and, unlike opus
90, it bears the title “Vier Impromptus” in Schubert’s own hand.5 The pub-
lisher of the earlier opus, Tobias Haslinger, may have suggested its title, but
Schubert seems at the very least to have accepted it and to have applied it
himself to the second set of pieces. On the other hand, we know from Schu-
bert’s correspondence with a potential publisher that he was willing to have
the impromptus of the second set published “either separately or together.”6
We also know that Schubert at one point numbered the impromptus of this
set as 5 through 8, as if he intended them as a continuation of the first set.
Neither the letter nor the numbering, however, has unambiguous implica-
tions. He might have been willing to sacrifice the integrity of the set if do-
ing so would lead to publication. And the numbering of the pieces might
mean only that he regarded the pieces in the second set as similar enough
to those of the first to be counted in their company. The fact remains that
Schubert wrote out the second set, like the first, in its own separate manu-
script, and that like the first it makes enough musical sense as a set to sug-
gest that Schubert must have conceived it as one.
But what made Schumann hear the two opening numbers of opus 142
as sonata movements? In his admiration of these pieces, he probably wanted,
for one, to confer on them the enduring aesthetic status of the sonata. What
presumably initiated this specific conjecture were certain features that the first
impromptu, in F minor (see exx. 6.1–5), shares with none of Schubert’s
other “shorter” pieces. The F-Minor Impromptu incorporates an apparent
sonata exposition, which makes a transition from a first theme in F minor
to a second theme (or group of themes) in the expected Ab major, and an
apparent recapitulation, in which the transition and the second themes re-
main in the tonic.
Presumably, what allowed Schumann’s conjecture to take root and, even-
tually, to embrace the entire set, are the ways in which the four pieces com-
plement each other. In Einstein’s account, the return of the opening theme
at the end of the first impromptu “cries aloud to be carried further to a log-
ical conclusion, a function which is met by the Allegretto in A-flat major.”7
The final impromptu not only returns to the tonic of the first, F minor, but
also balances the weight of the first, both in its wildly energetic character
and through its extended middle section and coda. The variations, in the
meantime, introduce a character that is lighter than what prevails in the first
two impromptus; although formally admissible into a Schubert sonata only
as a slow movement, they also fill the role, through their pervasive playful-
ness, of a scherzo.
If the manuscript bore no title, would these features permit the inference
that Schubert intended these pieces, or at the very least the first two of them,
as sonata movements? They would probably figure as credible sonata move-
ments for some imaginary composer of Schubert’s generation, and even more
so for one of Schumann’s. But one can only assess their plausibility as Schu-
bert sonata movements by comparing them to the movements Schubert ac-
tually included in his mature sonatas or in his closely related chamber and
symphonic works.8 None of the first movements of these works lacks a de-
velopment section; the first impromptu not only lacks a development but
also incorporates in its stead a lyrical episode in the rounded binary form
characteristic of a trio section. Unlike any of Schubert’s developments, this
quasi-trio is self-contained, beginning in Ab minor and returning at its end
to the Ab major of the second theme. This section returns complete, in the
tonic, at the impromptu’s end, as if it had really belonged all along to the
exposition and was now simply playing out its role in the recapitulation. But
even before this “trio” emerges for the first time, that exposition has artic-
ulated the relationship between its first and second themes in a way utterly
uncharacteristic of Schubert’s mature sonata forms. This idiosyncratic the-
matic articulation is the background against which the substitution of a self-
contained trio for a development section must be understood.
If the second impromptu fills the role of the dance movement in this sup-
posed sonata—as its symmetrical minuet and trio form and even its rhyth-
mic character suggest—then its placement as the second movement is unique
in Schubert’s sonata forms in the last ten years of his life.9 If instead it fills
the role of a slow movement, then the persistence of a rhythmic ground-
motive throughout its entire ternary form and the rounded binary form of
each of the sections of that ternary make it unique among the slow move-
ments of the same period. Variations, on the other hand, do occur as slow
d i s p l ac i n g t h e s o nata 143
movements in this period, but none incorporates dancing or scherzando ele-
ments to quite the extent that the Bb-Major Impromptu does.10 Nor do any
of the slow movements—or, for that matter, minuets or scherzos—written
after the “Unfinished” Symphony occur in the major subdominant. The
fourth impromptu, finally, is no rondo: formally, its theme is an elaborate
hybrid that cannot be simply classified as either rounded binary or ternary;
only one contrasting episode, albeit a long and complex one, occurs before
the theme returns, and at the end comes an extended coda that, unlike those
of any of Schubert’s concluding rondos, introduces seemingly new mate-
rial rather than returning to the opening theme or to an earlier episode.
II
Even these superficial observations make it clear that the standards that made
it possible for Schumann and those influenced by his critique to hear these
impromptus as sonata movements were not Schubert’s standards for such
movements. The conception of opus 142 as a sonata is easily enough dis-
missed, finally, to be of little interest in itself. It can, however, lead to a more
interesting question: that of whether the ideas and procedures that Schu-
bert associated with the sonata might have had a role in the creation of an
alternative—a work in some respects like a sonata, but only enough like one
to stand as its opposite.
Even though tonally exploratory, almost all of Schubert’s mature com-
positions in sonata forms are still structured, like those of his Viennese pred-
ecessors, upon the polarity between tonic and dominant or, for some move-
ments in the minor, tonic and mediant. (In his three-key expositions, for
example, the dominant is given a degree of stability never granted to the
second key.) As with these predecessors, certain cadential strategies are es-
pecially highlighted to establish, if not always to dramatize, this polarity. The
dominant or mediant at which the exposition ultimately arrives firmly es-
tablishes itself through its own predominant and dominant—and thus
through a prolonged half cadence of some kind—and confirms itself not
only through a strongly marked full cadence but also through ensuing clos-
ing material. In Schubert’s opening sonata allegro movements a develop-
ment still always follows the exposition. Sometimes it is enigmatic and seem-
ingly nondevelopmental in character, but it always, in the end, can be seen
only as a development. At the end of the development invariably comes a
drama of recapitulation, a moment when the dominant of the home key
reestablishes itself, making palpable the imminence of recapitulatory return.11
In its cadential strategies, the first impromptu of opus 142 consistently
invokes these norms; then, in one way or another, it just as consistently sub-
verts them. Within its “exposition,” its second key, Ab major, soon estab-
lishes and then repeatedly reestablishes itself, but it never confirms itself here
as firmly as does the second key in Schubert’s sonatas: instead of closing
material, this impromptu has only an immediate continuation into the en-
suing trio-like section (see ex. 6.3, mm. 66¤.). Not only is there no develop-
ment; there is also, at the end of this “trio” that takes its place, no drama of
recapitulation, but instead a simple return, almost without warning, of the
opening theme (see ex. 6.5). Unusual cadential strategies also characterize
the later impromptus of the set. As if in response to the never fully satisfied
cadential urgency of the first impromptu, the opening theme of the second
avoids any strong cadential articulation until the end of its fourth “phrase”
(see ex. 6.6, m. 16). That of the third impromptu (see ex. 6.8a), by contrast,
might be said to overemphasize its root-position dominant, to be unprob-
lematically intent on closure from its very beginning. The last begins, like
the first, with a cadentially closed, self-contained idea (see ex. 6.9), but then
departs from and returns to this opening idea in ever-widening circles. Its
middle section (see ex. 6.10a–d) takes cadential evasion to unfamiliar ex-
tremes, subsuming phrase after phrase within simple, extraordinarily pro-
longed harmonic progressions.
While the impromptus of the earlier opus 90 experiment with di¤erent
ways of establishing their opening keys, those of this second set explore states
of harmonically suspended animation within more conventionally established
keys, throwing into question—or at other times exaggerating—their ca-
dential confirmation. These cadential strategies derive their e¤ect, in part,
from the ways they initially contrast, in the first impromptu, with the ca-
dential maneuvers that articulate the tonal polarities of Classical sonata forms.
They address, and find alternatives to, the tonal procedures of the sonata,
and in this respect they open a new and in some ways comparable aesthetic
domain—a domain that, paradoxically, Schumann himself had entered by
1838, in a very di¤erent way, through his early piano works.
figure 6.1 The Opus 142 Impromptus as a Cycle
Impromptu
number Key Form
No. 1 Fm A B (B1–B2–B3) C (not a development) A B (B1–B2–B3) C A
(Search Fm Fm → AbM Abm Abm— AbM Fm Fm → FM Fm Fm FM Fm
for memories) More closed-off ↓ ↓ B and C exactly ↓ ↓
No articulated tran- V7–i of
and enigmatic as before, but in AbM
sition and arrival. CbM Bbbm V7–i of
than a “first the home key
“Second theme” always V7/n–n Gbm
theme” already there; keeps “Beyond” V7/n–n
“Duet
arriving but is never “Beyond”
texture” “Link”∗ →
fully confirmed
No drama of
recapitulation
No. 2 AbM A B A
Crucial chromatic AbM ∗ ↓ 3 motive New cadences DbM Dbm DbM AbM ↓3 motive SHORT
“link” and Cannot ca- V7–i of Gbm incorporate Gb “Brook” A/Bbb “Link”∗ Db–Gb CODA
“beyond” pro- dence until Fm “Beyond” into bass figuration “Beyond”
Climax,
gressions return incorporated over same A
suspended
from No. 1 through “link” “saraband” motion Exactly
bass as in A
↓
(Making peace progression∗ ↓ repeated
with memory) Gbm Gbm
“Gateway chord”
No. 3 BbM Theme (cf. Entr’acte No. 2 from Rosamunde) Var. 1 Var. 2 Var. 3 Var. 4 Var. 5 Coda
Theme and ↓ 3 motive ↓ 3 motive TAG† BbM TAG† BbM TAG† Bbm TAG† GbM BbM TAG†
Variations BbM TAG →
(Simple memory: Only cadences becomes
an actual story) when vii°/F is transition <6>
incorporated chord
No. 4 Fm A1 A2 “pre-B” B “post-B” A1 A2 Coda

Dancing, Fm Fm AbM–m– Abm Fm Fm DbM
AbM
“embodied” Breaking open Further expansion M–m Recalls “duet” of Exactly ↓ → Fm
Again
recollections of of Fm A and B incorporating Opening and No. 1 repeated Key +
emphatically
No. 1, with material from BbM–minor reopening, Only cadences incorporating progression
elements of No. 1 never after E–A/Bbb A/Bbb in order from “trio” of
No. 2 cadencing harmonies are to cadence No. 2
incorporated
∗ “Link” progression:
I/A
I/A V/f
V/f i/f
i/f
† “Tag” gives narrative feel to theme.
Already with Haydn and then, especially, with Beethoven, large-scale co-
herence and cyclic organization came to play a more and more explicit role
in the aesthetics of the sonata. In view of Schubert’s preoccupation with
the subtler forms of cyclic organization in his mature sonatas and formally
similar chamber and symphonic works, we might only expect that he would
have organized in similar ways any works for which he envisaged compara-
ble status. Opus 90, which is on my account a masterfully achieved early ex-
periment in progressive tonality, provides one example of such organiza-
tion. Opus 142, much more like a sonata in its overall tonal plan, again shows
signs of cyclic organization through motivic and idiosyncratic tonal elements
common to all four of its pieces (as shown in fig. 6.1). One of these, espe-
cially, provides an especially potent link because of both the wealth and the
ambiguity of its harmonic implications: a chromatic filling in of the whole
step between Eb and F (transposed in the final impromptu to Bb and C), ei-
ther in an ascending form with E (Eb–E–F, henceforth motive y) or in a de-
scending one with Fb (F–Fb–Eb, henceforth motive z); and an associated
stalling of this motion on the chromatic passing tone (in this case always no-
tated as E), which becomes redefined in the second and fourth impromptus
as a dominant that makes A into a momentary but climactic local tonic. As
we shall soon see, the ascending form of this motive is elaborated as a specific,
more fully defined progression that returns (like those already discussed in
chapter 2), to link the second impromptu dramatically to the first.
III
In at least one respect, the first impromptu of opus 142 begins in a conven-
tional way (ex. 6.1): the two phrases of its theme balance each other as an-
tecedent and consequent and thus together make up a parallel period. The
antecedent of this period begins with an imposing basic idea: from the broadly
spaced, forcefully arpeggiated first chord a descending melodic chain un-
furls, its entire length spiked with dotted rhythms. The opening melodic C
is almost too isolated to contribute to the establishment of a distinctive open-
ing motive. Nor does the ensuing chain of undi¤erentiated dotted rhythms
generate such a motivic presence; it sounds, instead, like improvisation.
Whether or not one can claim this opening complex to be unique in its
example 6.1 Impromptu in F Minor, op. 142, no. 1, mm. 1–34
A
Allegro moderato.
cresc.
3 3 3 3
cresc.
10 3
3
3
3 3 3
cresc.
13
(transition)
16
(continued)
19 B1
22
25
28 B2
cresc.
31
elusive thematic character, the way the rest of the impromptu relates to it
gives it a special place in the instrumental music of Schubert’s maturity. In
virtually every other movement of this music, either the opening theme or
a motivic complex recognizably derived from it plays a continuing role in
the passages that follow. Virtually every one of his sonata allegro move-
ments, for example, audibly builds the transition to its second thematic group
on motivic elements from the first group.12 But in this impromptu, once
the opening theme reaches the full cadence of its periodic structure in
measure 13, it withdraws, so to speak, from view, merely setting an omi-
nous stage for the ensuing music rather than persisting as an active presence
within it.
What immediately follows, then, is a new beginning. The new music is
much more tenuous than the opening theme, both in the quietly measured
tremolo of its upper parts and the hesitant but persistent syncopations of its
lower ones, but at the same time it bears greater promise of thematic ger-
mination. On considered hearing, this new passage reveals close ties with
the opening complex: it begins by again melodically emphasizing the fifth
scale degree and its upper neighbor, and its first harmonic move momen-
tarily tonicizes the subdominant. Like the opening melodic chain, it not only
incorporates but also especially emphasizes Gb, its Neapolitan degree, in its
melodic descent to the tonic. Its syncopations echo and, at the same time,
assimilate into ongoing motion the violent o¤beat chord that first constrains
the unfurling of the opening’s melodic chain in measure 4 and then arrests
its more swirling descent in measure 10. Although it completely avoids overt
motivic reference to the opening theme, therefore, this new beginning
nonetheless remains heavily under its shadow. Through the relatively covert
musical connections enumerated above, that brooding theme, only just com-
pleted but now abandoned, casts its aura over the new beginning. I shall ar-
gue that it thus becomes, in immediate retrospect, a potential emblem for
the all-pervasive power of lost or unarticulated memory.
Only eight measures after the new beginning in measure 13, this music
arrives at a full cadence in the relative major, the tonal goal of its exposi-
tion. It also clearly foreshadows, from the moment of that same beginning,
its second theme. No other exposition in Schubert’s mature music so quickly
makes a full cadence in the key of its second theme, nor does any other of
these expositions initially depart from its tonic through material that so au-
dibly anticipates that second theme. In a sense, both the second theme and
its key have already arrived by measure 21, yet as the music continues, both
keep on arriving. Certainly by tonal criteria, perhaps even by motivic ones,
the second thematic area of this exposition might be said to begin in this
measure and to comprise three second themes, all variants of one another.
The first two variants of the second theme both begin with two-measure
cadential subphrases in the manner of codettas (mm. 21–23, 30–32), rein-
forcing the tonal arrivals in Ab major from which they ensue.
The third and final variant (ex. 6.2, mm. 45¤.) also begins with a ca-
dential idea, now a fully articulated cadential progression that for the first
time incorporates and emphasizes its subdominant harmony. This is the first
of these variants not to be introduced through a full tonic cadence; instead,
the preceding variant, through its climax in bare parallel octaves, has invoked
the convention of anticipating the arrival of a new theme by dramatizing
and prolonging its dominant. In this case, of course, the dominant so dram-
atized and prolonged is threateningly unfamiliar, even though earlier di-
gressions to Bb minor have foreshadowed it; the familiar dominant emerges
from this dominant, as if from under a cloud, only at the last moment (mm.
43–44). The first appearance here of motive z is thus especially marked: at
the last moment it rescues the music from the wrong dominant.
In these ways, this music accumulates arrival upon arrival, and, in its un-
tiring attempts to confirm every arrival, cadential gesture upon cadential ges-
ture. Almost from the moment of the completion of the opening period
(see ex. 6.1, m. 13), both the second theme and its key are always already
within hearing but always also awaiting further actualization. Through this
pattern of repeated tonal and thematic arrival, with each arrival at first
confirmed but then threateningly negated so as to require subsequent re-
arrival, this impromptu mimics the cycles of illusory certainty and appre-
hensive doubt that are characteristic of a quest for elusive personal knowl-
edge. It aspires to the formal and dramatic definition for which the sonata
had become the vehicle, but it makes its distinctive aesthetic e¤ect by not
achieving that definition.
Each arrival feels less tremulous than does its predecessor, but the need
immediately to reconfirm each arrival through a further cadential gesture
suggests overcompensation for lingering uncertainty. Even the final arrival
of the second theme, emerging into ringing, full-voiced harmony from
the bare parallel octaves of the deceptive dominant prolongation, does not
break free of such overdetermined cadential reiteration. Indeed, for all its
reassuring glow, the second theme never advances beyond a mere celebra-
tion of such reiteration (ex. 6.2, mm. 45¤.). Not only does each phrase of
this final version insist on its dominant-to-tonic cadence by immediately
repeating it in a two-measure extension, the same cadential phrase, in its
B3
43 z sempre legato
47
now expanded six-measure form, repeats itself and then repeats itself again,
growing higher and fuller, and the last time longer, but garnering only ad-
ditional textural, rather than harmonic, substance. This culminating passage
a‹rms itself joyously, but it can never engender a complementary phrase
for its already-cadential opening one. It thus consists in substance of only
this single phrase, and in never finding its way to another it never achieves
the correspondingly full melodic and harmonic range that would enable it
to avert a lingering threat of disillusionment or loss of assurance and be-
come fully realized.
IV
Once again, the cadence that concludes this quasi-exposition (ex. 6.3, mm.
64¤.) is not articulated in the manner of any of the concluding cadences of
Schubert’s actual sonata expositions. As already mentioned, no codetta or
closing theme follows it; instead, its concluding sixteenth-note figuration
simply resumes at the moment of its resolution, persisting in continuous,
gradually quieting arpeggiations of the tonic triad. Within the near-stillness
of the arpeggiation, Ab major turns suddenly minor to introduce a new
episode. In taking the place of a confirming series of closural gestures, this
new music implies not simply the new beginning that would follow a more
8va
63
sinistra
67 C (“trio”)
decresc. appassionato
70
fulfilled ending, but a beginning over again, a return to the aura of the nearly
forgotten opening theme. In the minor and obsessed with its fifth degree,
it makes a new attempt to draw something motivically and expressively dis-
tinctive from that characterologically somewhat elusive material. In the
metaphorical terms already suggested, the memories over which the open-
ing theme broods have not yet fully disclosed themselves.
Like the problematic view of this impromptu as a movement in sonata
allegro form, the explicit interpretation of it as a musical exploration of
memory—perhaps at least as problematic a view for some readers—originates
with Schumann, for whom “the whole seems to have been written during
an hour of su¤ering as though in meditation on the past.”13 Interestingly, it
is just those subversions of such a presumed sonata in this impromptu that
make so plausible Schumann’s further hearing of it as an evocation of mem-
ory. Gülke has already elaborated provocatively on this interpretation: he
hears the entire “exposition” as anticipation, as a “not-yet,” and the new
Ab-minor section (the beginning-over-again in measure 69, after the second
theme’s final cadence) as a “no-longer,” the final stage of a search for an ob-
jectively irretrievable memory. Hearing the entire “exposition” primarily as
preparation for this central episode, as “bringing it to light,” he then hears
the episode itself as implying an underlying melody that it can never make
fully explicit, but can only approximate through melodic fragments calling
out in counterpoint to each other. For him, this composite of fragments
becomes the musical equivalent of the insight that the act of remembering
always transforms (and so leaves in partial obscurity) the memories it brings
to awareness.14
Gülke finds apt terms for the tragic sense this impromptu conveys, through
specifically describable tonal means, of a striving after goals whose fulfill-
ment can be fully imagined but never fully attained. The isolation of the
opening theme from the following music suggests a fateful setting for that
music, a powerful and irretrievable past, and a protagonist in the thrall of
that past, without articulate access to it.The acts of remembrance that Schu-
mann’s and Gülke’s descriptions invoke are attempts to forge routes of ac-
cess. Schumann’s metaphorical description consists only of a single charac-
terizing statement, but Gülke bases his more elaborate description on a
narration of the musical events of the piece. Within the Ab-minor section
itself, however, Gülke does not take continuing musical developments into
consideration; his account of this section gives the impression merely of a
striving of memory that is unfulfilled and can never be fulfilled, and of an
eventual surrender of the striving protagonist to either resignation or disil-
lusionment. His interpretation seems to derive no new inflection from the
harrowing intrusion of minor Neapolitan harmony after the double bar (ex.
6.4, mm. 88–90), for example, or from the ensuing transformation of the
Ab-minor material into the major, a transformation that conveys a sense, at
least as long as it remains in e¤ect, of reintegration.
This episode begins not only with a return to the minor but with an ac-
companimental figure based on the same upward right-hand arpeggiation,
from fifth to fifth, as the impromptu’s opening chord (see ex. 6.3, mm. 69¤.).
I have already mentioned that the melody, too, returns to an emphasis of
the fifth scale degree, now making that degree into the culminating and focal
pitch of a rising three-note motive. As in the opening theme, this degree is
thus the first point of melodic emphasis. Once again, it stands somewhat
alone, but the rising upbeat figure that precedes it brings it into clearer
85
88 E F
decresc.
E(=F ) E
91
94
97
motivic definition: it becomes the focus of a calling figure. It continues, in
e¤ect, to resound while the left hand answers it, rather than dissipating it-
self into a troubled melodic descent like that of the opening theme. Thus it
links itself, as part of an implicitly ongoing melody, with the ensuing, rhyth-
mically similar gestures in the same register. The texture of this passage sug-
gests a duet, but as Gülke observes, the melodic fragments that call to each
other across the accompanimental stream are too incomplete to suggest sep-
arate and independent protagonists. The two intermittent but regularly al-
ternating strands of melody instead suggest di¤erent, only partly articulated
voices within a single lone protagonist, voices representing di¤erent inner
personae that call out to each other, depending on each other for fulfill-
ment. In this way, for example, the call of remembrance in Gülke’s account
strives for completion through the recovery, which is never fully possible on
this account, of the voices of vividly specific memories.
In the return from the relative major (Cb) to the tonic minor (Ab) at the
double bar (m. 84), another rhythmic element, a quarter-note afterbeat, is
recalled from the opening theme (ex. 6.4, mm. 85¤.). First introduced in
measure 4 (see ex. 6.1) to arrest the momentum of the downward melodic
motion, this rhythm then makes its motivic impression on the melody in the
following measure.15 Now joined to a pervasively recurring three-note up-
beat figure, it brings, through the new five-note motive thus engendered, a
further fusion of this episode with the opening theme and a corresponding
impression of the deepening of memory. With the sudden stalling of the
melody on the E, the lower voice takes over the last note of this new five-
note motive, forcefully accenting it and holding on to it as urgent syncopa-
tion. The upper voice responds with a dotted rhythm, again drawn from the
opening theme, that heightens still more the urgency of the E. For a brief
span, upper and lower voices coalesce into a single strand of melody that sus-
tains focus on this now defamiliarized, unsettling E. The context of the sud-
den chromatic upward shift of harmony brings an atmosphere of anxious
expectancy to these rhythmic recollections, as in the setting of the opening
stanzas of “Die junge Nonne.” Here, perhaps, it is the aura of remembrance
itself, emerging in the turn to E, that plays the cathartic role of a divine pres-
ence, enabling the intruding pitch to split magically, thus receding as an Fb
in the lower voice and streaming upward as an E in the upper one. Motives
y and z converge to deepen the urgency of this revelatory moment. The
112
cresc.
A major V4 /F minor
3
115
cresc.
F minor
upper voice emerges from the E into a virtually continuous melody (ex. 6.4,
mm. 91–95) that the lower voice comes close to supporting as a simple bass,
without ambiguously continuing as a would-be melodic counterpart.
The return of the opening material of this episode in the tonic major,
here Ab (ex. 6.4, mm. 98¤.), is the only purely diatonic passage in the piece.
The upper and lower parts call to each other again while fulfilling each other
melodically in a way they have not before. As long as it lasts, this culmina-
tion is as cathartic as is Schubert’s setting of the young nun’s marriage to
her savior.The diatonic purity of this passage emerges in special relief against
the anguished chromaticism that has preceded it. It also sets into relief the
subsequent sudden return of a very di¤erent E and of the motive, y, that is
associated with it, immediately negating Ab major through a V F of F minor
in the ensuing retransition to the impromptu’s opening theme (ex. 6.5, mm.
112–115).Tonally, the demand for recovery of the tonic and subsequent bal-
ance in the tonic, a compositional strategy assumed for virtually all the in-
strumental music of Schubert’s epoch, necessitates this return. Dramatically,
however, the way the voices of the duet strive for a fusion that remains partly
unfulfilled also motivates this return, through which the Ab-major catharsis
comes to seem, in retrospect, partly illusory.
This recapitulation of the first impromptu—this return from the Ab-major
ending of the trio-like episode to the F-minor opening theme—is unlike
any of Schubert’s recapitulations in sonata allegro form. In virtually every such
sonata movement, he dramatically articulates, and usually prolongs, the dom-
inant in root position. Here, the Ab-major harmony simply dissolves into a
momentary passing VF of F minor, undramatized by any marked change of
movement or texture (ex. 6.5). Through this suppression of recapitulatory
drama, the return of the opening theme as an unchanging entity takes on
an inexorable prominence. When this theme returns it is still in isolation,
exhibiting no change whatsoever that might reflect the influence of the mu-
sic that has intervened since its first occurrence. The one alteration—harsh
broken octaves that reinforce the descending chain in the consequent—only
magnifies the di¤erences between this theme and all the intervening mate-
rial. As already argued, the theme is impenetrable, signifying a closed past
and a fateful setting for the music that follows. The isolation of this theme
may poetically motivate what might otherwise seem the merely mechani-
cal tonic recapitulation not only of the entire “exposition” but also of the
entire ensuing trio. The literal repetition of all this music may both sym-
bolize and illustratively enact its thralldom to the past, which is embodied
in the opening theme. At the same time, Schubert’s sectionalization of this
and other movements of his music, as well as the full repetition of long sec-
tions, can obscure the drama that evolves through these sections. In the case
of this impromptu, the drama is generated by the ways in which both the
“exposition” and the trio articulate developing responses to the inscrutabil-
ity of the opening theme.
Gentle but resolute in the regular reiterations of its rhythmic pattern, the
theme of the second impromptu, in Ab major (ex. 6.6), emerges from the
final chord of its predecessor.The use of the word “emerges” here may seem
an act of interpretive presumption.The juxtaposition of these pieces in Schu-
bert’s manuscript cannot automatically be assumed to imply a compositional
relationship between them. But clearly Schumann, and later Einstein, felt
such a relationship strongly enough simply to assert its existence. Their feel-
ing surely derives in part from the close relationship of the opening sounds
of the Ab-Major Impromptu to the final sounds of the one in F minor.These
chords are in the same register, and they share almost the same voicing.16
Allegretto.
sempre legato
I
14
V4 /vi vi
3
20 *
26
32
The recognition of another, less immediately apparent relationship sup-
ports this relationship with a deeper, more fully articulated one. In the Ab-
Major Impromptu, a distinctive harmonic progression derived from the F-
Minor Impromptu occurs just before the first full cadence (mm. 13–15).
The progression, which incorporates motive y, introduces the submediant
harmony, F minor, through its own passing VF arising over a stepwise de-
scent in the bass. The progression owes its poignancy, in the context of this
theme, to several easily recognizable circumstances. It occurs in a completely
diatonic context and thus brings to the piece its first chromatic pitch, the E
that is so marked in the first impromptu. It also introduces the first non-
tonic or nondominant harmonies to this harmonically almost minimalist set-
ting, and thus for the first time it furnishes the harmonic background for a
full cadential progression. At the same time, the descent of the bass con-
trasts markedly with the upward circling, almost unvaryingly repeated four-
measure pattern that precedes it. To an extraordinary degree, this progres-
sion becomes the focal moment of this theme, the moment that enables it
to cadence after three subphrases in which the bass has been too closely tied
to the melody and too given over to reiterating the root and third of the
tonic triad through passing and neighbor motions to bring about any true
harmonic arrival.
At the same time that it brings harmonic definition to this theme, this
progression makes explicit an expressive ambiguity. On the one hand, this
theme conveys, from the very beginning, an a‹rmative feeling through its
purely diatonic major harmony, its clear melodic emphasis of the compo-
nents of the tonic triad, and its poised and regular rhythm. On the other
hand, the theme also conveys a questioning feeling through hesitations in
its basic rhythmic pattern, the expressive highlighting of each second hesi-
tation as the tentative resolution of a first-beat dissonance (mm. 2, 6, 10,
14), and the avoidance, throughout the first three subphrases, of any strong
harmonic progression. It is thus a theme subtly imbued, from its opening
gesture, with the kind of expressive ambiguity that is invoked in “Mein
Traum” and epitomized by the apt, if maudlin, epithet “smiling through
tears” that is sometimes applied to Schubert’s music.
In the first impromptu, it is this same progression—from an Ab-major
triad in root position through a dominant four-three of F to an F-minor
triad, also in root position—that links the lyrical trio-like episode to the re-
turn of the opening theme (see ex. 6.5, mm. 112–115). In that impromptu,
too, this progression introduces the first chromatic pitch and the first change
in the character of the bass after a purely diatonic passage in an Ab major of
almost artless simplicity. In the first impromptu this progression happens only
here, at the midpoint of the piece. Because it negates the key that has just
recently been regained, it is a dramatic turning point. By making the defini-
tive return to the F-minor tonic at this moment, the progression both usurps,
while it essentially suppresses, the harmonic role of a development section.
At the same time, it encapsulates the harmonic organization of the entire
impromptu. In this way the opening theme of the second impromptu high-
lights, as its focal moment, a progression that is already central to the first in
both position and significance. The second impromptu thus reaches the first
a‹rmation of its Ab major, its first full tonic cadence, only by incorporat-
ing the same F minor that it attempts to leave behind.
This theme also resonates with memories of another passage from the
first impromptu: the final, most fulfilled variant of its second theme (see ex.
6.2, mm. 45–50). The first measure of the second impromptu exactly re-
calls the voicing of that theme’s cadential measures (mm. 48, 50), and, ap-
pearances notwithstanding, comes close to recovering the feeling of their
melody, which rises from the fifth to the tonic. The second measure of the
second impromptu then recalls the precadential measures of that earlier
theme (mm. 47, 49) in much the same ways. By incorporating the pre-
cadential submediant and its applied dominant, the opening theme of the
second impromptu brings to the memory of that earlier Ab-major music a
fullness of resolution that it has previously lacked.
Becoming suddenly forte and beginning with a quicker upbeat, the mu-
sic after the double bar responds exuberantly to this first full cadence of the
second impromptu, as if now imagining release from the memory on which
it has drawn. This passage culminates in the first subdominant harmony of
the impromptu, brought into relief through its deeper bass, its thicker dou-
bling, and its fortissimo dynamic. These mutually reinforcing emphases al-
ready suggest a possible tonicization for this Db-major harmony, a possibil-
ity that is reinforced by the Gb-minor harmony, the minor subdominant, in
measure 23 (ex. 6.6). Like the focal progression in the Adagio of the C-Mi-
nor Sonata discussed in chapter 2 (see ex. 2.1a), which quietly hesitates over
the very same harmonies, this minor plagal tonicization of the subdominant
carries no unambiguous implication for harmonic continuation.
The emergence of this Gb-minor chord after the double bar thus again
introduces a shadow into the music. As in the progression leading to the ca-
dence before the double bar, the Gb-minor chord also brings the first chro-
maticism to an otherwise purely diatonic passage. Like that earlier intro-
duction of chromaticism, this one also draws on a harmonic memory from
the first impromptu. The recollection is most easily recognized through a
comparison of measures 22 through 24 of the second impromptu (ex. 6.6)
with measures 201 through 203 of the first. The latter occur in the central
portion of the recapitulation of the lyrical, trio-like episode and parallel
measures 88 through 90 (see ex. 6.4) from the same piece. Perhaps the sec-
ond impromptu recalls and recontextualizes that moment—in which the two
melodic strands of the trio briefly converge—not only to register the fragility
of its own new-found exuberance but also to raise the hope, in response to
that awareness, of another, more abiding catharsis.
Accordingly, the music comes, in e¤ect, to a halt: it immediately with-
draws from the Db-major triad, forcefully wrenching back (or being wrenched
back to) the Gb-minor triad that preceded it, as if momentarily stunned enough
by that unexpected chord to be compelled immediately to recall it, to secure
it as the center of focus in an attempt to overcome the uncertainty it holds
(ex. 6.6, m. 25). Through an elliptical return to Ab, this seemingly powerful
tonicization of Db major, colored by its minor subdominant, dissipates like
another potentially transformative but not fully apprehended memory.
In its return, the opening theme now infuses the tonic-to-dominant bass
descent of its earlier cadential progression with the chromatic pitches aris-
ing from the intervening episode, thus incorporating and expanding upon
motive z. In so doing, it brings itself sooner to a full cadence (mm. 35–38).
By drawing on the immediate recollection of this intervening episode, this
cadential progression only extends and deepens the expressive range of the
first one. Perhaps it conveys comfort and fulfillment in the confirmation of
Ab major; at the same time, however, the earlier reaching of a cadence, the
now chromatic bass, and the hesitation over A may also convey resignation,
a feeling of yielding somewhat reluctantly to a tonality that is still not free
of the shadow of troubled memory.
59
*“gateway” chord
64 8va
68 8va
72
76
*“gateway” chord
decresc.
The trio (mm. 47¤.) returns to the Db major that was so exuberantly in-
troduced then so cryptically withdrawn in the theme. The music now flows
in a broad harmonic rhythm, at first with changes of harmony only in every
other measure—its melody is not explicitly enunciated but instead emerges
from the triplet figuration. At the double bar the seemingly self-su‹cient
Db major turns suddenly to the Db minor that has already once taken the
place of Db major in the first section, once again remembering and coming
to terms with the memories that have intruded there. It accordingly rein-
troduces the Gb/F#-minor triad, a proper subdominant in Db minor (ex. 6.7,
m. 67).Through its recovery in this key, this already striking, memory-laden
harmony now becomes a gateway that opens out to a further destination.
The music climbs, with resolute harmonic support, to an apotheosis pow-
erfully reinforcing a tonic arrival in A/Bbb major through a fourfold ring-
ing out of the impromptu’s opening, and always underlying, rhythmic mo-
tive. The same harmony persists in subsiding waves for seven full measures
(mm. 69–75) before it recedes, back through the gateway of the Gb/F#-minor
triad into Db territory.
A quietly rumbling trill signals the closing of this gate, and the vision
made manifest through the seven-measure stalling of harmonic and rhyth-
mic motion on the A/Bbb-major sound recedes into memory. After the gate
has closed, the opening music of the trio returns (mm. 79¤.) and is followed
by the impromptu’s entire opening section. A heightened sense of repose
arrives only in the four-measure coda, only at the very last moment allow-
ing the impression that the revelations of the trio have indeed brought some
resolution to the questions from which they arise.
VI
Each of the first two impromptus of this set thus suggests, through subtle
forms of discontinuity, ellipsis, or unrealized implication, a beyond—some-
thing not yet fully known, something awaiting disclosure. The first im-
promptu suggests this region beyond through the isolation of the opening
theme and the apparent (although only apparent) motivic unrelatedness of
this theme to the following music. This is music that, in one way or another,
never fully actualizes itself: the second theme does not reach harmonic fulfill-
ment; the lyrical quasi-trio is melodically fragmented. The Ab-Major Im-
promptu suggests such an unknown region through sudden incursions of
chromaticism into purely diatonic contexts (see ex. 6.6, mm. 14, 23), which
are immediately followed, in seeming reaction, by dramatic gestural inflec-
tions and changes of musical character (mm. 17, 25). Even if these incur-
sions did not have their source outside this piece—in the preceding one—
their sudden poignancy might easily suggest such an outside source for them.
The uncharted territory that Schubert suggests through these means
might just as well be metaphysical as psychological: the A-major vision at
the climax of the Ab-Major Impromptu could be a vision of a supreme force
or being, and all the surrounding music, in its unusual degree of symme-
try, a hallowed setting for that vision. One wonders if E. T. A. Ho¤mann
would have found in these pieces a contemplative, more poetic than dra-
matic manifestation of the infinite longing that he identified as the essence
of Romanticism.
Whether or not Schumann would have found such psychological or meta-
physical depth in these two pieces, he clearly found no such depth in the
next one (ex. 6.8a):
As for the third impromptu, I would hardly have taken it for a work by Schu-
bert, except, perhaps, as something from his boyhood. It consists of undis-
tinguished variations on an undistinguished theme. It shows none of the in-
vention or imagination Schubert exercises so masterfully elsewhere, even in
other variations.17
Schumann even recommends a performance of the other three pieces of

opus 142 without the Bb-Major Impromptu, urging that through such a per-
formance “we shall possess, if not a complete sonata, one more beautiful
memory of Schubert.”18 Although one might easily dismiss Schumann’s dis-
dain for these variations as overhasty or ill-considered, his intuition of the
impromptu as a youthful work does correspond, however coincidentally, to
the origin of their theme in an earlier (although not youthful) composition,
the incidental music for Rosamunde, D. 797, which was composed in 1823
but was published far too late—in 1891—for Schumann to know it (ex.
6.8b). But he may well have known the String Quartet in A Minor, D. 804
example 6.8
a. Impromptu in Bb Major, op. 142, no. 3, mm. 1–18
Andante.
y
5
decresc.
13
cresc.
16
dim.
b. Incidental music to Rosamunde, D. 797, Entr’acte No. 2, mm. 1–44
Andantino.
17
cresc.
26 Minore I.
Fine
34
40
espress.
(published in 1824 as opus 29), which bases its slow movement on a trans-
position to C major of the Bb-major theme in its Rosamunde version.
It is impossible to ascertain with certainty that Schumann knew this
Rosamunde version even through the A-Minor Quartet. But we can specu-
late that if he did, he might not have dismissed that music as readily as he
did its simpler variant. Unlike the opus 142 theme, the Rosamunde theme is
unusually rich harmonically. In the impromptu Schubert removes both its
early harmonic excursion to the supertonic and the harmonic ambiguities
after the double bar. He does draw on a chromatic element for this new vari-
ant, one implicitly present but not highlighted in the earlier versions of this
theme, but already of marked importance for its new context here: motive
y (ex. 6.8a). He reintroduces this motive not to suggest or intensify a conflict
as before, however, but to confirm the familiar. Here, in contrast to its roles
in the first and second impromptu, motive y only reinforces and brings color
to the arrivals of cadential, root-position dominant harmony (mm. 4, 8).
The simple harmony helps to imbue the theme with a fresh naiveté. In the
new continuation after the double bar, Schubert retains from the earlier
theme an excursion to the submediant (mm. 9–10; cf. ex. 6.8b, mm. 21–23),
but he both generates and relinquishes it quickly, without a trace of har-
monic ambiguity. In the final phrase comes one further momentary toni-
cization, here of the subdominant (ex. 6.8a, mm. 13–14), but again it passes
quickly, adorning the way to the cadential dominant without in any way ob-
scuring it. Like the chromatic inflections in this theme, no other aspects of
it introduce an impression of disjunction or unrealized implication. It is spir-
ited, charming, and in no way mysterious.
Why did Schubert simplify this theme? In its Rosamunde version, for one,
it holds too much harmonic interest to leave much room for elaboration in
ensuing variations. Even if these variations remain primarily figural, as Schu-
bert’s do, any chromaticisms arising from the play of figuration would best
emerge in relief against a simpler, less chromatically inflected harmonic back-
ground. Moreover, if repeats are taken in such a set of figural variations,
every harmonic progression in the theme will return, largely unaltered, per-
haps ten times. The drama of the progressions after the double bar in the
Rosamunde theme would not bear such repeating. Thus, for internal reasons,
reasons pertaining to the nature of variations, Schubert may have wished to
simplify this theme.
The context of the two preceding impromptus might also have given
him external reasons for such a simplification. After the searching expres-
siveness of the first two impromptus, another searching theme, even if un-
dertaking its search through the di¤erent route of harmonic ambiguity,
might well have spawned an expressive overload. At the same time, the sim-
plicity of the new theme in some respects matches, while it also comple-
ments, the simplicity of the theme of the Ab-Major Impromptu. Indeed, it
echoes that impromptu’s simplest, most ebullient moment: the descending
third just after the double bar (see ex. 6.6, mm. 17–18). Like that theme, and
unlike its forebear in Rosamunde, this theme of the Bb-Major Impromptu
circles back to the same harmonic goal for each of its three initiating sub-
phrases (ex. 6.8a, mm. 2, 4, 6). But unlike the theme of the Ab-Major
Impromptu—in fact, in diametric opposition to it—this one articulates these
goals as root-position dominant sevenths, thus making the opening of this
new theme as harmonically grounded, as objective in feeling, as the previ-
ous impromptu’s theme was searching and subjective. The directness and
simplicity of its cadences serve as a foil for the expressive cadential subver-
sions occurring throughout the rest of opus 142. Even the returns of mo-
tive y to embellish these simpler cadences only underscore their simplicity;
here this motive suggests none of the ambiguity or conflict that is linked
with it in the preceding pieces. Thus, whether or not the composition of
the theme for these variations involved an act of recollection for Schubert,
the theme itself could seem to embody an actual, clearly retained memory
in contrast to the search to recover lost memories that the first two im-
promptus can plausibly exemplify.
One might protest that nothing about this simple, charming, seemingly
objective theme suggests an evocation of memory. In fact, something does.
The two measures that come after this theme simply echo the resolution of
its final cadence, bringing no new harmonic or melodic substance. These
measures, variants of which follow every one of the ensuing variations, dis-
tance the theme and the individual variations from each other and, through
this distancing, approximate an act of recollective synopsis. Because of these
short, echoing, postcadential interludes, these variations do not build in in-
tensity to an emotional or dramatic climax, as do most of the sets that Schu-
bert incorporates as slow movements into larger works. These brief, recol-
lective interludes make each of the variations into a separate scene, as if they
evoked, through a series of vignettes of contrasting character, but with a
certain narrative logic, a succession of di¤erent stages in the life of the pro-
tagonist represented by the theme. A familiar sequence of scenes can serve
to illustrate this logic.
The first variation might tell, through its smooth sweetness, of falling in
love; the melodic garlands and springing syncopations of the second might
then tell of the exuberant joy of being in love. The extroverted anguish of
the third might move ahead to the distress brought by the loss of that love,
and the turn from Bb minor to Gb major for the fourth could then bring
memories of consolation and recovery from that loss. After this recupera-
tion, the memory of love, embodied as always in the postcadential echoes,
extends itself first to bring the restoration of the tonic Bb major and then of
the garlands and buoyant syncopations, now heightened and quickened, of
the second variation. By remembering love, telling of love, one feels, in this
happy context, as if in love again. The coda calmly closes and summarizes
the entire story, even incorporating Rosamunde’s tonicized supertonic, al-
though it is immediately dissipated. These measures recall trouble but allow
it immediately to pass and, in passing, to contribute to a final sense of calm.
VII
The last impromptu recalls the first, and eventually the second, both mo-
tivically and harmonically. Because it is more strongly linked to these two
impromptus than to the third, it may seem, initially, to furnish further
justification for Schumann’s exclusion of the third from the sonata he oth-
erwise finds in opus 142. Rather than acquiescing to Schumann’s view, how-
ever, we must attend more closely to what links there are between the third
and the fourth impromptus. The first to merit our notice is the material that
the final phrases of the third impromptu share with opening ones of the
fourth.
In the coda of the third impromptu, a melodic idea that in the theme has
always led to a half cadence—a complete neighbor figure around C that in-
corporates the chromatic B—now leads for the first time to a full cadence
(mm. 123, 125). The theme of the fourth impromptu (ex. 6.9) echoes the
aspects just enumerated of that melodic idea: it begins as a neighbor figure
to the same C as in measure 125 of the third impromptu, and it incorpo-
rates the same B. This new theme may also have its origin in the Entr’acte
from Rosamunde that I explored as the source for the theme of the third im-
promptu. It is built on the same scale degrees—5–6–5–2—as the opening
measures of the first interlude, Minore I, of that Entr’acte (see ex. 6.8b).
The interlude continues by moving from A to Bb (ex. 6.8b, mm. 34–35),
linking the falling fourth, from D to A, to the falling third, from D to Bb,
of the main theme of the Entr’acte. Thus possibly, through this Entr’acte,
the theme of the third impromptu is actually associated with a prototype of
that of the fourth.19 Unlike the recollections in opus 90 of Schubert’s best-
known songs, however, these possible recollections of Rosamunde in opus
142 are unlikely to generate interpretive clues. The Entr’acte has no text,
and the play for which Schubert composed it is all but lost. To ground and
construct an interpretation for it through the play would be, for these rea-
sons, a daunting exegetical task, and an excessively speculative one.
The theme of the last impromptu combines elements from the opening
complex of the first—an emphasis on the fifth and sixth scale degrees and
a syncopated second-beat accent introduced by a leap of a fourth—with
others from the ostinato-like music that immediately follows that im-
promptu’s first cadence. The B in measure 3 (ex. 6.9) and the broken figu-
ration of measure 7 both echo the first measure after that cadence (see ex.
6.1, m. 13).Through this intermingling of material from that opening com-
plex with what immediately follows and opposes itself to it, this new theme
thus has the e¤ect of beginning to break open that imposing and inscrutable
material, of taking possession of it by transforming it, finally, into the bod-
ily motion of a dance.
Each of the first three periods of this dance has almost exactly the same
cadential structure, suggesting, though not fully articulating, a half cadence
in its fourth measure (ex. 6.9, mm. 4, 12, 20), then reaching a full cadence
four measures later (mm. 8, 16, 24). To the fourth period comes an inter-
polation: like the second period, this one begins as an upward octave trans-
position of the preceding one but then prolongs the Db in its sixth measure
(m. 30) for four additional measures, bringing urgency to this prolonged
neighbor tone in the bass by setting above it a chromatic ascent from Bb to
C (a transposition of motive y). The second time around, four vehement ca-
dential flourishes reinforce (but in their syncopated insistence also challenge)
Allegro scherzando.
15
23
8va
30
cresc.
the overdetermined closure of the theme, as if still responding to the mem-

ory of the first full cadence of the first impromptu of the set and still try-
ing to break free of its hold.
The last of these flourishes subsides into a return of the theme, which
now wins its way to further expansion and thus to greater freedom. This
time the interpolation comes sooner, after the sixth measure of the second
phrase instead of the fourth (mm. 59¤.), and lasts more than four times as
long, building through hemiola and registral expansion to a highly climac-
tic cadence that is immediately reinforced by the return of the cadential flour-
ishes. Here the dance loses itself in the hemiola; the cadential flourishes, in
their still vehement return, jolt the meter back from C to the opening G, dram-
atizing this opposition of C to G as a conflict.
In a single gesture, the sforzando Eb dominant seventh in measure 86 (ex.
6.10a) sweeps F minor and its cramped G meter aside. An ethereal Ab-major
dance begins, carried along for the most part in the broader C, and kept aloft
harmonically through an extraordinary series of cadential evasions. First
come four eight-measure noncadencing “phrases” in chiaroscuro—major–
minor–major–minor—almost entirely over a tonic pedal (these are mostly
really in C, switching to H for their final measures). The meter returns to G,
and three four-measure half-cadential gestures in the minor (each really
sounds like two measures of H ) lead to a new Ab-minor theme (ex. 6.10b,
m. 131). This theme, beginning with a stepwise melodic ascent of a third,
recalls the music of the Ab-minor quasi-trio that took the place of a devel-
opment in the first impromptu (see ex. 6.3, mm. 70¤.); like that music, it
reaches its tonic cadence, again in the major, only after motion stalls on E.
By some criteria this new theme has only this one cadence—at its end, after
66 measures, in measure 197.Two-measure interpolations twice keep it aloft
(ex. 6.10b, mm. 143–144; 157–158) before it breaks o¤, climactically and
noncadentially, on the Eb dominant ninth in measure 163 (ex. 6.10c). The
Fb of this dominant ninth is then prolonged as E for twenty measures before
it returns to the Eb dominant (ex. 6.10c, m. 185), finally to introduce the
cadential gestures. This stalling of motion on Fb/E has less urgency than the
drama that it recalls from the first impromptu (see ex. 6.4, mm. 88–90).
Once again it has the e¤ect of appropriating, or making real, through the
bodily motion of a dance, what originally seemed a message from some
mysterious, not fully apprehended realm.
The closing material that follows makes the organization of this B section
tripartite: as a whole, the section comprises an introduction (mm. 87–130),
a new dance (mm. 131–197), and closing material that recalls both the in-
troduction and the theme of the dance (mm. 197–271). The return to the
dance motive comes just after the dynamic climax—the only fortissimo—
of this entire prolonged B section (ex. 6.10d, m. 223). This climax high-
lights a startling harmonic shift from Ab minor to its Neapolitan, notated as
example 6.10 Impromptu in F Minor, op. 142, no. 4
a. Mm. 83–100
83 8va
5 5
13
87 B legato
(major)
94
(minor)
b. Mm. 129–145
129 con delicatezza
137
c. Mm. 162–191
8va
162
170
178
cresc.
185 8va
d. Mm. 213–233
213
219
223 3
(continued)
223 3
228
A major. A two-measure prolongation of the descending scalar figuration

highlights even more the return, in this same A major, of the dance motive.
As at the climax of the second impromptu, the A-major harmony simply
insists on itself for seven measures before relinquishing its hold over the mu-
sic. Once again, this final impromptu recalls a visionary moment from an
earlier impromptu in the set, again appropriating it by transforming it into
faster and more familiar dance music.
Both the rest of this closing material and the ensuing extended retransi-
tion to F minor play repeatedly on the E/Fb ambiguity originally introduced
to opus 142 through motives y and z. The return to F minor is, of course,
inevitable, but through this prolonged process of return, its relative major
is not simply negated, as in the first impromptu; instead it contributes its
distinctive resonance to the atmosphere of the opening theme’s return.
The coda revives another memory of the second impromptu, that of its
Db-major middle section. That earlier episode is recalled not only by its key
and essentially chordal articulation but also by its opening alternation of a
tonic harmony with a dominant seventh in first inversion. The motive that
soon gains prominence in this coda, a chromatic upper neighbor figure on
the fifth degree, also resonates with occurrences of this motive in the ear-
lier impromptus of the set.20 These occurrences of the lowered sixth degree
convey a sense of pain remembered but transcended, a message that almost
has the final say in opus 142. Instead, in the most frenzied episode of the
entire opus, the F-minor dance returns in a faster tempo to climax explo-
sively into a downward-rushing F-minor scale.
VIII
After dismissing the third impromptu, Schumann came close to dismissing

the final one as well, complaining of “the superficiality of its entire con-
ception.” His disdain may have arisen from reading it formally as a loose ap-
proximation of a rondo, or of some other form he would have considered
appropriate for a finale. If so, then Alfred Einstein was following his lead in
hearing it as a rondo. Brian Newbould has likened its organization to that
of another Classical form, the scherzo and trio.21 Like Schumann’s assess-
ment of the first impromptu as a sonata, these later formal appraisals of the
fourth impromptu not only are misleading in themselves but also deflect at-
tention from some of its most distinctive features. Such an interpretation ig-
nores the way its A section furiously, even maniacally, reiterates tonic ca-
dences to a degree not characteristic of, or even formally consistent with,
any Classical scherzo; it also ignores the way the B section seems to take flight
through extraordinarily prolonged cadential evasions, avoiding anything like
the binary or rounded binary form of a trio section. Nor does a rondo or a
scherzo usually incorporate such a long and elaborate coda. Schubert’s con-
ception is not superficial (although it may initially seem improvisatory in char-
acter, thus becoming the only one of Schubert’s impromptus to reflect for
more than a moment the suggestion of improvisation in their title). This im-
promptu is simply too free of any model to exemplify any preexisting stan-
dard. It is deeply innovative, and this depth is only enhanced by its elabo-
rate references not only to motives from all the earlier impromptus of the
set but also to the unusual cadential strategies of the first two.
Like the third impromptu of opus 90, the third of opus 142 marks a turn-
ing point in the set, in this case a return to the comfort of the real after the
probing metaphysical or psychological quest of the first two. As already men-
tioned, its theme (see ex. 6.8a) echoes the repeated notes and the descend-
ing third that occur just after the first double bar in the second impromptu
(see ex. 6.6, mm. 17¤.), as well as mimicking, in its own more objective way,
the simplicity of that impromptu’s theme. Later, the last strains of its coda
are linked, in turn, to the opening of the fourth impromptu (see ex. 6.9).
The third is, indeed, lighter in character than the other impromptus of opus
142. It has its own considerable charm, however, and it is also motivically
linked with the others, providing through this linkage a foil against which
to experience those deeper explorations in whose midst it takes its place.
A set of pieces enough like a sonata to be called one by musically sophis-
ticated critics, yet in the end clearly not a sonata; a set that, for all its tonal
and motivic interconnections, need not necessarily be performed or regarded
as a set. Schubert’s intentions about what posthumously became opus 142
can never be fully known. But one last speculation might help in recon-
structing them. Having composed in opus 90 one set of pieces that, despite
its remarkable cyclic coherence, could never be confused with a sonata, Schu-
bert may have felt a need to come to terms with that achievement by im-
mediately composing another set in which he worked out a compromise be-
tween it and the sonata forms with which he was accustomed to working.
On this account, although opus 142 is still not a sonata, it does represent the
integrative, consolidating response of a composer grounded in sonata forms
to one of his own most extraordinary compositional innovations.
c hap t e r 7
Beethoven in the Image of Schubert

The Sonata in C Minor, D. 958
More than any of Schubert’s other sonatas—more, indeed, than any of his
other works—the C-Minor Sonata is compared to Beethoven. Virtually every
discussion of the sonata draws parallels between it and one or another—or,
more often, several—of Beethoven’s works. The gestural and thematic rea-
sons for this comparison are obvious. Like both of Beethoven’s early sonatas
in this key, op. 10, no. 1, and op. 13, Schubert’s C-Minor Sonata (see ex.
7.1a) begins aggressively with a full-voiced, forte tonic triad; as in both of
these Beethoven sonatas, forceful accents, dotted rhythms, and abrupt si-
lences impart to this theme’s opening a defiant tension. And most tellingly,
the theme itself begins almost as a clone of the theme of Beethoven’s Thirty-
two Variations in C Minor (see ex. 7.1b).1 Walther Dürr, hearing this C-
Minor Sonata as a tribute to Beethoven, also compares the chordally ac-
companied second theme (see ex. 7.2, mm. 40¤.), immediately repeated with
triplet figuration, to that of the “Waldstein” Sonata.2 Dürr is not alone in
hearing the figuration of Schubert’s development (see ex. 7.3, mm. 99¤.)
as Beethovenian, or in relating the character of Schubert’s Adagio (see ex.
2.1a) to that of the slow movements of the early Beethoven sonatas already
mentioned.3 Cone and Godel also associate the finale with Beethoven; Godel
invokes particularly the finale of the Sonata in Eb Major, op. 31, no. 3.4
Less obvious than the similarities between Schubert’s C-Minor Sonata
and certain Beethoven works is the nature or import of this relationship.
Godel’s comments seem to align him with Dürr in regarding Schubert’s
180
sonata as a kind of homage to Beethoven, who had died in the preceding
year. For Brendel, in contrast, Schubert’s music evinces too indirect and com-
plex a relationship to Beethoven’s to accommodate the possibility of a sim-
ple homage. “Schubert relates to Beethoven, he reacts to him,” writes Bren-
del, “but he follows him hardly at all. Similarities of motif, texture, or formal
pattern never obscure Schubert’s own voice. Models are concealed, trans-
formed, surpassed.”5 Andreas Krause attributes to Schubert a more deliber-
ate, self-conscious aesthetic response to Beethoven, hearing the reflections
of Beethoven in Schubert’s last sonatas as marking stages in an explicitly
emancipatory process.6 Hinrichsen, finally, suggests that through the func-
tional transformation of the theme of a set of variations into the theme of
a sonata, Schubert self-consciously establishes in his C-Minor Sonata an an-
tipode to this, and by implication, any other, Beethovenian model.7 Hin-
richsen shows how this theme, instead of providing a fixed melodic or har-
monic structure for Schubert’s sonata (as it does for Beethoven’s variations),
becomes a malleable source of chromatic motivic elements. But Hinrich-
sen does not note that even within Schubert’s theme Beethoven’s material—
even before it is subjected to developmental motivic liquidation—becomes
a foil for a powerful, contravening Schubertian response.
II
To establish such a foil, Schubert begins by making Beethoven’s theme more

Beethovenian than Beethoven himself made it—or, at least, more like the
opening of a dramatic Beethoven sonata. He simplifies the melodic begin-
ning, eliminating the syncopation that initiates the melody in Beethoven’s
theme. He also transfers the descending chromatic motion of Beethoven’s
bass to an inner voice, underpinning that erstwhile bass with a tonic pedal
that, along with the thicker chords, imparts to his theme a more massive cast.8
In both Beethoven’s and Schubert’s melodies, the E in measure 3 (ex. 7.1b,
ex. 7.1a) initiates a measure-by-measure chromatic ascent that culminates on
Ab. Both themes especially dramatize this culminating pitch. Beethoven’s Ab
arrives too soon: his theme makes one determined step, harmonically and in
basic melodic outline, in each of its first five measures; but with the arrival
of the G in both melody and bass the theme undergoes a convulsion. The Ab
b e e t h ov e n i n t h e i mag e o f s c h u b e r t 181
comes out of step, on the very next beat, jarringly emphasized through its
sforzando and through the thick voicing of its harmony. After this convul-
sion, the theme slyly mutters its close, too low and without chordal support.
No such convulsion disrupts the sixth measure in Schubert’s theme. The
Ab waits its turn in measure 7 (ex. 7.1a), and then gets it only provisionally,
as a quasi-dissonant appoggiatura leading to a half cadence. The gesture is
repeated—freely—with the hands reversed. The cadential gesture begins a
third time, intensified even more; now the high tonic replaces Ab as if to leave
it behind. Where a third half-cadential dominant might be expected (m. 12),
Ab suddenly and imposingly returns, usurping the place of the dominant. As
if through sheer force of will, it makes a weak measure into a strong one, su-
perimposing its own tonal and metrical order on the one already established.
After the leap up to this high fortissimo Ab, an Ab-major scale rushes down
through four octaves like a violent gust of wind, filling up two full measures
and most of a third. This three-measure gesture, so registrally and dynami-
cally emphasized, disrupts not only the regular alternation of strong and weak
measures that precedes it but also the organization of the entire theme be-
fore its arrival into two-measure groups. The disruptive force of this descent
has the e¤ect of immediately tonicizing the Ab, of wrenching the music into
this key and thus of suddenly collapsing the momentum toward a C-minor
cadence. The quiet subphrases that ensue from the low Ab are drawn even
further into the sphere of Ab through the Fbs of their diminished seventh
chords. They generate a new wave of movement within the prolongation of
Ab in order to regain the cadential dominant from its perspective.
Beethoven’s way of emphasizing the Ab confers on it a pivotal role in the
closure of his theme: it brings the precadential subdominant harmony into
special relief and demarcates a boundary between the opening and the ca-
dential elements of the theme. Of course Beethoven’s theme is of a type
exceptional for variations in the Classical period, and unique among his own:
it recalls the Baroque tradition of variations on a ground bass, of the cha-
conne and the passacaglia. This theme, unlike that of any of Beethoven’s
other sets of variations, consists of a single self-contained phrase instead of
a group of balancing and complementary phrases. It must reach full closure
within that phrase; and Beethoven draws on the gestural and textural re-
sources of his own sonata-based style to dramatize that closure—and make
it problematic—in a way that was unthinkable in the Baroque period.
example 7.1
a. Sonata in C Minor, D. 958, Allegro, mm. 1–20
Allegro.
cresc.
3
3 3
13 1 7 1 2 3 4 3
cresc.
17 8va
b. Beethoven, Thirty-two Variations in C Minor, mm. 1–8

Allegretto
5
Beethoven’s exceptionally concentrated dramatization of closure in the
C-Minor Variations provides Schubert with a special opportunity to enact
a negation of closure—to turn the same Ab in his own theme to an oppo-
site purpose. He first introduces his Ab as part of a cadential procedure that
is more conventional than Beethoven’s. But then Schubert dramatically sub-
verts the provisional closure toward which those half-cadences have gestured,
instead throwing the music wide open. What enters through the opening,
within the tonal and rhythmic sphere of the Ab, is a generative kernel for
much of the ensuing music of this and the following movements, an em-
blem of Schubert’s own themes and progressions for this sonata (ex. 7.1a,
mm. 14–15). In this way, within the clearing ripped open by the downward
rushing Ab scale, a protagonist identified with Schubert’s own new thematic
nucleus supervenes upon the one that struggles with Beethoven’s memory.
Schubert himself once asked: “What can one do after Beethoven?” Here
Schubert o¤ers one possible answer to his question.
III
The first of the themes to unfold from Schubert’s generative nucleus is the
second theme, which enters in measure 40 (ex. 7.2). The emergence of its
Eb-major tonality from an Ab-major sonority immediately establishes the
theme’s harmonic aura. The contentious Ab harmony, now becalmed,
su¤uses the second theme with its subdominant coloration.The entirely step-
wise melody of this theme’s opening four-measure phrase incorporates the
melodic motive (1)–7–1–2–3–4–3 as its own nucleus in its second and third
measures (mm. 41–42).
In the recent memory of the sonata’s opening strife, the second theme
comes as a vision of calm, sheltered from the first theme’s conflict, although
it is not without an inner striving of its own. In contrast to the aggressive
chromatic upward striving of the first theme, however, this theme sways tran-
quilly, diatonically rising and falling in gentle waves without strong accents
or dotted rhythms. The first of these waves rises to the subdominant, ac-
companied by subdominant harmony. The two waves of the next, longer
phrase do not return to the subdominant harmony itself, but nonetheless
remain under its spell in a way that specifically articulates its absence. The
example 7.2 Sonata in C Minor, D. 958, Allegro, mm. 39–53
39 (B) legato 1 7 1 2 3 4 3
46
cresc. cresc.
first of these rises, through the first leap in the melody, to Bb (m. 46). Har-
monic motion stalls momentarily on the Eb dominant seventh chord that
supports this high point. When the harmony does change, it proceeds not
to Ab major; it moves instead in a way that leaves the Eb harmony hanging
as a tonic imbued by its Db with longing to recover the subdominant of the
first phrase’s crest. That subdominant does follow in the melody, but not in
the harmony: the Db dominant seventh chord that succeeds the Eb one makes
the Ab distant, as if in a receding image of a faraway place. Rather than re-
solving the Eb dominant seventh, the Db one merely echoes it, implicating
in a suggestion of Gb major the Ab that would have brought it to resolution.
This Db harmony takes the place of the precadential subdominant or su-
pertonic that would bring a firm sense of closure to the second theme and
thus leaves the theme’s cadence somewhat attenuated, suggesting the fading
away of a dream.
Whereas, for Beethoven, the precursor of Schubert’s opening theme served
as a theme for variations, it is Schubert’s second theme, this new theme of his
own, that now becomes a basis for variations of a very di¤erent sort. The
first of these (mm. 54–67) is a simple figural variation in which this theme
comes again, made more vivid by the octaves in the right hand and more
fluid by the accompanimental triplets in the left. A second variation, more
agitated and beginning now in Eb minor, follows as if in a quest for the con-
firmation of closure withheld from the second theme thus far (mm. 68¤.).
It uses only the first four measures of that theme as the model for a sequential
move to Gb major in a delayed “resolution” of the second theme’s paren-
thetical Db dominant seventh.9 The variation culminates in a chromatic neigh-
bor motion around the dominant in the bass—Cb–Bb–A–Bb (mm. 77–84)—
while also winning strong harmonic support for 5 in the melody (m. 80),
initially made ambiguous by the Db. This brings the second thematic area to
a close.
In the peaceful but resigned closing theme (see ex. 7.3, mm. 86–98) the
chromatic neighbor figure from the bass of the second theme’s climax re-
turns in the melody, with a subdominant harmony underlying its initiating
Cb. By beginning with a full measure of subdominant harmony with its third
in the melody, this final theme of the exposition recalls the very moment
of the transition (m. 27) that, through the Ab harmony as subdominant,
opened the way from C minor to Eb major. This closing theme, like that
transition, melodically outlines a descent by step from 6 to 3. In making mi-
nor the major subdominant to which it refers, this theme signals once again
the inability of the second theme to realize itself through a diatonic resolu-
tion in Eb major and, thus, the unattainability, for now, of the calm-after-
resolution that that major subdominant might potentially bring. In the
specificity of its reference to the transition, the closing theme has the e¤ect
of closing only the scene that that transition has opened without making a
gestural reference to the first theme.
The cadence of the closing theme, which like that of the second theme
falls only to 3 rather than to 1, is immediately echoed as a separate two-
measure gesture (mm. 94–95). The echo is then reechoed in one-measure
gestures that recall the 6–4–3 melody of that first cadence of the second
theme. Further echoes reduce the gesture to two beats, producing an e¤ect
of hemiola and, dramatically, of the fading of the realm imagined through
that second theme.
IV
The powerful Ab-major triad with which the development abruptly begins
only strengthens the impression of Ab as a dramatic antipode to C minor in
this sonata. The chromaticism of the opening theme completely saturates
the development.The chromatically ascending bass moves the harmony from
Ab through Bb to C (ex. 7.3, mm. 103–109). The ascending chromatic line
is then transferred to the upper voices, progressing from C all the way up to
Gb (m. 113) while the supporting harmony moves by ascending minor third.
With the next melodic move, to G (really Abb), the bass suddenly becomes
diatonic, slowing the harmonic rhythm and somewhat simplifying the tex-
ture to bring a D major (really Ebb major) cadence (mm. 113–117). Har-
monically, dynamically, and in its duration, the arrival of this new key is the
most strongly articulated of any to occur in the movement, except for the
Ab in the opening phrase.
A highly chromatic three-measure phrase, clearly in D/Ebb but strongly
emphasizing Eb/Fbb, follows like an epigram (ex. 7.3, mm. 119–121). Its open-
ing motto, 1–7–1, fuses the half-step lower neighbor figure of the second
theme (see ex. 7.2, mm. 40–41) with the repeated-quarter-note motive of
the first theme. The third note, a quarter note, marks o¤ the first three notes
as a motto. Were this not a quarter note, the melody of this phrase would
move entirely in eighth notes. And were it not for the penultimate A/Bbb of
this phrase, the melody would consist only of half steps. Both its extreme
chromaticism and its very narrow range enable this phrase to stand alone
rather than to give rise, as most phrases do, to a complementary phrase or
to serve immediately as a point of tonal departure. Accordingly, this single
mysterious short phrase comes first below, then above, the accompaniment,
like the oracular voice of a disembodied being. Reminiscent in its chromatic
neighbor motions of Winterreise’s “Erstarrung” as well as the wind motive
of “Der Lindenbaum,” this laconic phrase (henceforth the “development
theme”) comes like a voice from a no man’s land such as the one that Müller’s
and Schubert’s wanderer creates from the barren winter landscape.This voice
thus gives the impression of arising not from another person but from the
di¤usion of a searching self into a lonely void.
After the portentous calm of these two phrases, the head motive of the
new theme separates and repeats itself to initiate a further chromatic ascent.
Its first articulated goal is a return to the Ab major with which the develop-
ment began (mm. 125–130). Thus, even in retrospect, the apparent D ma-
jor of this theme never acquires the function that one might expect of it in
a C-minor piece, as the dominant of the dominant. Instead it arises near the
midpoint of an expanse that is controlled at its beginning and again at its
K
85
decresc.
90
95 (development)
dim.
101
cresc.
105
109
112
cresc.
115
118
“development theme”
first provisional end by Ab major. The return of this key occasions a trans-
formed reemergence of the second theme (mm. 131–133), the theme that
was so marked in its original Eb-major occurrence by both the presence and
the subsequent absence of Ab as a harmony and is now su¤used with the
chromatic neighbor motions and rhythmic anonymity of the development
theme.10 This drawing of the second theme of the exposition into the net
cast by the development theme metaphorically achieves a fusion of the sec-
ond theme’s Schubertian voice with the mysterious voice disclosed through
that new theme, as if the self-assertion and ensuing self-exploration of the
Schubertian persona have prepared it for the possibility of its own dissolu-
tion. In a sense, this fusion parallels an imagined fusion of the winter wan-
derer’s voice with the stilled voice of the Leiermann.
The ensuing progression from Ab major to Db major remains under the
spell of Ab, extending its sphere of influence rather than allowing it to be
reabsorbed into C minor.The chromatically infiltrated second theme sounds
again in Db before the laconic development theme returns in the left hand
(m. 142) beneath ghostly, mostly chromatic scale-passages in the right. Only
with this reappearance in Db of that theme beneath the eerie sixteenth-note
figuration does a return to C minor begin. Four statements of this phrase
spread the development theme’s net to envelop tonic territory. The music
sinks into a quiet vortex (m. 152) from which a threatening chromatic as-
cent, articulating the sonata’s opening motive beneath sinister rising and
falling chromatic scales, prepares for the vehement resurgence of the open-
ing theme from a terrain now enveloped in the net cast by the development
theme. Unquestionably this is a powerful return of the first theme, yet this
theme in recapitulation almost immediately loses its Beethovenian shape, its
drive toward its cadence. Elements associated with Ab major now enter into
conflict with Beethoven’s theme and its C minor tonality to subvert its chro-
matic ascent to the dominant.
At the end of the recapitulation the cadence of the closing theme and
the codettas that echo it, which die away into ever shorter fragments, can
now be recognized as articulations of the three-note head motive of the de-
velopment theme. The return and transformation of this theme in the im-
mediately following coda make this relationship quietly but dramatically ex-
plicit. From the final dominant seventh into which the hemiola of the last
codetta fades, the music falls silent (m. 248). This unmeasured silence, this
void, reflects in a new way upon the dissolution of identity implicit in the
development theme. The ostinato of the development, now brought home
to C minor, reemerges from the silence. Beneath it the development theme
begins once again (mm. 250¤.). In its final form it responds to a hitherto
unrealized implication of the chromatic neighbor motion around its tonic:
the tonal ambiguity of this chromaticism, the instability of a tonic that can
easily become a dominant. Thus this tonic becomes this last time the dom-
inant of the subdominant: the melody, serving as the bass, descends to the
fourth degree and finally discloses the power of this phrase’s generative voice
to take control even of the movement’s closural gestures.This disclosure un-
balances the phrase; it now requires a consequent. In this consequent the
melody begins with the 4 just reached, only an octave higher, then rises to
6, finally capturing this Ab in the development theme’s net and making it
the source of the final descent to the tonic. Thus the Ab, Schubert’s Ab, wins
control of this ending, but it secures this victory only after it is harnessed to
the mysterious motive that it helped to engender in the development and,
hence, to the idea of its own transience as a marker of identity.
The downward rushing Ab-major scale and the motivic kernel that arises
from it, so near the beginning of the sonata, foretell not only events that
will ensue in the first movement, they also prefigure events in the later move-
ments. Foremost among them are the key and the theme of the slow move-
ment (see ex. 2.1a). As several writers have noted, this movement shares its
tonality with the slow movements of both of Beethoven’s early C-minor
sonatas; but the dramatic role of this key in Schubert’s first movement pow-
erfully motivates, within Schubert’s own conception, its return as the key
of the Adagio. Like the first movement’s second theme, this movement’s
opening theme draws from Schubert’s motivic kernel, sharing its basic
melodic outline—1–7–1–2–3–4–3–2—with the last tone incorporating a
half cadence. In its hymnlike texture and very slow tempo, it creates an at-
mosphere of still meditation that contrasts with the gentle and yearning sway
of the second theme. The need for such a contrast between themes of such
similar melodic character is what motivates, within Schubert’s own plan, the
tempo of this movement, its purportedly Beethovenian Adagio.
As explained in detail in chapter 2, the dramatic course of the Adagio
hinges in important respects on the recurrences of the focal progression that
first occurs in measures 11 and 12 (see ex. 2.1a). Although not directly or
fully anticipated in the first movement, this progression bears a strange fam-
ily resemblance—despite the lack of any clear motivic reference—to the
development theme. Like that theme, although at a much slower tempo, it
progresses almost entirely in even eighth notes, and its melody and its inner
voices all move predominantly in half steps. Finally, because of its fermata,
the rhythm of its plagal close echoes, in augmentation, the head motive of
the development theme. Through these characteristics—its extreme rhyth-
mic simplicity, its minimal melodic motion, and the rhythm that brings it
to hesitation—this focal progression seems, like that theme, to suspend for-
ward motion, to withdraw from overtly gestural expression and thus, mo-
mentarily, even from a sense of embodiment. Like this progression in the
Adagio, the drop from the Eb dominant seventh to the Db dominant seventh
in the second theme of the first movement (see ex. 7.2, mm. 46–50) also
suspends directed tonal motion, and in this way it also suggests a rift in that
theme’s surface, a possible allusion to a realm outside or beyond the theme,
a realm not fully apprehended by or accessible from it. As already proposed,
the disembodied, oracular voice of the development theme seems to em-
anate from that realm itself. The focal progression in the Adagio suggests a
return to that realm from the serenity of contemplation.
In echoing these events from the first movement the Adagio’s focal pro-
gression draws on specific musical memories within the sonata while also sug-
gesting as yet unexplored realms.The questions—both hopeful and fearful—
that are raised by this progression do not originate in this movement: they
are raised in the first movement as well. This progression so near the Ada-
gio’s beginning only returns to these questions, this time much more reflec-
tively, even prayerfully. Both movements recall Winterreise through the links
with the cycle that I have enumerated: the development theme in the first
movement with “Erstarrung” and “Der Lindenbaum”; the opening theme
of the Adagio with “Das Wirtshaus”; the focal progression of the Adagio
with “Gefror’ne Tränen”; and the episode that follows this focal progression
with “Gute Nacht,” “Auf dem Flusse,” “Der Wegweiser,” and “Einsamkeit.”
These connections give grounds for a metaphorical interpretation as well:
these passages suggest a search, if not for some kind of transcendence, then
at least for a loss or forgetting of self, a suspension of familiar motion and
emotion, that might ultimately lay open an arena of self-rediscovery and
re-creation.
In the return of the Adagio theme, the low echo of the focal progres-
sion’s plagal close (see ex. 2.5a, mm. 54–55) again seems to emanate, like
the first high echo of the development theme in the first movement, from
an oracular voice. In fact, this echo isolates the part of the focal progression
that also echoes the head motive of that development theme so closely. The
upward shift by a half step in this echo, which is linked to the ensuing, var-
ied recurrence of the entire B section a half step higher than before, com-
poses out the upper neighbor motions within the focal progression itself.
These neighbor motions themselves compose out, in turn, the C–Db–C
neighbor figure in the opening phrase of the Adagio, but they also draw on
the memory, as already indicated, of the predominantly chromatic neigh-
bor motion in the development theme.
In the final return of the Adagio’s theme, after the focal progression’s
initiating turn to Ab minor, the voice leading becomes even more chromatic.
The resulting bass descent, now entirely in whole tones, becomes even
stranger and more disembodied (see ex. 2.5b, mm. 104–105), as if the pro-
tagonist actually imagined being drawn o¤ into the distant realms hitherto
suggested only from a distance or even into death. The cadential figure of
this last occurrence of the focal progression is now echoed and reechoed,
each time a half step higher (mm. 106–107); the “echoes” not only rise but
also make a quiet crescendo, as if approaching rather than receding from
their source. Momentarily, as a sense of tonal orientation is lost, the remote
realms, the imaginary realms, take hegemony over the real ones. As does the
final stanza of “Der Wegweiser,” this last, quiet, echoing exploration of the
chromaticism of the focal progression finds an apt, although very di¤erent,
musical realization for a realm from which no one has ever returned. The
music itself, in fact, does not e¤ect a return. Instead, it falls silent (m. 109)
and then simply reasserts the cadence of its theme in its home key, plagally
reinforcing that cadence in a gesture not so much of integration as of re-
signed but hopeful acceptance of the limits of knowing or experiencing.
VI
The Menuetto once again articulates Ab major as a dramatic, countervailing

presence for its C-minor tonic. Not only is its trio in Ab, the music of the
Menuetto proper returns three times to this key, one of these times jarringly
and with a somewhat disorienting e¤ect (ex. 7.4, m. 21). The opening
twelve-measure phrase consists of three subphrases; the first of them is in C
minor and the last in Eb major, in keeping with well-established tonal con-
vention. The second of these subphrases is in Ab major until its harmony
pulls away to F minor (ex. 7.4, m. 8) in an upward twisting of the melody
that denies for Ab major a smooth, integrated return to tonic territory. Ab
major thus still insists on inclusion, an inclusion that always brings with it a
degree of disruption.
The melody of this Menuetto is closely related to the second theme of
example 7.4 Sonata in C Minor, D. 958, Menuetto, mm. 1–51
Allegro.
7 1
12 2
A “interruption”
19
28 8va
35 8va 1 2
Trio. 42
48 1
the first movement, and the music after the double bar plays on the de-
scending third motive from that theme. Before the return of the theme, an
Ab-major gesture once again overtakes the music tonally and rhythmically.
Through its fortissimo intrusion upon an established rhythmic, melodic, and
harmonic pattern, the arpeggiated Ab-major triad (m. 21) willfully trans-
forms a weak measure into a strong one, and wrenches the music away from
C minor. Thus it reenacts, within the more gesturally integrated framework
of the Menuetto, the self-assertion through which it supervened upon the
Beethovenian theme of the first movement. The hammering Abs that fol-
low mark this pitch as still staking out a separate realm within this Menuetto,
and the recurrence of a leading-tone diminished seventh chord of Ab (m.
24), reinforced by the sudden melodic leap up to Db, confirms the associa-
tion of this passage with the first dramatic appearance of Ab major in the
first movement. But the passage in the Menuetto in which this Ab major
takes part is now more concerned with closing than with opening; the in-
trusion of Ab major delays that closure, but cannot forestall it.
The return of the Menuetto theme in the left hand, beneath even, quiet
passage work in the right, once again recalls the first movement, especially
the last occurrences of its oracular theme in the development (mm. 142¤.).
Measures of silence now come between the subphrases of the theme, ret-
rospectively rescinding their ambiguities of phrase rhythm. Unlike the si-
lence before the coda of the first movement, these silences are measured.
Each separate subphrase falls silent, and the silences accrue weight from the
memory of the continuity that they negate. This final passage of the
Menuetto seems only to remember the movement’s beginning, rather than
to bring its full return. Somewhat paradoxically, the separation of the Ab-
major subphrase from the others has the e¤ect of equalizing the three sub-
phrases of the theme more than before and, thus, of stilling the subversive-
ness of the Ab.
The trio recalls the theme of the Adagio in its opening figure and in the
ascending chromatic voice leading of its harmonic progression from the dom-
inant of Ab to the dominant of F minor (ex. 7.4, mm. 48–49). In its qui-
etly dancing rhythm (its legato leaps also again recalling the second theme
of the first movement), it imparts a feeling of bodily movement to material
that has previously seemed more purely meditative; thus that material seems
to become more physically real, more fully possessed. In a sense, this quiet
transformation prepares for the far more dramatic transformations of the Ada-
gio’s focal progression in the finale.
VII
The finale, like that of the String Quartet in D Minor, D. 810 (“Death and
the Maiden”), is a tarantella. The impulse to interpret it, through this asso-
ciation, as a dance of death gains plausibility from the resonance of key pas-
sages from the earlier movements with Winterreise—particularly the oracu-
lar theme in the first movement and the focal progression of the Adagio,
with its suggestion of a meditative return to the mysterious realms that the
oracle might inhabit. But simply to equate such realms with death is to limit
them arbitrarily, especially in the work of a composer as attuned as Schu-
bert was to his literary contemporaries. Rather than unequivocally impli-
cating a deathly realm, these passages suggest, more ambiguously, something
outside or beyond the context in which they occur—something not fully
known, in its mysteriousness potentially enlightening, but also powerful and
threatening.
In many conceptions death is the gateway to such a realm; in Romantic
conceptions, however, nature, art, and even love also become such gateways.
Romantic wanderers and artists, placing themselves outside social and dis-
cursive convention, often seek to define and validate themselves through their
privileged access to such realms.The protagonist of Winterreise, disillusioned
in his Romantic quest—explicitly a quest for love, but implicitly an aesthetic
and philosophical one as well—seeks to die, or perhaps to be reborn, but
instead he endures a kind of living death. The C-Minor Sonata, suggesting
access to such mysterious realms for its Schubertian protagonist, perhaps un-
dertakes a resurrection, or at least a validation, of this lonely outcast. Its final
tarantella might signify not merely the wanderer’s death, but a new-found
access to realms of enlightenment, mystery, and terror, and a consequent
ability to embrace death without feeling annihilated by the prospect of it.
As I interpret the first movement, this protagonist boldly and antagonis-
tically individuates himself through the downward rushing Ab-major scale
within the initially Beethovenian thematic complex of the opening. In the
finale this protagonist again boldly proclaims himself, this time martially trans-
forming the Db plagal cadential gesture from the focal progression of the
Adagio and festooning it with aggressively ascending scales. This enables the
protagonist to introduce—and manifest his control through—the second
theme (see ex. 7.6). Before that announcement, however, a strong tonal un-
dercurrent in the first theme of the tarantella anticipates this proclamation
of Db by repeatedly pulling the music into Db major and minor. Db, the only
non–C-minor component of that original Ab scale, has figured prominently
in every harmonic articulation of Ab throughout the sonata. One might ask
how it could fail, as the subdominant of Ab, to do so. But the establishment
and exploration of Ab as a harmony or tonal region does not require the
substitution of a Db dominant seventh for an Ab-major triad in the second
theme of the first movement (see ex. 7.2, mm. 46–50) or the Db-major sec-
tional articulation in its development (mm. 142¤.); neither does this tonal
articulation require the cadential hesitation over Db in the focal progression
of the Adagio (see ex. 2.1a, m. 12) or the return to Db minor for its con-
trasting episode (m.19); nor does it require the melodic leap up from Ab to
Db at the climax of the Menuetto (see ex. 7.4, m. 24). In these ways, the Db
within the Ab-major complex that opposes C minor throughout the sonata
has been consistently and emphatically marked. It comes into its own in the
finale, as if to ground the Ab and reinforce its independence from the C-
minor territory of its origin.
The opening theme of the finale is drawn into Db far more than into any
25
D major
31
38
D major
other secondary tonal region. A tonicization of Db major initiates the for-

mal expansion of this theme (ex. 7.5, m. 29); another one prolongs this ex-
pansion (m. 39); and a third, now articulating both Db minor and major in
two successive outbreaks, marks its climax. The harmony eddies about C
minor’s dominant for ten measures after this climax, entwining it melodi-
cally with its chromatic neighbors, Ab and F#, in a motivic echoing of both
the opening theme of the first movement and its development theme. The
theme of this finale now returns, delicate and dreamlike, in C major (m.
67), although Db still haunts it as it fades away, sinking into a quiet rocking
motion between this Db and its ephemeral C-major tonic (mm. 86–92). In
a sudden swell, a fortissimo Db overtakes what might have been the final C
of this fading undulation (ex. 7.6, m. 93). In its seeming willfulness, and in
the jarring and immediate return to Db major that it brings about, this Db
parallels the Ab that overtakes the theme of the first movement. The ascend-
ing, marcato Db scale remembers and complements the downward rushing
93 (transition)
cresc.
98
cresc.
103
107 8va
8va
113 B
Ab scale from that opening thematic complex. And the two hammering blows
to which it leads, along with the essentially dotted rhythm that follows (mm.
97–100), recall the opening gestures of the sonata as if to gain control over
them in a new way, or from a new perspective.11
The ensuing Db-major fireworks (ex. 7.6) thus do not make an entirely
unprepared proclamation. Instead they have the e¤ect of an explicit and
dramatic manifestation of something already implicitly known, but never
yet overtly acknowledged. They proudly bring the Db-rooted protagonist
out, transforming his hesitant self-questioning in the Adagio’s focal pro-
gression and his lonely self-searching in the ensuing Db-minor episode into
an imposing self-assertion. The Gb-minor subdominant chord that in the
Adagio deepens the hesitation here reinforces the self-assertion of Db as a
separate region from C minor. The C#/Db-minor theme that follows (mm.
113¤.), opening with an expansion of the same tonic–subdominant–tonic
progression, further carries this transformation of a question into a proud
proclamation. In the immediately following repetition of this theme, the
chromatic embellishing runs recall the ominous ones from the end of the
first movement’s development, as if in a mastering of a pervasive fear
through self-assertion (cf. mm. 131–132 et sim. with mm. 142¤. of the
first movement).The sequential progression that comes next recalls the har-
monic ambience of that development; this time it advances upward by mi-
nor third with the determination of a crusader.The Eb-major closing theme
(mm. 213¤.) that follows the grand Eb-minor climax of the sequence re-
calls, once again in tranquillity, the minor plagal gesture of the focal pro-
gression, but the augmented sixth chord (m. 216) that now precedes this
gesture makes its harmony into a V of ii and prepares for its rhyming rep-
etition as a dominant of Eb major, which is at this point the home key. In
this way, the closing theme brings the focal progression home and its ques-
tioning to rest.12
If this finale were simply a dance of death (which it is not), then the B/Cb-
major theme that follows (ex. 7.7, m. 243¤.) would suggest a vision of par-
adise and the ensuing development (mm. 305¤.) a descent into purgatory.
The B-major theme fuses a melodic motive from the closing theme with a
rhythmic augmentation of the head motive of the opening theme (5–3–2–1).
This fusion brings an Elysian calm to the memory of the opening theme
and then celebrates this calm in Arcadian dancing (mm. 258¤.). A quiet B-
major scale descends from the dance’s end (mm. 301¤.) into a portentous,
hushed ostinato. Now the head motive of the B-major melody returns be-
neath the continuing ostinato (m. 309). It is darkened and sequentially re-
peated, as if in a search for true access to, or confirmation of, the newly dis-
covered theme.
In each of the six ensuing phrases, the left hand controls both the harmony
240
246
251
and the melody; each phrase begins with a double reiteration of the same
head motive and culminates in a shadowy anticipation of the return of the
Adagio’s focal progression. In the first two of these phrases, that anticipa-
tion is created by the five rhythmically even concluding steps of a nine-step
descent in the bass, bringing an overall tonal descent by whole step (from E
minor through D minor to C minor). The next two phrases (mm. 325–338,
339–352) are almost twice as long, and they elaborate on this anticipation
of the focal progression. In each of these phrases the left hand culminates
in an ominous recollection of the upper voices of that progression; the chro-
matic line, now in the bass instead of a middle voice, ascends beneath a
melody of repeated notes, now in the tenor but still in the same evenly, even
implacably, advancing rhythm. Each phrase leads to a suspension (mm. 335¤.,
349¤.) whose resolution, chromatically elaborated, is subverted by a chro-
matic voice exchange with the right hand. The suspension figure, low and
prolonged, comes close to a deathly moan. In the fifth phrase (mm. 353–
367), the unit of rhythmic construction swells to three measures, and the
fivefold articulation of this unit extends the length of the phrase yet more,
to fifteen measures. The culminating remembrance of the focal progression
now becomes more complete; it is the virtual quotation that motivates the
analysis in chapter 2. The entire fifteen-measure phrase comes sequentially
again, and most of it a third time. Harmonically, these climactic phrases ig-
nite at their peaks into flares of Db major, then Ab major, then Eb major. This
entire culminating sequence has the e¤ect of a blaze of glory, triumphant
but fatal. The quotations of the focal progression signal the fulfillment of
the quest that it has initiated, but they also create the sense that fulfillment
has been reached only in some kind of death and rebirth.
The dominant of C minor now supervenes in three great waves (mm.
395¤.), each wave billowing through a rising scale in the right hand and
then breaking over another in the left. The last of these waves subsides
through a descending G-major scale (mm. 413–417) similar to the B-major
scale that opened the way for this development’s beginning. These are the
first descending scales without accompanying harmonic activity since the
dramatic Ab-major scale in the first movement’s opening thematic complex.
They quietly recall the dramatic gesture that marked the beginning of the
story, as if to signal its end. Unlike that Ab-major scale, this final G-major
one is assimilated—it is a simple hushed articulation of C minor’s dominant.
Ab, no longer in control of the scale, then resurges (m. 421), now as the bass
of a Db-minor chord in second inversion, in a sudden aftershock, a musical
death convulsion.13
Fortunately this moment articulates only the return of the opening theme
rather than the end of the movement. We hear again the proud, if stoic, sec-
ond theme and the restful waves of the closing theme. This last time the
closing theme flows directly into the coda, which begins by returning one
last time to Ab major. This coda expands the four-measure progression in Ab
that initiated the development in the first movement (see ex. 7.3, mm.
99–103), now allowing it to fill twenty-four dancing measures. This passage
comes as close as possible, perhaps, to bringing home and making real the
Arcadian dance within the B-major theme that intervened in this finale be-
tween the exposition’s end and the development’s beginning. That part of
the opening theme that so emphasizes Db returns only now, at the very end
of this long movement. The Db maintains its heroic hold almost to the very
end, the D taking its place only in the last climactic gesture and final four-
octave descent to the cadence.
VIII
Beethoven had been dead only about a year when Schubert began work on
the C-Minor Sonata. Schubert presumably did not realize that he himself
would die soon after. The sonata’s Beethovenian beginning might therefore
tempt us to associate its evocations of death more with Beethoven’s passing
than with Schubert’s thoughts of his own mortality. This work begins with
possibly the fullest and most explicit quotation of Beethoven in all of Schu-
bert’s instrumental music, but it also holds its deepest and most explicit mem-
ories of Winterreise. And it is di‹cult to imagine that in drawing on those
memories of a lonely, outcast wanderer, Schubert would have associated them
with such an illustrious—even if lonely—figure as Vienna’s most famous
composer. How then do we make sense of the progression in the C-Minor
Sonata from a Beethovenian beginning into an idiosyncratically Schubertian,
even Winterreise-haunted world?
Of course Schubert idolized Beethoven and felt his influence constantly.
In a finely balanced account, John Gingerich has described in sensitive de-
tail both how Schubert, in his mature instrumental music, emulated Bee-
thoven, and how he never lost his own distinctive voice in doing so.14 To re-
gard Beethoven as Schubert’s musical father figure is perhaps too obvious to
bring any new revelation to a general consideration of their relationship.
But for the C-Minor Sonata, which Schubert in a sense begins by casting
Beethoven aside, a quasi-parricidal myth can help to explain the ensuing de-
scent into a Winterreise-haunted wasteland. In this myth, Schubert is pro-
foundly alone: not because he has been spurned, like the protagonists of
Müller’s poetic cycle or his own “Mein Traum,” but because he himself has
spurned his most powerful forebear. In doing so, he is himself threatened
with loss of identity until he accepts the fusion of his own voice with that
of the oracular figure, the counterpart of the Leiermann—who could even
be Beethoven’s ghost—that he first encounters in the development of the
first movement. In gradually re-creating himself in the wake of this en-
counter, he also re-creates Beethoven in his own image.
c hap t e r 8
Recovering a Song of Origin

The Sonata in A Major, D. 959
For both its beginning and its ending, the finale of the A-Major Sonata draws
on sources outside itself. As is well known, it appears to take its theme (ex.
8.1a) from a much earlier piece, the E-major Allegretto quasi Andantino of
the Sonata in A Minor, D. 537 (ex. 8.1b), which was composed in 1817.
Schubert cannot have intended his reuse of this theme in the A-Major Sonata
of 1828 to be heard as a self-quotation, however, for the early A-Minor
Sonata was not published until the early 1850s. It is not even certain, al-
though it is surely likely, that he realized that he was quoting an earlier com-
position. In contrast, the use of the first movement’s opening to end the A-
Major Sonata (see ex. 8.2a–b) is unmistakable in its intent; striking and
unique, it is a stratagem that Schubert employs only in this one instance.
On first reflection, the occurrence of these two very di¤erent kinds of
allusions in the same movement may make little sense. No matter how we
ultimately understand its presence—even as nothing more than the framing
device that Rosen has called it1—the reference of the finale’s ending to the
first movement’s beginning is unquestionably a unifying gesture, one of the
most manifestly cyclic moments in all of Schubert’s instrumental music. But
the reference to the earlier sonata can seem quite the opposite: indeed Godel
cites it as his first evidence for his claim that Schubert’s finales “virtually
abandon their contexts and, entering the scene from outside, hazard a new
start.”2 How is it that Schubert ends the very same movement that begins
with a seeming reference to a di¤erent sonata with one of his most patently
204
unifying gestures? Does the cyclic gesture simply counterbalance the out-
side derivation of the theme? Or does it, instead, compositionally implicate
that theme in some way?
A simple musical thought experiment can quickly suggest an answer to
this question. Play the opening of the sonata (see ex. 8.2a, mm. 1–6); this
is the phrase that will return in cancrizans at the end of the concluding Rondo
(see ex. 8.2b). Then, instead of continuing in the first movement, imme-
diately play the theme of the Rondo (ex. 8.1a). In this juxtaposition the
opening phrase of the sonata becomes an apt introduction, a perfect foil,
for that theme. The Rondo theme, in its flowing lyricism, is everything that
the sonata’s opening phrase might want to be but is not. Indeed, the op-
position between that opening and the Rondo theme is far greater—and
more satisfying—than it would be had Schubert simply reused the Rondo’s
theme in its 1817 form (ex. 8.1b), with its staccato bass and slower moving,
less fluid melody. At the same time, this new version of the Rondo theme
evinces a much closer compositional relationship than does its 1817 fore-
bear to the sonata’s opening material. I have mentioned Ivan Waldbauer’s
observation that this theme and the opening of the first movement share
fundamentally the same stepwise ascending bass, a bass not present in the
1817 version.3
But that is not all they share: the Rondo theme also incorporates other
aspects of the first movement’s contrapuntal and melodic structure. Once
the Rondo’s melody reaches the tonic A at the end of the first measure, that
A is retained—after its momentary deflection to G# in measure 2—either
as melody or as the next highest voice throughout the rest of the phrase.
Unlike the 1817 version, the new version of the first semicadence now re-
turns to that tonic and its leading tone, thus responding as a distant echo to
the sonata’s very first melodic move from the same A to the same G#. The
new Rondo theme can thus be heard as essentially incorporating the sonata’s
opening material, embedding this material within itself in order to trans-
form it from an imposing but expressively and functionally ambiguous fan-
fare into song. This new version of the theme is thus seemingly a hybrid.
The return of the opening material to end the Rondo immediately becomes
more than a mere framing device; this material returns, at the very least, as
an emblem of a significant compositional relationship. To understand that
relationship we must trace its evolution through the A-Major Sonata.
r e c ov e r i n g a s o n g o f o r i g i n 205
example 8.1
a. Sonata in A Major, D. 959, Rondo, mm. 1–17
Allegretto.
cresc.
10
15 1 2
b. Sonata in A Minor, D. 537, Allegretto quasi Andantino, mm. 1–16

Allegretto quasi Andantino.
legato
9
II
I have just considered the Sonata’s opening phrase as a foil for the Rondo
theme, which answers to it as its lyrical complement. Within the first move-
ment itself, the music that immediately follows the opening (ex. 8.2a) also
opposes itself to it in almost every way. The sonata begins with an assertive
rhythmic motive of two quarters, downbeat and afterbeat (motive x). The
left hand makes a stepwise diatonic ascent in the lowest moving voice against
the insistently repeated tonic in the top voice, producing what might be called
a diatonic wedge, while the harmonic rhythm of the block chords acceler-
ates gradually through simple duple subdivisions. In quiet opposition, the
second phrase immediately introduces triplets and arpeggiation. This leads
to a complementary motive of two quarters, beginning with an upbeat (mo-
tive y, the opposite of x), and a chromatic bass ascent against the fourth scale
degree (rather than the tonic) in the top voice, creating a chromatic wedge
that responds to the diatonic one in the opening phrase.
The blankness of the opening phrase makes it, in a sense, inscrutable.This
is one of Schubert’s most Classical, “multum in parvo” gestures, neither lyri-
cal nor immediately passionate, but instead abstract and pregnant with mo-
tivic possibilities.4 It owes its seeming abstractness especially to the insistently
unmelodic quality of the repeated tonic in the top voice, which rings out
no less than fourteen times before resolving down to its leading tone at the
first cadence. Even though it appears more Classical than Romantic in char-
acter, this opening di¤ers from most Classical openings because it seems un-
suitable for incorporation into either a period or sentence structure. Instead
it stands alone, as if it really were the introduction that the just-ventured
thought experiment made of it. Schubert’s second phrase therefore does not
so much follow his first phrase as encounter and quietly interrogate it, op-
posing itself to the first through rhythm, texture, and harmony. The second
phrase makes the first seem more enigmatic, even more inscrutable, than it
otherwise might.
If the opening idea, in its assertiveness, can be taken as a musical image
of objectivity, then the ensuing response, which throws into question so many
aspects of the opening idea, immediately emerges as its subjective counter-
part. In the third phrase, the left hand quietly reiterates the first, producing
a ternary structure, while the right mirrors the lower-voice motion with a
example 8.2 Sonata in A Major, D. 959
a. Allegro, mm. 1–31
Allegro.
6 x
y
10
cresc.
13
16
21
(continued)
25
cresc.
E major
28
C major A major
b. Rondo, mm. 375–382
375
new countermelody and so incorporates it into a more flowing musical con-

tinuum. The two hands in their interaction already suggest a possible com-
bination of the opposed motives x and y into a three-note motive, z, con-
sisting of two quarters and a half note. Triplets and touches of chromaticism
further this synthesis of elements of the second phrase with those of the
first and, along with the countermelody, enhance the impression of music
now flowing naturally. The ease with which the third phrase achieves a fu-
sion of the seemingly impenetrable “objectivity” of the first with the “sub-
jectivity” that interrogates it in the second conveys an air of youthful inno-
cence, an imperviousness to the dangers that the disjunctions between the
opening two phrases might imply.
The fourth phrase, a gestural echo of the second, begins as a quiet
confirmation of the tonic resolution of the third. The sudden intrusion of
a new triplet arpeggio breaks the established rhythmic pattern and abruptly
shifts the harmony to the dominant key (ex. 8.2a, m. 27). This summary
modulatory gesture might again be taken as objective in its simplicity; but
it immediately leads to what again seems a subjective response, a harmonic
flight of fancy. An evocative modulatory sequence, based on the chromatic
wedge, takes the music through a circle of descending major thirds: from
the just announced E major through C major and Ab major and back to E,
only averting a return to C in order to stabilize E’s dominant.5
Instead of opposing dominant to tonic, this first movement might be
viewed as establishing a tonal opposition between tonic and dominant to-
gether, taken as one pole, and the tonalities and tonal procedures that arise
from the chromatic wedge, taken as the other. The dominant thus joins the
tonic in the objective sphere while the subjective interrogating stance artic-
ulates itself through a development of the harmonic implications of the
sonata’s second phrase. What I am calling the harmonic flight of fancy in
the transition is in a sense only a digression, rather than a goal-directed mo-
tion, but it is only after this digression, this seeming exploration of the sub-
jective, that the opening material can be reapproached.The progression from
low, darkly eddying triplets to high, luminous unaccompanied eighth notes
at the end of this transition (mm. 45–55; ex. 8.3 begins at m. 48) evokes a
return from imaginative ferment into objective, even if euphoric, clarity—
an innocently optimistic return to home territory.
The impulse to take tonic and dominant together as representing a sin-
gle composite tonal domain—a kind of objective stratum—in this move-
ment is supported by their sharing the same thematic material. As Wald-
bauer and Brendel have both recognized, the second theme is a new version
of the first, incorporating the same stepwise ascending bass and accompa-
nying thirds. Before this bass gets under way, the new melody (ex. 8.3, mm.
55¤.) reaches from 5 up to 8 to lure the top voice down through the new-
found scalar eighth-note motion, dislodging it from the intractable position
it occupies in the opening phrase. Now the top voice rises with the bass,
and a melody thus begins to emerge—or to be won—from the sonata’s open-
ing material. The new theme begins to sing: it rises to a new motive, 5–3–6,
5–3–2 (henceforth motive a, here also a twofold lyrical articulation of mo-
tive z), but then breaks o¤ without reaching a cadence. It begins again an oc-
tave higher, but with the new motive it turns to the parallel minor and then
immediately to G major, as if it had to seek a first lyrical self-realization
example 8.3 Sonata in A Major, D. 959, Allegro, mm. 48–140
48 (end of transition)
decresc.
51
55 B 5 3 6 5 3 2
60
cresc. decresc.
b
65
8 7
cresc.
70
(continued)
74
77
decresc. dim.
82
E: V7 /C C
86 z
V7 /A A /G
90
cresc.
V7 /E E
94
x
97
x
100
103
cresc.
106
109
cresc.
114
(continued)
from a
118
123
dim.
128 1
cresc.
129 2
133
137
outside its home territory. Now comes a new strain in G major, elaborat-
ing on the sonata’s first melodic move, the 8 to 7 motion of the very first
cadence (mm. 65¤.).The isolation and elaboration of this melodic idea makes
this semitonal descent, at least potentially, into a motive (motive b), one that
will take on prominence in the later movements. Here it gestures toward
closure, but only in this relatively remote key of G, deepening the sense that
it aspires to a lyricism it cannot yet achieve, or that it can achieve only away
from home.
At what seems the end of the second theme, its head motive returns as
a mere echo, only to subside without cadencing. Its last echoes enkindle a
new development of the chromatic material that originates in the sonata’s
second phrase (mm. 82¤.), a development that makes the fusion of motives
x and y into z fully explicit for the first time.The way this new episode arises
from the echoing away of the second theme seems to make the very act of
listening—a form of questioning contemplation—its primary motivation.
The episode begins with the same circle of descending major thirds—
E–C–Ab–E—as in the earlier transition. With the completion of the circle,
the return to E (m. 91), the chromatic ascent in the bass becomes slower
and more momentous. When it reaches the G in measure 95, the rein-
forcement of the falling E-minor arpeggio through motive x in the left hand
suggests a first appropriation of the sonata’s opening material into this now
agitatedly chromatic but still quasi-subjective domain.The E-major measure
that follows only strengthens this impression, as does the full ascent of the
bass from tonic to dominant—a composing out of the sonata’s opening bass
progression—in measures 91 through 100. The ensuing culmination of this
developmental episode, pitting triplet and duplet articulations of motive x
against each other, brings to a climax this advance of the subjective—the
searching, interrogating protagonist first individuated in the sonata’s second
phrase—upon the sonata’s opening material.
The contest breaks o¤, once more without a cadence. The dancing un-
accompanied eighth notes, again magical in their emergence from the tense
silence, bring back the second theme. By touching momentarily on “proper”
submediant harmony in measure 120, the theme almost reaches a full ca-
dence. An ethereal echo, a phrase extension that introduces the movement’s
first sixteenth notes to animate the lyrical a motive, brings the cadence itself.
The closing idea (mm. 123–126) remembers the bass progression from the
end of the transition (mm. 43–46) in a chromatic shadowing of the diatonic
cadence just achieved. The juxtaposition of contrasting diatonic and chro-
matic cadential gestures keeps alive the echo of the opposition established
by the sonata’s opening two phrases.
III
Like the turbulent developmental episode within the second group of the
exposition, the music that begins the development arises from simple re-
verberation. Once again, the act of listening seems to enkindle the new
from the just heard, as if in free association. Suddenly the echoing of mo-
tive z shifts from E major over a tonic pedal to C major, and a new osti-
nato of eighth-note chords quietly begins, their constant pulsation linked
to the chains of eighth notes that have already twice led into the second
theme. Above this ostinato a seemingly new theme emerges. It begins with
the version of motive a, animated by sixteenth notes, that finally brought
the second theme to a cadence (ex. 8.3, mm. 121–122). The new theme
articulates itself as a fantastical ten-measure period: its first phrase slips away
from C major into B major, while its second slips just as magically back up
to C. An even more ethereal variant of the same phrase pair immediately
follows, its sixteenths now spun out into gossamer webs. For these two pe-
riods, the music simply oscillates between C and B, achieving what Rosen
characterizes as a stasis with a “physical e¤ect . . . like nothing in music
before.”6
Brendel’s characterization of Schubert as a “sleepwalker” seems especially
apt in view of the way this new music appears and then seems to hover.7
Schubert chances on a new idea at the very last moment of his second the-
matic group (mm. 121–122); the short closing group that follows merely
echoes a motive from that second group (cf. m. 123 to m. 82). The closing
material fragments, echoing itself; and then opens into a static dream space.
In this enchanted space, held fast for the moment by the constantly pulsat-
ing chords, the last-minute idea from the cadence of the second group be-
comes the leading motive. It recollects and reassociates itself with the repeated
notes common to all this movement’s melodies, which now follow rather
than lead as they have before. Like a dream, the music of this development—
or antidevelopment—takes on its own life, losing any sense of tonal des-
tination. Through its exotic, even hypnotic alternation with B major, C
major—twice touched upon in the exposition’s sequential flights of fancy
(see ex. 8.2a, mm. 29–30, and ex. 8.3, mm. 84–86) and once again before
its climax (ex. 8.3, mm. 103–104)—gains an illusory stability.
But if closely attended to, the harmonic countercurrents within this os-
cillation between C major and B major—this enchanted stalling of motion—
betray its instability, its necessarily ephemeral quality.The C-major antecedent
feels the pull of A minor and then of E minor, and the B-major triad of its
cadence emerges from an augmented sixth chord that under more ordinary
circumstances would have made it into a dominant of E minor. The pull of
this minor tonality on that B-major harmony is still felt in the consequent,
but C major reemerges from it instead. Only in the phrases beginning at
measure 161 does the dreamscape darken completely: the antecedent becomes
fully minor and wells up passionately, this time staying caught in C-minor
harmony. In place of the tonic triad that would bring the dream to a de-
spondent end comes an ambiguous diminished seventh chord (m. 168), which
resolves via an augmented sixth onto the dominant of A. Like the awaken-
ing memory of a dream just dreamt, the C-minor phrase comes quietly again
in the home key—here A minor—and the drama of recapitulation—in this
case a still optimistic return to the reality of waking life—thus begins.
Cone has commented astutely on the recapitulation and the coda.8 He
shows how the only significant changes within the recapitulation itself re-
spond to the instability of the opening three phrases, the first and third of
which he characterizes as “unappeased antecedents.” In place of the fourth
phrase (the A-major material that begins the transition in the exposition) a
minor-mode echo of the third phrase enters an octave higher (mm.
219–225). This new variant seems to draw on the memory of the C-minor
and A-minor phrases that mark the end of the dream sequence in the de-
velopment, but it now has an integrative e¤ect: the A-minor variant ends
in F major, and the new transition begins in this key. Instead of emerging
through the chromatic wedge, the lowered submediant now arises directly
from a variant of the opening material, as if that material has now become
more malleable, more accessible, than at first.
In the coda that material finally surrenders itself to a fully articulated, if
extraordinarily extended, thematic structure (mm. 331–349). If A major is
home, it begins as a home that cannot be fully possessed or occupied by the
protagonist individuated in the second phrase. The second theme represents
a first attempt at its possession, an attempt that involves a lengthy search for
some kind of resolution. In this stilled lyrical expansion at the movement’s
end, its lyrical possession becomes at least fully imaginable. The augmented
sixth over Bb, the penultimate harmony, in one way brings that searching
subjectivity to rest, but in still casting a shadow over the movement’s end-
ing, it is also a resolution that leaves that calm uncertain.
IV
The very pitch that melodically closes the first movement also opens the
second (ex. 8.4). But that A now introduces the sighing motive that not only
begins the Andantino theme but permeates it, becoming both its motivic
kernel and its expressive core.9 This opening sigh recalls the very first melodic
move of the first movement, a descent from the same A to the same G#,
embellished in its first occurrence for the sake of breadth and grandeur. The
highlighted, more intimate embellishment of the same semitonal descent
within the first movement’s second theme (see ex. 8.3, mm. 65–70 et sim.)
has already suggested a motivic role for it (I have identified it as motive b in
that movement), a role now made fully explicit by its unembellished emer-
gence as the head motive of the Andantino. Rhythmically and texturally, this
new theme also plays on the echo of the first movement’s coda. In that coda,
the opening rhythmic motive, x, recedes for the first time into a purely ac-
companimental role. Now elaborated with a legato afterbeat, it reemerges
in the same role to accompany the new melody.
Despite all of these linkages to the first movement, this new theme
sounds not merely poignant but desolate, as if sung in exile from the won-
drous and mysterious but ultimately innocent world of that movement.10
The feeling owes its intensity partly to the utterly di¤erent character of the
Andantino melody, so filled with sighs after so much music almost entirely
free of them. But what really generates the sense of alienation in this
Andantino—paradoxically, it may seem—is its key, its F# minor, which is the
relative minor of A and thus is seemingly not at all remote. It sounds remote
nonetheless; for the first movement not only avoids proper submediant
example 8.4 Sonata in A Major, D. 959, Andantino, mm. 1–32
a
Andantino. 5 6 5 4 3 2
b
17 A: 8 7
25
harmony except at a few key moments (see ex. 8.3, mm. 71, 120, 122 et
sim.) but also achieves in large part its particular tonal ambience by con-
sistently replacing that submediant with its lowered counterpart. The An-
dantino thus begins with a tonal color that the first movement has not
merely overlooked; it has specifically avoided it by positing a substitute.The
F-major ending of the first movement’s antepenultimate phrase (mm. 340–
344) retains this substitution even in the tonal aura of that movement’s coda.
It is by emerging so directly from that aura that the F# minor of the Andan-
tino can sound so foreign.
Another reference of the Andantino theme to the first movement—more
figure 8.1 Sonata in A Major, D. 959: Motive a
5 3 6 5 3 2
a. i, mm. 55–58
5 (3) 6 5 (3) 2
b. i, mm. 131–135
5 6 5 (4) 3 2
c. ii, mm. 1–8
5 (3) 6 5 3 2
d. ii, mm. 140–146 (cf. [b] above)
5 (4) 6 5 3 2
e. iii, mm. 38–43 (cf. [c] above)
5 (4) 5 6 5 3 2
f. iv, mm. 47–51
veiled and more elaborate, but unmistakable once recognized—again para-

doxically only intensifies the sense of alienation so palpable in this plaintive
song. After responding to its first two falling sighs with a similar rising ges-
ture, from the fifth to the sixth scale degree (ex. 8.4, mm. 5–6), the An-
dantino melody then descends through a quickened stepwise chain of sighs
from the sixth to the second (mm. 7–8). This seemingly new melodic idea
is only a variant of the first movement’s motive a (fig. 8.1), the first tenta-
tive drawing of song from the sonata’s opening idea in its second theme (see
ex. 8.3, mm. 57–58). Here, in the Andantino, this motive from the earlier
theme—5–3–6, 5–3–2—loses a triadic diminution in its first half and gains
a passing one in its second to become 5–6, 5–4–3–2 (this scalar descent is
further elaborated with appoggiaturas). In the first movement every aspect
of the presentation of this motive, but especially its simple melody and
rhythm and its root-position triadic harmony, bespeaks purity and innocence:
Brendel christens it the “bliss formula.”11 The dream sequence arising from
this motive in the development both heightens that innocence and betrays
its fragility. By draping this motive with motive b, the Andantino theme now
envelops motive a in sighs. It recalls the innocence of this motive to lament
the loss of that innocence. It is the song of a fallen angel.
In the second period, the same melody comes unexpectedly over a dom-
inant pedal in A major (ex. 8.4, mm. 19¤.). It thus recalls the first melodic
move of the sonata in its original key and contrapuntal setting, as a 4–3
suspension (here an appoggiatura) over a dominant bass. Nothing prepares
this A-major tonality here, and it never achieves a cadence, receding instead
into F# minor.This reharmonization of the melody only intensifies the sense
of a distance between F# minor and A major by alluding to the sonata’s home
tonic without allowing the music to return there.The key of A major comes
here as a memory: not as a goal achieved but, once again, as a source lost
and suddenly remembered. Schubert learned very early to use the dominant
of the relative major to imbue the minor mode with a feeling of isolation,
loss, or bereavement. In the first phrase of “Gretchen am Spinnrade” he uses
this harmony—there, admittedly, tonicized—to convey Gretchen’s inabil-
ity to recover her peace of mind: “Meine Ruh ist hin, mein Herz ist schwer,
ich finde sie nimmer und nimmermehr” (My peace is gone, my heart is heavy,
I shall find it never, never again). The Andantino of the A-Major Sonata
seems similarly su¤used with a feeling of irreparable loss and isolation. The
relative major itself, the tonal home of the expansive preceding movement,
can indeed be remembered here, and it is thus experienced as what has been
lost. The absence from the Andantino’s second period of the beginning of
a consequent makes this appearance of A major more urgent because it is
more fleeting.12
After coming again in an octave doubling that makes it still more urgent,
the theme finally recedes through a dark, descending version of the diatonic
wedge—again a forlorn, emblematic recollection of the first movement.
Only now does the ostinato that has constantly cradled it since the begin-
ning also abate, leaving open an empty space. The right hand, unaccompa-
nied, quietly begins again to stir above this chasm in a rising, appoggiatura-
saturated arabesque that draws the theme’s sighing gesture into enigmatically
neutral proliferation. As the slow sixteenths advance into triplets, the left
hand reenters with a diminished seventh chord (ex. 8.5, m. 73). Now, as six-
teenth-note triplets advance to thirty-second notes (m. 75), the chord’s G#
bass note, in the guise of an Ab appoggiatura, falls to G. The harmony shifts,
mercurially and mysteriously, from F#-minor darkness to C-major light in
a dreamlike moment that seems to recall the dream itself: the C-major six-
teenth notes (moving at about the same tempo) from the first movement’s
development. Like the other recollections of the first movement in the sec-
ond, this one only deepens the chasm between the two, increasing the sense
that the innocence of the first has been lost.
Because of its rocking accompaniment, the theme of the Andantino is
sometimes called a barcarole.13 If so, then whoever sings it has been cast o¤
from the first movement’s shores and so has lost sight of the play of sun and
shadow in its mountainous vistas. The extraordinarily wild episode that now
arises within this movement brings the rocking boat, on this description,
through a terrifying storm. Both the quieting, leveling proliferation of the
sighs at the beginning of this B section and its momentary suggestion of C-
major harmony might epitomize the eerily deceptive calm that one learns,
through experience, to take as a storm’s forewarning. But Brendel, in de-
scribing this episode as a “feverish paroxysm” and associating its dynamic
and gestural extremes with those of “Der Doppelgänger,” brings it into a
domain that is more personal, both physically and psychologically, than its
interpretation as a storm scene is likely to suggest.14 In its slow advance and
its uncanny shifts of harmonic focus (first from C minor to C# minor to E
minor in mm. 85–93, then from E minor to F and finally to F# minor in
mm. 94–104) this music suggests something more deeply sinister, more pro-
foundly disorienting than even the most violent storm. Does Schubert here
commute into music his own experience of illness? Is the alienation of the
Andantino theme his own alienation, the alienation that that same illness,
because of its origin, is so likely to have intensified? If so, then the allusion
to the C-major of the first movement’s development can figure as the mem-
ory of some youthful dream, some fantastical pleasure garden like the one
in which the seed of illness took root.
The climax of this violent episode seems as chaotic as tonal music can
ever be, yet even so it is motivically linked to the sonata’s opening lines.
When the downward-rushing C#-minor scale that launches this climax
example 8.5 Sonata in A Major, D. 959, Andantino, mm. 66–76
66 B
(diatonic wedge) 3
73
3
reaches its bottom G#, it initiates a slow chromatic ascent from that qua-
vering bass note up to its C# tonic (ex. 8.6a, mm. 107¤.). The E in the top
voice that signals both the arrival and the first culmination of this climax
keeps sounding throughout the entire bass ascent (mm. 107–116), making
this passage a variant of the chromatic wedge from the sonata’s second phrase.
Thus this feverish crisis—this disorienting, sense-defying experience—is not
in every respect as chaotic or as senseless as it may sound. Its origin is not
in the outside world, as a storm’s would be, but inside, in the personal ex-
ploration connoted by the sonata’s second phrase. It reveals, as the first
movement never can, the possible danger of such exploration, transform-
ing the first movement’s dream into nightmare and its optimistic health into
tormented illness. The episode abruptly culminates in violent chords (mm.
122, 124, 128, 130), like the awakening shrieks of a terrified—even fever-
a›icted—dreamer piercing the night air.
These chords can, once again, stir contrasting memories of the first move-
ment. That movement begins with an isolated A-major triad whose bright
resonance is enhanced by the afterbeat of motive x. Here, at the Andantino’s
climax, the absence of such an afterbeat from the first C#-minor chord, after
so much unremitting turmoil, is just as palpable as its presence at the sonata’s
beginning. Measures of recitative, which fuse recollections of this episode’s
beginning (see ex. 8.5, mm. 69¤.) and the decorative intensification of the
theme (see ex. 8.4, m. 3 et sim.), immediately lead, three times more, to
example 8.6 Sonata in A Major, D. 959, Andantino
a. Mm. 104–116
8va
104 8va 3
3
3 3
108
(chromatic wedge)
8va
111 6
cresc.
8va
114
3 3
3
b. Mm. 132–146
132
cresc.
139 5 4 3 2 1 6 5 4 3 2
further violent outbursts. The fourth time, however, the chordal shriek is re-
placed by a melodic call, an incipient lyrical transformation of motive x (ex.
8.6b, m. 132). In this new form, the motive that imparted its resonance to
the sonata’s opening returns in the wake of a climactic gesture remarkable for
the absence of any such resonance. The still violent left-hand chord that im-
mediately follows this melodic transformation of x now enhances the reso-
nance not of a chord but of a single tone, G#. Robert Hatten justifiably asso-
ciates the resonant e¤ect of this chord with the similar function of motive x
in the first movement.15 Thus, just as motive x, which originally enhanced a
chord, becomes melody, a chord itself takes over its resonance-enhancing role.
On its fifth try (ex. 8.6b, m. 141), the chord turns hushed and major, and the
melody of the recitative flowers into an expanded free elaboration of motive
a (mm. 140–146) that subtly recalls the first movement’s development theme
with a momentarily assuaging e¤ect (see fig. 8.1). The transition that follows
recalls the similar retransition in the Gb-Major Impromptu, a passage that I
have associated with recovery—there not from illness, perhaps, but certainly
from some calamity associated with a loss of innocence. Within this Andan-
tino, however, this recovery, although glimpsed, is not yet achieved.
The aftere¤ect of the violence is felt in the hypnotically layered texture
of the theme’s return. The relationship of the A-major phrase (m. 177) to
the first movement’s beginning—its derivation from motive x—becomes
transparently clear. In a cruel response to the innocent pleading of this tex-
turally simplified phrase, the truncated consequent surges up into a violent
cadence, even more curt than before. In the cadence’s aftermath, G dark-
ens the final melodic descent of the coda, as if the protagonist can no longer
even plead. The final chords expand on the desolate recollection of the di-
atonic wedge, the memory of the first movement’s opening.
As I have already argued in the prologue, the Scherzo exemplifies aspects of

Schubert’s music that can seem conceptually incompatible with one another:
on the one hand a quasi-improvisatory continuity, in which the music takes
new turns as if by chance; on the other a rich cyclic allusiveness, in which
everything that comes about through this seeming improvisation turns out
to be derived from what has come before.Thus the opening measures clearly
juxtapose motives x and y (see note 14 to the prologue), and measures 11
through 16 (see ex. P.1a) structure themselves upon a new variant of the di-
atonic wedge through their stepwise ascent in the bass against an implied
dominant pedal in the upper voices. The C major of the first movement’s
dream and the C# minor of the Andantino’s nightmare both return, as I have
indicated, without preparation, like direct emanations from realms of ex-
perience that are not merely di¤erent but are even dissociated from each
other. C major and C# minor thus come here not simply as the way stations
of an A-major tonal course, but in some respects appear as quasi-independent
tonal strata bearing distinct and complex memories.
Like A major itself, which in the first movement joins with its dominant,
E major, to form a single composite tonal domain, both C major and C#
minor can also be understood here as representatives of similarly compos-
ite domains. C major, arising in the first movement’s exposition and devel-
opment as the lowered submediant of E, is therefore linked with F major,
which takes the same role with respect to the tonic in the recapitulation and
coda. And C# minor, the only key to achieve any stability in the Andan-
tino’s middle section, is linked through a similar fifth relation to F# minor,
that movement’s main key. From the vantage point of the Scherzo, the en-
tire sonata can be seen as structured upon these three composite tonal strata,
which the Scherzo juxtaposes, as if to gain an overview of them for the first
time.
The trio (ex. 8.7) remembers the first movement even more transpar-
ently than does the Scherzo. Again it concerns itself with drawing lyrical
continuities from motives x and y in new ways. At its beginning, motive x
introduces melodic garlands around motive a, now in the major-mode har-
monization toward which the second period of the Andantino theme ges-
tured. The stepwise eighth notes of the garlands come straight from the first
movement’s second theme, but they now sound more tripping and less
tentative. At the double bar the mezzo forte exclamation almost literally re-
calls the first movement’s opening. With the sudden turn from A major to
F major in measure 93, motive x yields to motive y in a revelatory moment
of synthesis—a moment that through this reference to y acknowledges the
source of F major, like its close C-major relative, in the querying music of
the sonata’s second phrase at the same time that it juxtaposes A major and
example 8.7 Sonata in A Major, D. 959, Scherzo, mm. 80–101
1
Un poco più lento.
80
2
87 x
y
95 decresc.
F major as equals. The sudden return of the dominant seventh of A major

(m. 99), by rediscovering the Scherzo’s opening gesture, e¤ects a corre-
sponding return of motive x. Like the coda of the first movement, the re-
maining phrase of this trio momentarily tonicizes the subdominant in a mo-
ment of quiet lyrical a‹rmation, a moment in which the pitches C and C#
are melodically and harmonically integrated.
VI
The rising A-major arpeggiation, 3–5–8, with which the Rondo theme be-
gins (see ex. 8.1a) seems to arise directly from the falling arpeggiation,
8–5–3–1, with which the Scherzo ends. Similar echoes have linked the be-
ginning of each movement to the ending of the preceding one: the x-based
ostinato of the Andantino theme darkly echoes the accompanimental use of
the same motive in the first movement coda; later, the high rolled chord that
sets o¤ the Scherzo resonates with the low rolled chords that conclude the
Andantino; finally, this rising arpeggiation reverses—and complements—a
falling one.
The Rondo theme gathers together more motivic allusions than any other
thematic complex in the sonata (fig. 8.2). It begins with a new lyrical man-
ifestation of x, one that because of its held, syncopated second note also car-
ries echoes of y.16 Its second measure brings a new lyrical variant of z, one
that incorporates b at its original pitch level, from 8 to 7 and then immedi-
ately resolves it back to 8. I have described how the first phrase incorporates
the diatonic wedge on which the opening phrase of the sonata is constructed.
In the Rondo’s second phrase, the elaborated upper neighbor motion from
B in measure 7 (see ex. 8.1a) quite explicitly recalls the intervallically iden-
tical upper neighbor figure on E at the center of that original phrase (see
ex. 8.2a, mm. 3–4). The apex of the melody, which occurs just after the
double bar, structures itself, like motive a, upon an upper neighbor to 5 fol-
lowed by a fall to 2. Its cadential gesture, which rises from a repeated 2 to 3
and then falls through the same repeated figure to the tonic, echoes the grim
cadences of the Andantino (see ex. 8.4, mm. 15–18), transforming their
tense, death-haunted pulsation into life-a‹rming lyrical e¤usion. Every el-
ement that returns in this theme now arguably attains its most lyrical actu-
alization, its most self-possessed, unselfconsciously singing form.
The immediate repetition of this theme in the left hand beneath accom-
panying triplets in the right has an obvious and frequently cited precedent
in the finale, also a Rondo, of Beethoven’s Sonata in G Major, op. 31, no.1.
This is the first of several features that strongly suggest that Schubert mod-
eled this Rondo on Beethoven’s—indeed, the suggestion is so strong that
the modeling is now commonly assumed to be fact.17 The formal and tex-
tural development of Schubert’s finale follows Beethoven’s almost point-
for-point, but the sequence of events in the opus 31, no. 1, finale is logical
enough to allow for the possibility that Schubert might have hit upon it again
without remembering it explicitly—that in composing his A-major finale
he might have been working under the influence of subliminal, rather than
conscious, Beethovenian memories. If not, then Schubert’s composition of
this finale represents an improbable juggling act indeed: it contains an ear-
lier theme of his own in a movement modeled on Beethoven and yet still
contributes significantly, within its own context, to a cyclic conception. Im-
probable, although—I must add—certainly not impossible.
figure 8.2 Sonata in A Major, D. 959
Reduction of the Rondo theme

1
Motivic recollections
n b
‘Diatonic Wedge’ b
n
(cf. melody above)
x y z
i, second theme i, bass, mm. 13–16
Reduction of the Rondo theme

9 5 6 5 4 2 4 5 1 2 3 2 2 2 3 2 2 2 1
Motivic recollections
5 6 5 2 2 2 2 3 2 2 2 1
i, mm. 57–58 a ii, mm. 15–18
5 6 4 3 2 3
i, mm. 16–22
Whatever its claims on our belief, the assumption of this modeling tends
to discourage—although it certainly does not preclude—serious thought
about the relationship of this finale to the earlier movements of the sonata
that it completes. The arguments supporting the assumption encourage us
to accept the modeling process as a full explanation for Schubert’s compo-
sitional choices in this movement, but close attention to the Rondo reveals
its many ties to the first movement. In the opening of Schubert’s first move-
ment, material played by the right hand soon moves to the left (see ex. 8.2a,
mm. 16¤.), just as it does in the finale. Triplets are prominent near the be-
ginning of the first movement as well (although they occur there in oppo-
sition to the opening material rather than in conjunction with it). Much of
the music of the first movement’s exposition involves a conflict between
“objective” duplets and “subjective” triplets, a conflict whose memory lends
a special sense of peaceful integration to the supportive role of triplets
throughout so much of the finale. The Rondo imparts the sense that these
two opposing domains are finally reconciled with one another.
The flowing stream of triplets persists through a luxuriant, unproblem-
atic transition and then through all of the ensuing B section. The new B
melody (ex. 8.8) begins with a simple ringing forth of motive z before ris-
ing to its crest in motive a through eighth-note figures that recall those of
both the first movement’s second theme and the Scherzo’s trio. At the same
time, the way the 5-to-8 motion of its first eighth-note figure immediately
follows the z motive recalls, in calm transformation, the shape of the ges-
ture that initiates the turbulent developmental episode in the first movement’s
second group (see ex. 8.3, mm. 82¤.). Here, as in the first theme of the
Rondo, old motives return in flowing, lyrically consummated forms. The
phrases of this new B theme rhyme with each other: in each, the same
rhythms come in the same order. But this regularity masks a subtle irregu-
larity: three phrases rather than two or four, each of them five measures long.
This melody rings out as simply and unselfconsciously as a folk song, but it
achieves its e¤ect in part through this sophisticated freedom of phrase struc-
ture. Tonally it ranges freely as well, from the E major of the first phrase,
through a memory of the Andantino’s F# minor in its second phrase, to the
A major through which its third phrase lays that memory, for the moment,
to rest.
example 8.8 Sonata in A Major, D. 959, Rondo, mm. 46–51
46 z
5 6 5 3 2
49
Lulling codettas confirm this subdominant arrival, but then the new
melody begins again (m. 68), now in four-measure phrases that take the mu-
sic further in the subdominant direction, first to D major and then, were it
not for a cadential evasion, to G major. The evasion brings the music back
to E major for a full cadence. But it is immediately o¤ again: E major, E mi-
nor, again G major, and once again an evaded cadence, this time standing
on the dominant of E major, with a persisting minor shadow, for seven mea-
sures. The melody begins yet again, but it is for the first time in E minor
(m. 91). Now, instead of returning from the dominant to tonic, the first
harmonic progression of this new phrase is suddenly diverted to C major
(m. 92), to be held there, in tonic-dominant oscillation, for eleven mea-
sures. Much as in the first movement and the Scherzo, C major thus sud-
denly emerges without preparation and then persists in stalled motion. More
like a daydream than a night dream in this instance, the C-major passage
leads smoothly back into an exuberant E-major cadence (mm. 104¤.). Al-
though still improvisatory enough in character to remind us of its earlier ap-
pearances in those movements, C major feels far more integrated now than
ever before. The strong subdominant pull of the entire B section has indi-
rectly prepared for it: the progression from E major through A major and
D major to G major would have arrived at C major in one more step—and
the chromatic progression in measures 102 and 103 allows C major to be-
queath its dream-stirred magic to a jubilant E-major resolution.
The incorporation of the chromatic wedge into the continuing triplet
figuration of the retransition to the first theme (mm. 117–125) once again
betokens calm integration. With the return of the Rondo theme above the
still undulating triplets, the shadow reintroduced by the chromaticism
quickly passes. But the darkness is not yet over; it returns when the theme
moves again to the left hand and the triplets to the right (mm. 142¤.). The
theme now comes in the tonic minor, and it leads into a development that
ascends by fifth through minor keys, from A through E, B, and F# to C# mi-
nor. With mounting turbulence, this music heads back into the tonal terri-
tory of the middle section of the Andantino. But while the C# minor of that
nightmarish episode came about through a series of eerily and violently chro-
matic shifts, as if in the thrall of a sinister force, this time it is attained through
a sequence of quasi-logical, quasi-deliberate moves by ascending fifth. The
manner of its reemergence suggests a courageous return to the scene of an
earlier trauma, leading this time to mastery of it. At the climax of this episode,
after two turbulent C#-minor assays on the Rondo theme, motive z splits
registrally apart to become, in e¤ect, a powerful augmentation of x (mm.
180¤.). This passage, by at first invoking the diatonic wedge, produces an
e¤ect of splitting it open and thus, at last, gaining control over it.
As the climactic passage dies away, C# minor turns major, yet again re-
calling the Andantino. Now, in place of the F# minor that followed in that
movement, comes the theme itself of this movement in F# major, with a con-
current quieting of triplets into duplets. An aura of epiphany persists as the
consequent brings the harmony back to A major, allowing the tonic to re-
turn in the guise of a lowered submediant and thus for a moment to fuse
the dream associated with that altered degree with the reality associated with
the tonic.18
Schubert’s coda parallels Beethoven’s not only in the pauses that inter-
rupt the theme in its last occurrence but also in the ensuing presto and the
concluding chordal allusions to the first movement. Here, in this eccentric
coda more than anywhere else in Schubert’s finale, comes the most seem-
ingly incontrovertible evidence for its modeling on Beethoven’s template.
But even now certain striking aspects of Schubert’s coda, without an-
tecedent in Beethoven’s, respond to earlier events in this A-Major Sonata.
After its first pause (m. 332), the theme turns to A minor and then to F
major, paralleling the one change Schubert introduced into the recapitu-
lation of his first movement (mm. 220–225) and carrying an echo of the
coda of that movement (mm. 343–344). The way A major returns from F,
through the augmented sixth in measure 343, once again brings the low-
ered submediant into harmonic continuity with the tonic, in this way al-
lowing it finally to contribute its aura to the Rondo theme itself. In the
presto, not only F major but even Bb major is momentarily tonicized, and
a final allusion to C# minor—along with G# minor and F# minor—follows
moments later. The presto thus surveys the tonal range of the A-Major
Sonata one last time, sweeping it up into one gestural continuity. The very
ending of Schubert’s finale, in alluding explicitly to the first movement,
introduces a ploy at which Beethoven’s ending does hint—through its ref-
erence to the first movement’s successions of blocked G-major chords—
but at which it hints just barely.
VII
Not only in its theme but at every stage of its form, Schubert’s finale thus
returns to material from the earlier movements of the sonata in order to ren-
der this material more flowing, more lyrical, and more tonally integrated
with its A-major home. The B section draws three separate ideas from the
first movement—motive z, motive a, and a “four-eighths motive,” all of
which are, at first, hesitantly presented in that movement—together into
one unbroken melody (see ex. 8.8). At the same time it progresses har-
monically, through a succession of turns to the subdominant, toward the C
major that has previously always come without preparation. It appears with-
out preparation here as well, only much less so. The dramatic middle sec-
tion returns in a similar way—through minor-mode turns to the dominant—
to the C# minor of the Andantino’s “feverish paroxysm” (see ex. 8.6a), now
plotting a continuous, seemingly controlled course toward that key, making
a deliberate tonal goal out of what was previously a vortex. Finally, the coda
draws the A-Major Sonata’s disparate tonal regions—the tonal strata of A
major–E major, C major–F major, and F# minor–C# minor—together in
one place for one last time, making a final continuity of them while still ac-
knowledging their discontinuity.This finale is thus the capstone of what may
be Schubert’s most profoundly cyclic conception.
And yet Schubert drew this finale’s theme, probably knowingly, from one
of his own earlier sonatas and then supposedly modeled it on one of Bee-
thoven’s finales. How can this be? How can a movement so profoundly re-
sponsive to its own context be at the same time so derivative from outside
sources? Why would a composer, in approaching the culmination of an al-
ready elaborately cyclic conception, suddenly introduce thematic material and
even a formal plan of outside origin? Of all Schubert’s conceptions, this one
would seem one of the least likely to resort to such borrowing—unless, of
course, that borrowing was already part of Schubert’s original plan, already
in his thoughts as he began work on the sonata. Such it was with the “Wan-
derer” Fantasy and, seemingly, with the “Death and the Maiden” Quartet.
It must also have been so, more profoundly and obviously more subtly, with
this A-Major Sonata.
Let me propose the following scenario for the composition of this work—
one that renders it a “work” indeed, a deeply unified conception in itself,
but one that explicitly acknowledges Schubert’s indebtedness both to tradi-
tion and to his own earlier compositional experience by drawing in a com-
plex way on outside sources. Schubert recalls one of his own earlier themes,
which now comes back to him in an enchanting lyrical transformation.
Something about this new version of his theme reminds him of the finale
to Beethoven’s opus 31, no. 1: the resonance of its texture, perhaps, with its
held notes in the left hand, or the way its melody rises, within its opening
idea, to take lyrical possession of the tonic, or the way the approach to the
first semicadence incorporates the raised fourth degree. It occurs to him that
his own melody might work well as the theme of a movement like
Beethoven’s, and he sketches it out. As Beethoven’s movement is a finale,
so will Schubert’s be. The way Beethoven’s ending resonates with his first
movement sparks Schubert’s cyclic impulses, and their energy becomes all
consuming. From his own theme he not only derives a kind of Grundgestalt
for the material of his new sonata but also finds a form for it that will en-
able it to open and close the entire work. The original version of Schubert’s
opening, not yet enlivened by motive x, is accordingly even more abstract
than the sonata’s opening in its final form: it makes the scenario I am pro-
posing especially plausible. In building his sonata upon it, Schubert finds ways
to progress at first only tentatively, only gradually, towards more lyrical man-
ifestations of its motives. He arrives at a conception for which the Rondo
theme becomes a lyrical culmination, finally bringing all of its principal mo-
tives flowingly together in the home key for the first time.
Until its end, the Rondo feels seamless and self-contained in ways the ear-
lier movements do not. The puzzling, sometimes even violent disjunctions
in each of those movements leave open questions that the Rondo seems finally
to answer. For these reasons, the hypothesis that I propose here about how
Schubert composed this sonata makes sense even if Schubert did not know-
ingly reuse his own theme and even if he did not consciously model the
finale that begins with this theme on one of Beethoven’s.
VIII
I have described the sonata’s opening as objective, yet inscrutable. In its

athematicism it has more the character of an introduction to a movement
in sonata allegro form than of a main theme for such a movement. Not only
is its A major unambiguously clear, it also comes forth, through motive x,
assertively. But this is surely one of the most unsingable opening themes ever
composed within the Viennese Classical tradition. We know from the out-
set what the tonic is, but we cannot aurally take possession of it; it has no
melodically distinctive motivic shape that would articulate the tonic for us.
We know that A major is, but not what it is, except a functioning tonic. This
beginning is like a musical realization of the Kantian Ding an sich, a reality
whose existence we are forced to acknowledge but whose essence eludes
us. This simile might encourage us to interpret the course of the sonata as
a proto-Schopenhauerian advance of the Will upon the World, a turning
inside—through a gradual winning of lyrically contemplative depth—in or-
der to gain understanding and control of what lies outside.
With respect to Schubert’s own project of musical rediscovery and re-
building of himself in the aftermath of Winterreise, the A major of this sonata
is perhaps most aptly understood simply as home. At the beginning it is a
home that the protagonist who is individuated in the second phrase must
encounter and question: he cannot sing in it, and for this reason cannot fully
live in it. He explores his own imagination—his own subjectivity, his own
pleasure gardens—and derives new approaches to home from these explo-
rations. By the first movement’s end, its opening idea has already become
singable, and in this way it is far more accessible now than at first. A shadow
still hangs over this ending, however, a shadow whose menace overtakes the
second movement. As in “Mein Traum,” an exiled protagonist sings of love
and pain, but the horror of his exile overwhelms him and he has to cry out
in terror before he can sing again. The Scherzo, at least provisionally, returns
home, there a¤ording a vista from which the desired and the feared, the
dream and the responding nightmare, can be viewed together. But only the
Rondo takes full lyrical possession of home territory and finds ways within
that territory to embrace both the dream and the terror to which the dream’s
pursuit has led. The home that Schubert created in this finale is perhaps
utopian, but this is a utopia that he deeply wins and one, accordingly, that
comes to life as though it were animated by his own breath and blood.
c hap t e r 9
Schubert’s Last “Wanderer”

The Sonata in Bb Major, D. 960
In the Andante sostenuto of the Bb-Major Sonata, the sudden, quiet turn to
C major in the last section is a transfixing moment. After an A-major mid-
dle section that recalls the first movement both thematically and texturally,
the somber C#-minor theme of this slow movement returns (ex. 9.1a, mm.
90¤.). The ostinato has derived a new rhythmic figure and a new sense of
urgency from the accompanimental sixteenths of the middle section. The
chords that cling closely to the slow, almost unadorned melody still impart
to it their quiet intensity, while the new ostinato continues to create a sense
of an open, empty space into which the melody resonates as a lonely, search-
ing song. For thirteen measures the theme stays the same, melodically and
harmonically, as it was the first time. Then, suddenly, instead of moving to
its relative major, E, as it did before, it shifts to C major (m. 103). The mu-
sic is held in C, in what feels like a revelatory stilling of motion, for eight
measures. The melody of this new turn to C di¤ers only slightly but nev-
ertheless crucially from the E-major melody whose place it takes. The G#,
which before was held over from the C#-minor semicadence as 3 of E, now
slips down to G, 5 of C, and the melody becomes 5, 8–7–6, 6–6–5, 4–3–1.
In the context of this C#-minor song, what is revealed through this C-ma-
jor phrase may still seem remote and mysterious. But it will return later as
something real and close at hand: it will become the jubilant second theme
of the finale (ex. 9.1b).
The C# minor of this movement is, of course, the “Wanderer” key, and
237
example 9.1 Sonata in Bb Major, D. 960
a. Andante sostenuto, mm. 82–112
82 (end of b' 2 ) (B : evaded cadence)
84
87
dim.
90 A'
94
98
C: 5 8 7 6 6
101
cresc.
6 5 4 3 1
105
109
b. Allegro ma non troppo, mm. 85–94
5 8 7 6 6 5 5 4
85
90 4 3
the virtual quotation of the beginning of that song in the first movement
has created a context for hearing it as such.1 C major is also associated with
“Der Wanderer”: as I argued in chapter 3, the “Wanderer” Fantasy made it
the home against which C# minor comes into relief as a Fremdling region,
a scene of exile. And indeed, although nothing about this C-major moment
in the Bb-Major Sonata pointedly recalls “Der Wanderer” or the “Wanderer”
Fantasy, C major does feel here, in its suspension of harmonic motion, like
a profoundly peaceful, even maternal memory—like an idealized vision of
home. Even within the Andante sostenuto itself, this C-major passage proves
to be a turning point: its melody returns at the end to transform the C#-
minor ending into the major (mm. 123¤.), as if the e¤ect of the C-major
passage has been to show a way out of the minor. This moment at the
sonata’s center, so extraordinary in itself as to seem self-justifying, there-
fore has far-reaching import, a¤ecting both the subsequent course of its
own movement and the thematic character of the concluding movement.
II
Thus not only the first theme of the finale (see ex. 1.1a) but also the second
(ex. 9.1b) has its source in an earlier movement. Like the first, however, the
second theme di¤ers so markedly from its source in both articulation and
sense of motion that its derivation has gone virtually unrecognized.2 The
first theme not only originates in the sonata’s second phrase (see ex. 1.3,
mm. 14–16), as explained in chapter 1, but in essence transports the phrase
to this new site to foreground it as an opening theme. The octave G that in-
troduces the finale theme opposes itself to the memory of the Gb trill of the
first movement so categorically as to figure still a response to it: it leads now
rather than follows, as the trill did, and comes as a diatonic rejoinder—in
the foreground, solid and clear—to a chromatic foil, originally in the back-
ground, trembling and mu›ed. The G brings the elusive power of the Gb
trill under control while finding its own release from obsessiveness through
the Gb itself.
As just suggested, the second theme of the finale originates in a passage
that suggests a haven away from the C# minor of the slow movement. Inas-
much as that key can be said ultimately to arise from the first movement’s
trill (through a Gb–F#–C# “trajectory”), the e¤ect of the sudden turn of this
passage from C# minor to C major also implicates the memory of the trill;
it envisions, but does not yet achieve, a release from the C# minor—the
“Wanderer” key—to which the trill’s Gb has indirectly given rise. In its re-
turn in the finale, this melody celebrates that escape, the “overcoming of
the Sonata’s dolens” first registered by the finale’s opening theme, as some-
thing now realized.3 As Rosen has written of the trill, “the more one plays
it, the more the entire work seems to arise out of that mysterious sonor-
ity.”4 It is through the exploration of that sonority and its implications that
the figure of the wanderer enters into Schubert’s last sonata; and it is through
the memory and the mastering of that sonority that that figure wins his way
home.
III
In itself, the emphasis of Gb in a Bb-major piece—even if prolonged—is noth-

ing extraordinary. By Schubert’s time, the use in the major of the sixth scale
degree borrowed from the parallel minor had become one of the most com-
mon of chromatic inflections. At the beginning of the Bb-Major Sonata, how-
ever, Schubert draws not only on textural, dynamic, and registral resources
but also on subtler rhythmic ones to make the first appearance of the Gb into
what Kerman calls a “mysterious, impressive, cryptic Romantic gesture.”5
Thus Schubert not only emphasizes the Gb through a trill, as soft and low as
possible, but he introduces it into a subtly disoriented thematic complex,
one that has already begun to lose its way, rhythmically and melodically.
The second subphrase, the one to which the trill belongs, begins by revers-
ing the pattern of rhythmic stress established in the first subphrase (see ex.
1.3, mm. 5–9). It then extends the following motion in quarter notes so that
the melodic goal, C, arrives not on a downbeat, like the earlier long notes,
but in mid-measure. Through this manipulation of phrase rhythm, Schubert
finds a context for his mysterious gesture that makes its Gb not merely a col-
oristic element, but a seemingly portentous one. The trill—Schubert’s par-
ticular trill, so low, so hushed, so close to stopping time—reconfigures a
common chromatic inflection, the lowered sixth degree, as something ex-
traordinary. The Gb emerges beneath the first semicadence as a harbinger of
s c h u b e r t ’s l a s t “ wa n d e r e r ” 241
something outside or beyond what is implied by the theme itself, something
fascinating in both its allure and its danger.
After a consequent that incorporates the Gb into a chromatically descending
bass, the pianissimo trill comes immediately again (see ex. 1.3, m. 19). Be-
ginning now on Bb, it immediately shades the tonic with a Cb neighbor; by
itself it draws the music, without recourse to modulatory harmony, into its
own Gb territory. The theme comes again now in a variant beginning with
the same opening Bb, but as 3 instead of 1, over a Gb tonic pedal that lasts for
sixteen measures. It is as if a protagonist individuates himself through the
trill to make a first, charmed exploration of the Gb-major territory. The mu-
sic reemerges from this Gb major into a seeming rea‹rmation of Bb, played
forte over a dominant pedal. But now the Bb-major cadence is denied: Bn
takes the place of its Bb melodic resolution over an ambiguous diminished
seventh harmony (ex. 9.2, m. 45). After hovering with growing tension on
this harmony for three measures, the music is plunged into F# minor.
In Schubert’s first sketch of this movement, more of the Bb-major mu-
sic returned, and it came to a second full tonic cadence like the one at measure
18 (see ex. 1.3). Another Bb to Cb trill, just like the first one but twice as
long, led directly into an F# minor as harmonically unprepared as the ear-
lier turn to Gb major. In this first version, Schubert thus made the paral-
lelism of F# minor to Gb major completely explicit, so that the F# minor af-
ter the second full cadence literally took the place that Gb major had taken
after the first. The final version somewhat conceals the relationship of this
F# minor to Gb major and hence to the Gb trill, but at the same time it makes
this new key more powerful in its emergence from the thwarting of the sec-
ond tonic cadence. In the final version, once the protagonist has been to Gb
major he cannot take part any longer in a Bb-major cadence. Instead he is
drawn back into the territory of the Gb itself, which has suddenly turned
darkly minor. Like the protagonist of “Mein Traum,” he is cast out—not for
rejecting his father’s garden of delights, but for already venturing into his
own—and he begins to search and to wander.
The first F#-minor phrase already gestures toward A major, but it is pulled
back to F# minor in its fifth measure (ex. 9.2, m. 53). Its consequent reaches
A major (m. 58), but the ensuing music immediately takes a vacillating course
that ultimately returns through Bb (m. 70) to another resolution-evading B
(cf. m. 72 with ex. 9.2, m. 45), this one finally resolving to the dominant
42
45 (B : evaded cadence)
decresc. cresc.
(transition theme)
48
f minor v
51
cresc. decresc.
V7 /A V65/f
of F major. This emergence reverses, for the moment, the e¤ect of the ear-
lier plunge, from the same B over the same diminished seventh, into F# mi-
nor. Thus this first short journey, although vacillating, does reach a com-
fortingly familiar goal: the dominant of the dominant.
The dancing music that celebrates this arrival in F major (ex. 9.3a, mm.
80¤.) unfurls garlands of triplets over the long–short–short rhythm (hence-
forth motive w) already implicitly present in the F#-minor theme (I shall call
its form in that theme, beginning with a dotted quarter and an eighth in
place of the simpler half note, motive v). The new dance swells into six-
measure phrases, and the shadow of the F# that appears in the fifth measure
(m. 84) immediately passes in the sixth. When the phrase comes again, at
example 9.3 Sonata in Bb Major, D. 960, Molto moderato
a. Mm. 76–85
8va
76
V/F
8va
79 B
w
83
b. Mm. 99–134
v
K
99
102
cresc.
106
(continued)
8va
111
decresc.
115 1
2 (development)
118
ritard. (A theme)
121
(continued)
(“transition theme”)
125
129
(B theme)
132
first with the hands reversed, the emergence and passing of the shadow is
echoed and reechoed, almost bringing the dance to a halt. The phrase ca-
dences a‹rmingly nonetheless, leading into a closing theme that attempts
to transform the F#-minor theme into a comforting a‹rmation (ex. 9.3b,
mm. 99–100, recall the melody of the transition; see ex. 9.2, m. 49), but
stammers again and again. By delving into darker harmonies and reemerg-
ing from them, this closing theme seems to reach an a‹rmation in the ex-
tension of motive v through an additional long note (mm. 106–107). The
echoings of this extension, in their lack of melodic resolution, only cast doubt
on the seeming a‹rmation. The exposition ends, to an unusual degree, in
an aura of questioning hesitation.
IV
The first ending of the exposition, the transition back to the beginning, only
makes this questioning more radical—even astonishingly so.The slurred pairs
of sixteenth notes that initiate it stir memories, already turned fragmentary,
of the slurs in the dancing F-major theme (ex. 9.3a, mm. 80¤.). The fol-
lowing pianissimo short–short–long gesture reverses motive w, already los-
ing hold of the initially a‹rmative extension of that motive in measures 106
through 115 (ex. 9.3b). In its hesitancy and fragmentation, this passage reflects
the uncertainty of the resolution just achieved. Perhaps in anxious response
to this uncertainty, it grows quickly agitated, exploding into a violent chordal
outburst that is immediately followed, just as violently, by the Gb trill. Any-
one who has doubted the danger of the trill can doubt it no longer. Be-
neath its enigmatic allure it harbors an elemental and potentially annihilat-
ing force.
The second ending, as stilled as the first was violent, is nonetheless al-
most as shocking. With devastating simplicity, it merely isolates and echoes,
in remote C#-minor harmony, the last short–short–long gesture, as if sud-
denly taking the protagonist back into exile. This fall from F major into C#
minor parallels and echoes the earlier fall from Bb major into F# minor. In
this key comes the opening theme, not in its first strain but in its second—
the version beginning on the third scale degree, originally in Gb major: the
one through which, on my account, this protagonist first individuates him-
self. Not only the first theme but also the F#-minor theme itself (ex. 9.3b,
mm. 126¤.) returns in this tonally remote interlude, in which these themes
of the exposition appear drawn together in meditative recollection. At the
deceptive cadence (m. 131) comes the additional recollection of the danc-
ing theme (from m. 80; ex. 9.3a), which soon initiates a new tonal explo-
ration. The first stage of the journey, animated by a triadically ascending
version of motive w, passes from A major through G# minor, B major, and
Bb minor to arrive at a Db-major climax, an optimistic brightening of the
C#-minor region in which this development began. This arrival, which re-
verses the exposition’s darkening sequence from Gb major to F# minor, sig-
nals itself through a dynamic climax and the cessation of motive w in the
left hand, which firmly resolves into a Db-major tonic chord. The climactic
triplet arpeggio descends into a calmly repeated bass Db that resonates by it-
self for a full measure, thus also marking the climactic arrival as a gateway,
a new beginning. This resonating Db opens the space for a new theme, one
that brings the upward-moving arpeggiation of motive w for the first time
into the right hand as its head motive (see ex. 9.4).
With this departure from the C#-minor territory by way of a new Db-
major theme, the music embarks on further exploration. The second phrase
of this theme moves to E, and it is here, beginning with an E-major triad
followed by an A-minor one (ex. 9.4, mm. 159–160), that motive w dis-
closes its identity by virtually quoting the opening measures of “Der Wan-
derer.” In the wake of this disclosure, the music begins a modulatory tra-
jectory that takes it through six keys to D minor in only twice as many
measures (mm. 159–171)—as if its protagonist were venturing forth as a
wanderer into uncharted territory. In this D minor, harmonic motion is sud-
denly stilled, and in this key comes another new theme, once again based
on w, the same “Wanderer” motive.
D minor arrives as the culmination of the most agitated, thickly textured,
tonally complex, and sustained buildup in the movement. This key is of
course closely related to Bb major, the home key, but it comes only as the
last in a series of chromatic modulations (from F minor through Ab minor
and B minor) in which no key is closely related to the ones that precede and
follow it. Even someone reading and recognizing this D minor will proba-
bly not hear it as close to home—despite the coherence of the voice lead-
ing through which it comes about—but rather as lost. It seems cut o¤ from
any tonal mooring, neither close to home nor recognizably far from it. The
theme that this unique climax introduces carries the obvious memory of the
Db-major theme that marked the only distinctive point of arrival earlier in
the development. It also carries more subliminal memories of events that
originate in the first moment of agitated tonal disorientation—the sudden
deflection of the cadence of the first theme into F# minor (see ex. 9.2, m.
48). As already indicated, the first measures of the F#-minor theme are al-
ready structured on motive v, a variant of w, whose evolution I have traced
through the dancing F-major theme, the closing theme, and the journey-
ing passages of the development. In phrase structure, this new D-minor
theme revisits the six-measure pattern, motivically three plus three, of the
dancing theme (see ex. 9.3a, mm. 80¤.). Harmonically, it shares with the
F#-minor theme (see ex. 9.2, mm. 49¤.), also the source of its rhythmic im-
pulse, an ambiguous oscillation between a minor key and its relative major.
Both themes withhold any unambiguous suggestion of the direction of their
resolution until the moment of its occurrence. The F#-minor theme finally
149
153
157
cf. “Der Wanderer, ” beginning

160
cresc.
164
167
(continued)
169
cresc.
171
174
179
184
189
193
198
8va
203
207 8va
3
211
decresc.
215
sempre legato
cadences in A major, initiating the wanderer’s first search, a tonally indirect
and vacillating transition to F major. But here at the development’s climax,
this D-minor theme remains in D, deepening its own stillness by not re-
sponding to the pull of its penultimate chord to F. And when, in the echo
of the first D-minor phrase, the cadential dominant of F major falls back to
a D-minor chord a second time, the stage is set for yet another D-minor
phrase. Only at this moment—with tonal motion stilled, the wanderer sim-
ply waiting—does the trill return. It returns on D, confirming D as tonic
through sheer reiteration.
Into this setting, now following the trill rather than preceding it, the open-
ing theme of the sonata returns (ex. 9.4, mm. 188¤.). Its melody is inter-
vallically exactly that of the opening strain, but in coming after the trill and
beginning on the third degree of the scale, it is closer in feeling to the sec-
ond strain, the one first heard in Gb major. Improvising a version of this pas-
sage in which the return of the theme begins instead with the tonic reveals
at once how crucially the melodic emphasis on the third degree a¤ects its
feeling. It still feels more like the song of the exiled protagonist, the lonely
wanderer, than like the theme in its more choral, more angelic initial form.
The texture, too, is soloistic, like that of the second strain’s first, still angelic
occurrence. It is also similar to that of the theme’s return (also in minor and
on the third degree) at the beginning of the development, only it is now
accompanied by concentrated repeated chords rather than by fluid arpeg-
giations. The six-measure spans established through the first two D-minor
phrases now incorporate both trill and theme. A second low trill on D ends
in a descent to Bb, alluding to the home key without really going there, with-
out changing the trill’s E to Eb, and without a harmonically realized mod-
ulation. The first strain, the theme in its original form with its melody cen-
tering on the Bb “tonic,” now returns in the same soloistic texture. The Gb
in its harmonization keeps it at an allusive distance from D minor. The con-
clusion of a third trill rolls the Bb back up into the D, and the D-minor set-
ting of the second strain comes back to frame the first. Under its last note
(m. 203), the expected D-minor chord gives its place to the dominant of
Bb, at first only in inversion. Only through a chromatic descent to yet an-
other trill, echoed by still another, does this harmony regain the bass note
F, its root, that it needs to set the stage for recapitulation.
The quiet chordal accompaniment of this passage, its predominantly still
or only chromatically stepwise bass, and its slowly unfurling succession of
six-measure phrases in D minor all contribute to an impression of hushed
expectancy. The contrast with the constant exploratory harmonic motion
and the more rhythmically and contrapuntally active textures of the pre-
ceding music only deepens and intensifies the stillness of this passage. This
cessation of motion contrasts too markedly with all that has come before
(fig. 9.1) to be a restful stillness; instead it is a stillness that awaits an epiphany.
In the return of the first strain, opening like a window of memory upon
the sonata’s beginning, it is as if the trill whose allure led to the protago-
nist’s exile has now returned to show him a way back, in a first intimation
of that epiphany. This memory makes possible a further revelatory moment
(m. 203), the moment when the home dominant takes the place of the D-
minor chord at the end of the following phrase, bringing a yet quieter calm
and an actual return to the opening theme in its original form.
In the recapitulation, the most marked change from the exposition
achieves an emblematic moment of integration of the disparate tonal re-
gions of the sonata in measures 235 through 266 (an integration of this
kind also marks the recapitulation of the A-Major Sonata). After begin-
ning in Gb, as before, the second strain flows directly into F# minor and
then to A major, bringing back the theme over a tonic rather than a dom-
inant pedal. Perhaps the protagonist now grasps more fully the implications
of his fascination with the trill, the F# minor that its Gb major, in the world
of this sonata, necessarily implies. The reflective coda (mm. 336¤.) once
again integrates first F# and then Gb, but now they are simple chromatic
inflections, assimilated memories of disturbance rather than full reenact-
ments of it. The final refrain, in its three short subphrases, reiterates one
last time the idea of a melodic strain beginning on the tonic framing an-
other one beginning on the third scale degree. Now the two strains share
both harmony and texture, as if able at least to imagine belonging fully to-
gether. A final return of the trill still haunts the final cadence. As in the A-
Major Sonata, a mysterious element, both alluring and disturbing, comes
to rest through this gesture. But it still casts a shadow over the movement’s
ending, one reflected in both the key and the melodic character of the move-
ment that will follow.
figure 9.1 Sonata in Bb Major, D. 960: Diagram of the First Movement (Molto Moderato)
“Sonata
Nomenclature” Exposition Development
Second Closing
First group Transition group theme
Thematic material A1 A2 A1 B1 C1 B2 A2 B1 C1 C2 —
Principal key areas (1)∗ (2)∗ (3)∗ EM

CM
BbM GbM BbM F#m → FM FM C#m continuous DbM Abm
→ modulations Bm
Dm
Individuation Quest for Quotation of
of Protagonist reinclusion “Der Wanderer”
Stage of narrative Opening chorus Banishment Memory and W

of protagonist reflection I
in exile L
Way D
station; E
entrance to R
hallowed N
place E
S
S
∗ (1) Departure from tonic; (2) Establishment of dominant; (3) Departure from dominant; (4) Reestablishment of tonic
Even though the Andante sostenuto is a new movement, the juxtaposition

of its first C#-minor chord with the first movement’s final Bb-major chord
is striking enough to compel us to hear it as a progression, one that echoes
the unsettling moves to F# minor and C# minor within the first movement
itself. But this new beginning, which introduces at the same moment the
unadorned C#-minor harmony and its mournful, intensely simple melody,
makes an even starker e¤ect than those earlier moves. A sense of loss, or
even of a fall from grace, comes to its most intense expression at this mo-
ment. The distance of C# minor from Bb major is felt here with the great-
est possible immediacy; this, like the Adagio of the “Wanderer” Fantasy, is
the song of a Fremdling.
Recapitulation
Second Closing
Retransition First group Transition group theme Coda
C3 A2 A1 A2 A1 A2 A1 B1 C1 B2 A1
(4)∗
GbM
Dm V/Bb BbM ↓ BbM Bm → BbM BbM BbM
F#m
Epiphany
No man’s
land; memory
of beginning
At the end of chapter 3, I associated the opening of this movement with

the stanza of “Der Wanderer” that so literally returns at the heart of the fan-
tasy. Its accompanimental ostinato only deepens the association: it is a new
variant of motive w, the long–short–short “Wanderer” rhythm, a variant
that opens, time and time again, onto the empty space implied by its silence
in every third beat. As in the Andantino of the A-Major Sonata, the melody
that slowly rises into that space is made up of sighs—falling two-note ges-
tures that recall the first movement’s beginning and also, more tellingly, the
trill and its resolution. Indeed, this Andante’s first two melodic pitches, G#
and F#, first come to the sonata through that trill, as its very first Gb and Ab.
The trill has just come again as a lingering shadow in the first movement’s
final gesture, one that reveals itself also to have been a foreshadowing of this
Andante’s beginning.
As is widely acknowledged, the same three-phrased melodic arch comes
twice, but in di¤erent and complementary, even opposite, harmonizations.
The first phrase—the longest one of the three—rocks slowly over a tonic
pedal, each of its sighing gestures filling two measures. For the second phrase
the bass moves to a dominant pedal, and the succession of sighs quickens
and rises, culminating on G# an octave higher than the melody’s beginning.
It holds still there for an additional measure. Then, without mediation, the
harmony suddenly shifts from the dominant of C# minor to the tonic of E
major in first inversion, and the melody falls back, down through the G#
octave to a gentle tonic E. Only in this third phrase does the harmony move,
peacefully changing in each measure to articulate a simple cadential pro-
gression. Now the melody begins again, this time in E major. First comes
the longer phrase, the slowly rocking one, over an E pedal; then the quicker
ascent, a measure shorter than before, over the dominant of E; and finally
the restful fall of the melody over cadential harmony, now back in C# mi-
nor. Two great, nearly identical melodic arches: the first beginning in C#
minor and emerging into E, the second taking up this E major but then
falling, finally, back to C# minor. What musical pattern could correspond
more perfectly to the singing-in-exile of “Mein Traum”—to its pain turn-
ing to love, and its love to pain?
Two codetta phrases bring this thematic complex to a somber close, and
then the middle section begins with almost as little preparation (ex. 9.5a) as
the opening of the movement. The music is suddenly in A major over a
constant sixteenth-note ostinato; the melody distinctly recalls the opening
theme of the first movement, both in the melodic shape and harmony of
its antecedent and in the tonicization of the supertonic (here B minor) in
its consequent. After the repeat of this first period as a figural variation (mm.
51–58) comes a harmonically exploratory continuation that touches again
on B minor before moving on to D major, but then falling suddenly into
Bb major, the key of the first movement (ex. 9.5b, m. 63). At first the allu-
sion to Bb major holds no distinct echo of the first movement, but one soon
comes to it. In measure 66 a cadential melodic resolution to Bb is diverted
to Bn, just as in measure 45 of the first movement (see ex. 9.2). This with-
held resolution recalls the precipitating crisis of the first movement, the mo-
ment when the Gb-major harmony that was first introduced by the trill re-
turns catastrophically as F# minor. In the Andante sostenuto this first
example 9.5 Sonata in Bb Major, D. 960, Andante sostenuto
a. Mm. 38–50
38
42 B b1
45
48
b. Mm. 57–75
(end of b 1 )
57 b2
decresc.
60
cresc.
(continued)
63
66 (B : evaded cadence)
cresc.
70
cresc.
73
decresc.
memory of the catastrophe passes; instead of becoming an E# as it did in the

first movement, the F in the bass of measure 66 (ex. 9.5b) falls to the E of
measure 67 in a one-measure extension of the phrase, and the A-major
melody of this middle section returns in measure 68.This return of the theme
of this B section (making its underlying formal scheme a rounded binary
with written-out repeats) introduces a further harmonic exploration: the an-
tecedent comes as before, but the consequent (mm. 72¤.) answers it in the
minor. A minor leads powerfully to C major before A major can return.
Paralleling the varied repeat of the middle section’s opening period in
measures 51 through 58, a similar variation of the second portion of its
rounded binary form begins in measure 76. But this time the theme never
returns to complete the formal scheme; instead, the withholding through
Bn of the Bb-major cadence in measure 83 extends itself into a further echo
of the first movement, an actual return of the F#-minor harmony (see ex.
9.1a, m. 85). This harmony, which turns out to be a subdominant, is su-
perseded by the dominant of C# minor in a transition back to the move-
ment’s opening theme. This theme itself thus becomes linked to the first F#-
minor crisis in the first movement and so to the trill in which that F# minor
has its origin. The measure of silence at the transition’s end makes the re-
turn of the theme feel at first as concentrated in its stillness as it was the first
time. But the new ostinato, which draws the sixteenths of its upbeat figure
from the accompaniment of the middle section, mitigates the austerity of
the “Wanderer” rhythm of this movement’s opening by bringing some sense
of mobility to a figure that was all but immobile before.
It is from this heightened sense of mobility that the Andante’s most time-
stopping gesture arises, its sudden, breath-catching turn to C major. One
can call this a transfixing moment in a musically literal sense: the leading
tone, B#, is held in suspension instead of either resolving up to C# or im-
mediately sliding down, as if it were a C, to B, as it did before (m. 14). The
B# is literally transfixed as an illusory tonic, as if pierced through and held
fast by the memory of a distant time or place.
Is this tonality C major, or is it B# major? It begins as B#, as a prolonga-
tion of the leading tone of C# minor; but the ensuing return of E-major
harmony after eight measures turns it into C major. The bass descends to B,
and the first E-major phrase returns over a dominant pedal instead of the
tonic pedal that accompanied it the first time. E major comes with more
preparation than before because of the bass progression from C to B that
now introduces it. It also arrives with more urgency because of the domi-
nant pedal. The movement is nearing its end, however, and its melody must
return again to C# minor. This melodic arch corresponds to the second of
the two great arches in the first A section. The first of those arches ended
before in E major, but in the return of the A section, C major has replaced
E major in a turn so unexpected that it has the e¤ect of making a new be-
ginning and thus displacing the completion of the first arch. The C#-major
return of the first C-major phrase at the movement’s end redresses the im-
balance arising from that withheld completion. By bringing back this C-
major phrase in the tonic, it allows that phrase to take on the concluding
role that it could not assume the first time. At the same time, by coming
immediately after the concluding phrase of the second arch, whose func-
tion it now mimics, this C#-major phrase amends, and in e¤ect replaces, the
C#-minor phrase rather than merely following it. A transfixing moment thus
returns as a transfiguring one.
VI
The Scherzo begins by transforming into dance the theme of the first move-
ment (ex. 9.6a). The repeat of its melody, now in the left hand, takes an un-
usual turn: it cadences in the subdominant.This sudden turn to the subdomi-
nant is only the first impatient move in a winged modulatory trajectory—it
is a premature diversion, before the double bar, of the Scherzo’s tonal course.
After the double bar, the music moves through a rapid series of modulations
to Db major. Then, having arrived in Db, it suddenly stands still (ex. 9.6b,
mm. 35¤.).The music has settled for the moment, with an expectant height-
ening of attention, in Db major, the key in which the slow movement
ended—a key thus associated with the trill and with the crisis of subjectiv-
ity to which it leads, although it is here playfully integrated into Bb-major
surroundings.
In measure 47 the Db-major melody begins a second time, but this time
its first subphrase culminates on the minor subdominant—notated as F#—
rather than the major one to which it led the first time. The second culmi-
nation apes the first in a sudden accent on the first of three staccato, regis-
trally highlighted chords and in two additional measures that mark time in
ländler rhythm, allowing the highlighted harmony simply to resonate. The
Gb-major–to–F#-minor sequence of these two high points recalls the emer-
gence in the same order of these two harmonies as remote key centers—
the first alluring, the second threatening—at the beginning of the first move-
ment. Here they are playfully brought into relief and juxtaposed as equals,
and an idiosyncratic but charmed and untroubled path is opened from F#
minor back to Bb major. The last turn in this path, which leads back to the
home key, is quietly exhilarating. Instead of resolving in any customary way,
the diminished triad in measures 64 through 67 lets its bottom B slip back
down to the A# from which it came, now as the root of a Bb-major triad,
example 9.6 Sonata in Bb Major, D. 960, Scherzo
a. Mm. 1–8
Allegro vivace con delicatezza.
b. Mm. 35–72
IV = G
35
decresc.
41
iv (= f m)
48
54
sempre
60
(continued)
67
cresc. un poco
c. Mm. 91–108
91 Trio.
97
cresc.
103
to be rejoined, a measure later, by the opening strain that e¤ortlessly restores

to this Bb its tonic identity. This retransition thus recalls the moments in both
the first and second movements when Bn takes the place of Bb in cadential
progressions to divert the music’s tonal course into F#-minor and C#-minor
territory (see ex. 9.2, mm. 45¤. in the first movement; and ex. 9.1a, mm.
83¤. in the second). Here, the shift from B back to Bb reverses those earlier
progressions, literally correcting the Bn and thus recovering Bb major in the
wake of a momentary recollection of F# minor. In the return of the Scherzo’s
opening theme, the subdominant that has opened a way back into the Db/C#
region moves forward to begin the second phrase, so that the theme can ca-
dence firmly, this last time, in the tonic.
The Db major that arrives in the middle of the Scherzo is emphasized not
only through its accented chords and its phrase-extending silences but also
simply through its duration. The music remains unambiguously in Db for
over twenty measures—longer here than in any other key, even the tonic.
As I have suggested, the music returns to the enchanting but also dangerous
C#/Db territory explored in the first two movements, but it makes no ges-
tural reference to either of these movements until the shift from B to Bb in
the retransition. Further gestural reference comes only in the Bb-minor trio.
Here the opening, close-position Bb-minor chord, with its fifth in the top
voice, recalls the disposition of the opening sonority of the slow movement,
while the detached left-hand notes, parodying the ostinato of that move-
ment, also recall the opening ascending third and the Gb-F trill motive in
the first movement. Db-major and Gb-major chords now come a phrase later,
gathering around the double bar; the shift from Bb minor to Db major in
measure 97 (ex. 9.6c) has the same touching immediacy as the turn from C#
minor to E major at measure 14 of the Andante. Soon after, a C-major chord
leads directly into an Ab-major chord (mm. 104–105) in another veiled
recollection of the coloristic alchemy in the slow movement that takes G#
major, the dominant of C# minor, to C major. Like the Scherzo of the A-
Major Sonata, this one thus draws together memories of the two preceding
movements, surveying a divided realm in the hope of making it whole.
VII
The juxtaposition of the finale’s struck G (see ex. 1.1a) to the quietly re-
ceding Bb-major ending of the Scherzo is certainly startling, but it is not the
only unsettling juxtaposition brought by a movement’s beginning to the Bb-
Major Sonata. As I have argued, the first C#-minor chord of the Andante
sostenuto, immediately following the final Bb-major chords of the first move-
ment, is at least as disturbing, even though much more quiet. Perhaps the
initially aggressive G that opens the finale and abruptly establishes the key
of C minor responds to the memory of the sudden and stark G# that begins
the slow movement’s melody in the same register.
Like that earlier beginning, this one is nonetheless subtly prepared by the
ending and by earlier events of the preceding movement. From the very be-
ginning of the Scherzo, the G enters into the melody instead of remaining
in an inner voice as it did in the theme of the first movement. Toward its
end, a tonicized C-minor harmony contributes its weight, in a strengthen-
ing of the supertonic as a predominant (mm. 81–82), to the final cadence.
Finally, the diminutive coda of the Scherzo at last brings to a halt the move-
ment’s nearly unceasing rhythmic activity through its simple, expiring
chords—a halt so sudden and so brief as to require a more commanding,
more arresting gesture before new motion can begin. The descent by thirds
in the lowest voice of those chords takes its next, if surprising, step through
the G that now announces the finale—just the sort of commanding, arresting
gesture that is required.
Like the beginning of the slow movement, the beginning of the finale
may at first make the impression of an unsettling move away from the Bb
major of the ending it immediately follows. But unlike that earlier begin-
ning, this one almost immediately returns to the sonata’s home key. This
new beginning resonates just enough with the slow movement’s beginning
to make this into the finale’s first gesture of homecoming, a response to that
earlier opening as an emblem of exile.
Superficially the entire opening thematic complex of this finale makes an
impression of tonal instability, but there is no deep-seated instability in its
harmonic digressions. Every return to Bb major is both unambiguous and
strongly confirmed through a perfect authentic cadence. The tonal instabil-
ity is only a shadow play in which the nontonic keys of C minor, G minor,
and Ab major serve as foils that ultimately only underscore the tonal mes-
sage of homecoming that this finale seems intent on conveying. This move-
ment is not merely in Bb major; it is concerned with bringing the music fully
back to this key from the tonal journey—a journey that soon became exile—
to which the Gb trill has given rise.
The second theme (see ex. 9.1b) celebrates that homecoming in a joy-
ous and dancing song. In contrast to the opening theme, this theme explores
only one subordinate tonic: D, its diatonic sixth degree. With only one ca-
dential interruption close to its beginning, this theme fills nearly seventy
measures with a constant flow of even quarter notes and accompanying
inner-voice sixteenths, while the o¤beat eighths keep stirring in the left hand,
coming to rest only in the refrains, in order to make them into quiet cul-
minations. By so strongly emphasizing the diatonic sixth degree, this theme
aligns itself with the movement’s first theme, but by avoiding the Db that
would here correspond to the Gb of the first theme, the second theme is
able to achieve a greater distance from the aura of the trill than the first theme
could.
Instead of a cadence, two measures of silence. Then a fortissimo F-minor
chord (m. 156), coming as abruptly as this movement’s opening G. Then a
violent succession of F-minor chords in dotted rhythm, leading, again
abruptly, to a return of the Gb as a Gb-major chord that immediately overflows
into swirling scales that especially dramatize it. The continuing violence of
the ensuing stormy F-minor interlude has only two precedents in the sonata,
both of them in the first movement and both closely linked with the trill:
first, the shocking first ending of the exposition, which culminates so rap-
idly in the fortissimo return of the trill; second, the D-minor climax in the
development, which occurs shortly before the trill returns quietly in almost
its original form. The strongly emphasized Gbs in this passage of the finale
(mm. 160–165, 174) still respond to the power of the trill, but both times
they signal mastery over that power by incorporating the Gb into ascending
chromatic progressions that contrast with its original descending resolution.
After struggling upward from F minor into Db-major harmony, the episode
accordingly calms and turns major, transforming the angry dotted rhythm
into the sprightly gestures of a pastoral dance.
The theme proceeds, in its return, fundamentally as before: two phrases
that move from C minor to Bb major lead into a playful phrase based on a
falling triadic pattern. But when that phrase veers once again to G minor,
no struck G comes to the rescue. Instead the music continues in G minor
(mm. 256¤.), in a turbulent development that makes the chromatic caden-
tial figure its head motive, pitting it in double counterpoint against a vari-
ant of the opening theme. At first the turbulence stays close to G minor,
but when swirling triplets come to the bass, the harmony also becomes un-
stable. Suddenly the music is back in Bb; the triplets billow gently in the right
hand over the melody, now calm, in the left. Once again the home key beck-
ons, as if from a distance rather than being fully present, but by this point
the allusion has become more playful than imploring—more like being at
home, remembering that one could once only long for it, than like being
example 9.7 Sonata in Bb Major, D. 960, Allegro ma non troppo, mm. 488–514
488
494
501
Presto.
508
cresc.
in exile again. After eight measures of becalmed tonic allusion, Gb major

bursts in, bringing back the same double counterpoint heard in G minor at
the beginning of this episode.
Through its dramatization first of G minor and then of Gb major, this
episode composes out the bass progression of the finale theme that the G
always announces, the progression already brought subtly into play, so long
ago, in the second phrase of the first movement. In the wake of this episode,
the return of the G, although ostensibly exactly the same as before, seems
becalmed—more a quotation than a full reenactment. This G returns only
once again, after the entire second thematic complex has again come and
gone. This last time, tellingly, it loses for the first time its forte-piano dy-
namic marking, retaining in that marking’s stead only a simpler and meeker
accent (ex. 9.7, mm. 491–492). This last return of the theme is no longer a
real return but instead only a coda whose point of departure is the dissolu-
tion of that theme. Its first, C-minor strain trails o¤, the bass motion from
G to Gb delayed by a beat. Now, this last time, the Gb itself comes forward
as a bare octave to garner its own subphrase, aping the C-minor one. This
equalizing juxtaposition of the Gb with the G gently reminds us of the force
that the Gb has exerted upon this sonata’s tonal cosmos. It is because of the
Gb, in a sense, that this movement began with a G. The Gb now descends,
as always, to F, now also as a bare octave; but in the ensuing, extended sub-
phrase over that home dominant, the Bb is kept at bay. B continues to take
its place in a final, charming allusion to its subversive role throughout the
sonata. Before the F can lead to resolution, it must return, one last time, to
G. What especially distinguishes this last emphatic return of G is the F# that
introduces it, an F# that—by coming so soon after the spelling out, through
the theme’s dissolution, of the role of Gb—finally dispels the force of that
Gb. The presto conclusion celebrates this final overcoming.
VIII
A story of exploration, banishment, exile, and eventual homecoming—not

a very di¤erent story from the one I have drawn from the A-Major Sonata
or from the one that the text of “Der Wanderer” suggests for the “Wan-
derer” Fantasy. One could easily object that these pieces are too di¤erent
from one another to exemplify any single narrative pattern, no matter how
basic or shorn of detail. To this objection I would answer that the telling of
this story is not a purpose of these pieces; they need only to engage the
story’s patterns of tension and conflict—the personal conditions or psy-
chological predicaments that it embodies—and to find new ways of exem-
plifying and resolving them. Creative artists of all kinds return to the same
predicaments, and reenact the same stories, again and again: those stories
and predicaments exemplify the domains in which they psychologically
dwell.
Whereas the A-Major Sonata culminates in its most warmly lyrical move-
ment, the Bb-Major Sonata begins in this way. And although the slow move-
ments of both sound far removed, both tonally and gesturally, from their
first movements, the Andantino of the A-Major Sonata introduces an aura
of alienated desolation not yet encountered in its first movement, while the
Andante sostenuto of the Bb-Major Sonata returns to dwell more deeply in
a mood already experienced. The A-Major Sonata establishes two subordi-
nate tonal strata besides its primary one of tonic and dominant. One of them,
based on the lowered submediants of these keys, F major and C major, gives
rise to music imbued with a sense of charmed, subjective exploration, of
dreams and fantasies; the other, based on the proper submediants, F# minor
and C# minor, suggests a scene not only of desolation but even of terror.
The Bb-Major Sonata, in contrast, articulates only one subordinate stra-
tum; it is based on Gb and Db, the lowered submediants of its own tonic and
dominant. Unlike in the A-Major Sonata, a manifestation of this stratum—
the trill—occurs in the very first phrase. But this stratum harbors two kinds
of music: alluring Gb- and Db-major music, and desolate, even tormented,
F#- and C#-minor music. Through this revelation of opposites in a single
stratum, the Bb-Major Sonata binds joy to sorrow in a way that mirrors, even
more closely than does the A-Major Sonata, the particular Schubertian psy-
chology of “Mein Traum.”
Whatever Schubert’s existential situation, whatever his sense of himself,
he would have tended to find ways to articulate that sense in his work time
and time again, as would any other artist, and to adapt this articulation to
every new set of musical circumstances that he created for himself. It is, then,
the creation of these ever-new musical circumstances that maintains our
interest in the inevitable return of the same story. If “Mein Traum,” “Der
Wanderer,” and Winterreise tell of how Schubert must have viewed his own
existence, as I am convinced they do, then he could only meet the challenge
of rediscovering and recreating himself through his music, by transforming
into music the kinds of scenarios these texts portray. He would have needed
to create for himself the home to which he never entirely found his way in
actual life. And he would have needed to come home to it fully enough to
be ready for the early death that he must have expected, whenever it might
come.
Epilogue
Telling, Retelling, and Untelling Schubert
I have traced a compositional and expressive trajectory that draws Schubert’s

instrumental music into the resolution of an imaginary narrative of his per-
sonal as well as his artistic life, a narrative that he could probably not bring
to any fulfilled resolution by other means. The actual facts of Schubert’s life
might well have made the determination and resolution of such an implicit
narrative especially urgent for him. His was a life that was far more focused
on the somewhat unstable allegiances of friendship than on those of fam-
ily, a life that never fully established an independent home for itself, a life that
left no record of any fulfilled love relationship, and, after 1822, a life that was
consigned to recurring illness and untimely death. As a man without consis-
tent family support, without a home he could call his own, without even the
memory of fulfillment in love, and as a man a›icted with a life-threatening
and socially stigmatized disease, Schubert is likely to have harbored poten-
tially overwhelming impulses to represent himself, in at least some of his
fragmentary imaginary narrations of his own life, as a Fremdling. His artis-
tic vocation may well have intensified these impulses even as it created an
arena for their resolution.
Even if he did not yet know of his illness in November 1822, these fac-
tors encourage the attribution of autobiographical significance to Schubert’s
choice of “Der Wanderer”—and, in particular, of its Fremdling stanza—as
the basis of his first completed large-scale instrumental work after a three-
year hiatus. The “Wanderer” Fantasy engages itself with that imaginary nar-
269
ration both through the alienation of the stanza’s text and through its draw-
ing of the text’s C#-minor setting into a tonal drama of strife-ridden conflict
and exuberant C-major resolution. Thus Schubert not only inscribed one
of his most famous songs into the fantasy; by doing so he also inscribed
himself into it, and by finding a home for its Fremdling protagonist he car-
ried an implicit narration of his own life to a first utopian resolution. As I
argued in chapter 4, it requires no great imaginative leap to surmise a self-
inscription of the same kind in the “Unfinished” Symphony of the month
before.The Andante of the symphony draws its key and its theme, only some-
what less pointedly, from the preceding stanza of the same song. The char-
acter and course of the music of the symphony suggest a narrative that is
even more powerful than the one suggested by the fantasy: one not merely
of estrangement and homecoming, but of death and transfiguration.
II
These, of course, are exactly the themes of “Mein Traum,” the one narra-
tive of potential autobiographical significance that Schubert committed to
writing, just a few months, as it happens, before composing the symphony
and the fantasy. It is worth pausing here to reconsider, one last time, the
question of ascribing autobiographical significance to “Mein Traum.” How-
ever we ultimately construe the story’s protagonist, Schubert identifies this
protagonist as “I” and takes him from the home of the story’s beginning
through two cycles of exile and homecoming, both homecomings made pos-
sible only by deaths. Of course, on the basis of biographical information
alone, the so-called “external events” of Schubert’s life, one cannot read this
story unambiguously as an autobiographical statement. Otto Erich Deutsch’s
claim that it is “founded closely on fact” has been mostly, although not en-
tirely, discredited.1 Maynard Solomon has made a nuanced and fascinating
psychoanalytic interpretation of it, one too rich in speculative detail to be
evaluated by anyone whose combined psychoanalytic expertise and knowl-
edge of Schubert’s life does not match Solomon’s own.2 On the other hand,
several Schubert scholars of Solomon’s generation seem as intent on ex-
plaining away “Mein Traum,” by imagining the possible situations that might
have impelled him to write it, as he is on explaining it.3
In the end, however, we remain, and will probably always be, ignorant of
the circumstances of the composition of “Mein Traum.” We know with cer-
tainty only the identity of its author. Whatever its circumstances of origin,
it was Franz Schubert, not those circumstances, who determined just what
episodes to include and just how they might unfold.Those episodes and their
course—exile, failed homecoming, subsequent singing-in-exile, and final,
death-haunted, transfigured homecoming—are the inventions (or, at the very
least, the choices) of the same man who also chose, only months after writ-
ing them out, to base a revolutionary instrumental work on the song of an
exile and who was later impelled to set not merely the first twelve but even-
tually all twenty-four songs of Winterreise’s exiled and death-obsessed pro-
tagonist. “Mein Traum” corresponds not so much with the events of Schu-
bert’s life as with the expressive valences that the key texts of “Der
Wanderer” and Winterreise confirm in his music.
Too strange to be fact, “Mein Traum” is also, finally, too strange to be
fiction. The supposition that, in the absence of corroborating outer fact, it
mirrors an “inner reality” finds confirmation in Schubert’s subsequent quests,
through his music, to alleviate his apparent sense of exile and his anticipation
of early death. “Mein Traum,” in crystallizing an imaginary narrative of Schu-
bert’s life, foretells the narrative journey on which he was soon to embark,
probably without ever explicitly acknowledging it to himself, in his music.
III
I view this trajectory as reaching a first culmination—through Die Schöne

Müllerin, the first song cycle—late in 1823, after which it becomes subsumed
in, although certainly not altogether eclipsed by, the “Beethoven Project”
that John Gingerich has proposed.4 With Winterreise, the second song cycle,
Schubert begins to turn away from Beethovenian models and to immerse
himself more fully in the quest, through his musical, imaginary self-narra-
tions, for an ultimate homecoming—a re-creation of himself through his
art. Especially in the piano compositions of 1827 and 1828, echoes of “Der
Wanderer” mingle with those of Winterreise to identify their Schubertian
persona as a wanderer in search of a sense of self and a restful haven.
Some readers may wonder how a tonal piece, which by definition ends
e p i log ue 271
by reaching home, can achieve any special sense of homecoming. But al-
most all tonal pieces also begin fully and unproblematically in a home key as
well, while in significant respects some of Schubert’s do not. In every Schu-
bert piece, to be sure, the identity of the tonic is clear from the outset, but
in some cases—and notably in all three of the last sonatas—Schubert “prob-
lematizes” either the tonic or the material through which he articulates it.
In each of these sonatas, the first response of the music to its own opening
idea can be said to individuate a protagonist that is not at home in the open-
ing key. Thus in the opening phrase of the C-Minor Sonata, the downward-
rushing Ab-major scale sweeps C minor aside, interrupting the drive to the
first cadence in order to introduce in this secondary key a new motive that
is more generative in some respects than the opening motive for the ensu-
ing music. I have characterized the opening phrase of the A-Major Sonata
as inscrutable in its abstractness, presenting the tonic key as a domain that
the protagonist, who is individuated by the following interrogating phrase,
cannot lyrically possess. Most succinctly of all, the Gb trill beneath the Bb-
Major Sonata’s first cadence throws the serenity—or even the reality—of
the opening Bb-major song into doubt and immediately gives rise to an ex-
ploration of Gb major as a virtual alternative to Bb.
In the first impromptu of opus 90, whose date of composition is closer
to that of Winterreise, the tonic identity of C minor is again immediately
clear, but the stentorian power of the opening G overdetermines it, imbu-
ing the tonic region more with the character of a scene of exile or impris-
onment than of a potential haven. Such a haven is instead remembered, and
return to it thus prefigured, in the Ab major of the first B episode: this key
becomes the goal of the progressive tonal course of the cycle. Again, in opus
142 the first impromptu configures its F-minor tonic as a closed and inhos-
pitable domain from which it moves away as soon as it can, but to which it
eventually succumbs. It never even manages, despite repeated attempts, to
confirm fully its secondary key of Ab major. Accordingly this Ab major re-
turns, more fully realized, in the second impromptu, and the fourth im-
promptu dwells again at length in this key in what again feels, despite its
close relation to the tonic, like an escape from the opening F-minor music.
The fourth impromptu even returns for its coda to the Db major associated
with Ab major in the second impromptu. On this interpretation, the down-
rushing F-minor scale that concludes the fourth impromptu, and hence the
set, might be heard as an attempt to dispel the inhospitable opening tonal-
ity of the cycle once and for all.
In opus 90, on my account, cyclic organization is implicated not merely
in the development of motivic potential but in the achievement, through a
progressive tonal plan, of tonal resolution itself. Unlike most major-mode
endings of minor-mode pieces, the final turn to the major in the first im-
promptu is indecisive, still in the minor’s shadow; the modal ambiguity of
this ending suggests the impossibility of any full tonal resolution for this mu-
sic in its opening key. The cycle, accordingly, comes to resolution only in
what originally emerges—almost without preparation, then receding with-
out any harmonically articulated retransition—as a subordinate key. In the
later impromptus and the last sonatas, however, the opening key does itself
eventually become home and does so, at least provisionally, by the end of
the first piece or movement. With respect to tonality, at least, the cyclic in-
terdependence of these pieces might therefore seem less essential to satis-
factory resolution than it was in opus 90. But in the ways they make their
opening keys problematic, the opening movements of all these pieces cre-
ate tonal schisms between tonalities that are not merely contrasting but are
gesturally or texturally dissociated. Such a schism separates the never alto-
gether attainable Ab major and the seemingly closed o¤ tonic region in the
F-Minor Impromptu, the suddenly introduced Ab major (as a pathway to a
Db major enshadowed by its parallel minor) and the tonic of the C-Minor
Sonata, the static, dream-laden C major and the tonic of the A-Major Sonata,
and, finally, the alluring but dangerous Gb major-minor and the tonic of the
Bb-Major Sonata. These dissociations remain in some respects unresolved at
the ends of those opening movements, as my discussions of them have at-
tempted to show. In the sonatas the keys explored in the slow movements
even heighten or complicate the sense of dissociation. But the opposing keys
always return in the remaining movements in less conflictual or even non-
conflictual guises, in ways that forge new avenues of continuity within for-
merly divided tonal worlds.
In some respects—most notably in the opus 90 impromptus and the last
two sonatas—the finding of home that I am describing thus completes it-
self only in the final movement. In the minor-mode pieces—the opus 142
impromptus and the C-Minor Sonata—the narrative I propose is more aptly
characterized as one of self-definition, of Schubert’s finding of himself and
e p i log ue 273
of continuity within his own experience, than as a tale of homecoming. In
either case, the goals of such implicit narratives, in their Schubertian forms,
are not su‹ciently prefigured from the beginning to be striven for; the pro-
tagonist must await their eventual and only gradual disclosure. It is accord-
ingly not surprising that this music—in contrast to the famous Beethoven
works that have traditionally been associated with heroic and triumphant
narratives—can strike some listeners, for long stretches, as meandering or
even static, as lacking in progressive, linear development.
IV
Recent scholars, explicitly aware of the dominance of Beethoven in the crit-

ical traditions they have inherited, have sought increasingly to develop un-
prejudiced characterological terms and even analytic methods especially ap-
propriate to Schubert’s music. Among the most sensitive of these are Godel,
Hinrichsen, and Gingerich. All three make serious attempts to evaluate Schu-
bert’s works in sonata forms on their own terms, to forge a space for them
unclouded by the shadow of Beethoven. In all their accounts, however, any
compelling logic in the succession of events in these works, any sense of
truly functional di¤erentiation between these events and of why they occur
in a particular order, sometimes all but vanishes. Both Hinrichsen and Gin-
gerich fundamentally agree, as best I can ascertain, with Godel’s assertion
that “the hierarchy of formal components of the classical sonata is dissolved
into a democratic juxtaposition.”5 Contemplation, remembrance, associa-
tive richness, and even the dependence of the conscious on the unconscious
have all finally found a rightful place in these accounts of Schubert’s music,
but the evolution of the particular unresolved tensions and inner dramas so
pervasive in the mental life that this music evokes has not.
These three authors seek to supplant the view that Schubert’s sonata forms
simply served as vessels into which he poured lyrical material not really suited
to them. For all three, Schubert’s forms instead take on their own distinc-
tive and independent lives as sca¤oldings for an associative play of harmonic,
motivic, and textural ideas—an almost improvisatory succession evocative
of dreaming, remembering, and other forms of psychic activity. But their
formulations do not especially suggest, or even accommodate, the kinds of
“thematic,” pervasively recurring schisms in Schubert’s music that I have
been exploring in this study.
In the first movement of the Bb-Major Sonata, for example, Godel and
Hinrichsen stress the ways in which Schubert prepares for and integrates the
F#-minor transitional theme, but they do not especially acknowledge its dis-
ruptive dramatic e¤ect. This disquieting event appears for them to be “nor-
mal for Schubert,” simply participating, without residue, in the kind of
motivic and tonal unfolding through which Schubert both develops and sup-
plants the procedures of his forerunners in sonata forms. By contrast, my
own account of this F#-minor theme suggests instead a combination of the
views of these recent scholars with the views they attempt to leave behind.
Perhaps Schubert’s material is at odds with its formal framework; but if so,
then he exploits the tension between his forms and his material as an ex-
pressive e¤ect. The heart of the protagonist of this sonata is “in the wrong
place”—in Gb major and F# minor instead of Bb major—and it comes to
first full expression “at the wrong time”—in the formal interstices rather
than in the more formally and tonally grounded principal and subordinate
themes. Despite appearances, dominant and tonic actually retain their struc-
tural hegemony, but it is a strange, outside tonal region—a Fremde—that
becomes the source of dynamism. The Fremde is perceived as such because
of the tonal and formal background against which it comes into relief. Schu-
bert did not simply pour his musical ideas into formal molds; he made these
ideas struggle to find their own full voice and autonomy within them. Sonata
forms might even be said to have become for him, in one sense, musical em-
bodiments of the Viennese social conventions from which he sought liber-
ation while seeking acceptance, recognition, and even fame within the so-
ciety that endorsed those conventions. More basically, as articulations of
fundamental tonal relationships, sonata forms might well have represented
the kind of home for which he longed but to which he could only gradu-
ally find his way, even in his imagination.
The formulations of Godel, Hinrichsen, and Gingerich apply more aptly
to Schubert’s opening movements than to the subsequent course of his mul-
timovement works. In the A-Major Sonata, for example, the static C-ma-
jor dream sequence of the first movement’s development may linger in mem-
ory, at that movement’s end, as an unintegrated, quasi-independent episode.
At the end of the Andantino, the C#-minor episode, the dream’s nightmarish
e p i log ue 275
opposite, may still seem to override in importance the theme that surrounds
it. For these two movements, Godel’s and Gingerich’s terminology of jux-
tapositions and tableaux seems appropriate. I have suggested in the prologue
that, even in the Scherzo, the A-major, C-major, and C#-minor passages
all carry nearly equal weight. By now they all also carry specific memories
that prepare for what in the finale will become, for all its lyric expansive-
ness, a systematic integration. Thus distinctive memories in the finale of
the C-major and C#-minor music, the Fremdling’s dream and his ensuing
nightmare, become integrated with, and hence subordinated to, a lyrically
possessed tonic reality. The separate tableaux are no longer so independent;
instead they weave together to suggest a narrative of integration, of the find-
ing of a home hospitable enough to be a haven for the protagonist’s dreams
and a refuge from his nightmares. As in the other two last sonatas, this con-
cluding sonata rondo is in important respects more normative—more flow-
ing, less marked by disjunctions—than the movements that precede it. Its
development is full of sequential modulations, motivic fragmentations, and
contrapuntal recombinations. Like those of the other two last finales, it thus
exhibits much more of the “action-packed” character of a so-called classi-
cal development than does the first movement. The finale does the kind of
integrative work that cannot yet be undertaken in the first movement.
By some criteria we might not characterize any of Schubert’s mature
works in sonata forms as fully cyclic, even the Eb-Major Trio or the A-Major
Sonata.6 Virtually none of these pieces manipulates formal schemata, for ex-
ample, to link one movement to another, and none of them exhibits the
thoroughgoing and manifest motivic unification of a work like Beethoven’s
Fifth Symphony. But in many of them—in particular, the ones I have dis-
cussed in this study—the separate movements are motivically interlinked to
an extent that is far deeper and more elaborate than anyone, even Brendel,
has hitherto acknowledged.The A-Major Sonata markedly exhibits such der-
ivations throughout, but the other two last sonatas are scarcely less—even if
much less conspicuously—motivically through-conceived, as I have shown
in considerable detail. In the “Unfinished” Symphony and the last sonatas,
the motivic recurrences marked for recognition are thus only isolated overt
manifestations of an almost constant but mostly subliminal process, mani-
festations that have hitherto remained largely unrecognized as keys to sub-
tle and elaborate systems of motivic relationships.
Rich and elaborate though they are in themselves, I have felt it necessary
to develop intertextual contexts for these motivic webs to bring some
specificity to their interpretation. It is only by weaving a network of asso-
ciations that I have ventured to identify a distinctive, if implicit, line of au-
tobiographical narrative in Schubert’s music: these associations occur not only
within and between two groups of Schubert’s pieces from di¤erent com-
positional periods (1822 and 1827–28), but also between all those pieces,
the poem “Der Wanderer,” the poetry of Winterreise, and Schubert’s own
story, “Mein Traum.”
Anyone who finds the narrative that I have proposed convincing, who shares
my belief that it—or something like it—deeply influenced Schubert’s com-
positional choices in the works considered here, is likely to assume that such
a narrative must also be implicated in at least some of his other music, and
especially in the music after Winterreise. In both the Bb-Major Trio and the
C-Major Quintet, for example, one might feel the sway of the same psychic
forces that a¤ect the Bb-Major Sonata. The F-Minor Fantasy for piano duet
might well exemplify, or even intensify, the existential plight embodied by
the opus 142 impromptus or the C-Minor Sonata. For myself, I would have
to “take up residence” in any of these complex pieces over an extended pe-
riod to consider the extent to which it articulates the same story. But I have
mentioned, in passing, another work of this final period whose cyclic aspects
exemplify this implicit narrative especially clearly. In the first movement of
the Eb-Major Trio, the mysterious B-minor beginning of the second group
can be taken, once again, to individuate a Fremdling protagonist.The theme
of the C-minor Andante con moto is steeped in the aura of Winterreise, and
when this Winterreise-haunted theme returns in the finale, it also sublimi-
nally evokes the memory of the B-minor theme from the first movement
by returning in that key. That the final apotheosis of this trio, the conclud-
ing return of the same Andante theme in the tonic major, might represent
a homecoming or rebirth for the winter wanderer is almost too obvious to
require justification.
There is one other piece from Schubert’s last period that exemplifies with
e p i log ue 277
extraordinary clarity the kind of characterological contrast and tonal stra-
tification that I trace to the “Wanderer” Fantasy: the Moment musical in Ab
Major, op. 94, no. 2. Even though it is only a single movement, and although
it contains no clear thematic references to these Fremdling songs, I submit
that this piece can serve as an emblem for my entire study.
Despite its quintessentially Schubertian delicacy and stillness-in-motion,
the opening theme of this piece teems with ambiguities (ex. E.1). Without
the help of the score, can anyone who hears it tell whether it begins with
an upbeat or a downbeat, or whether its meter is triple, as it initially seems,
or duple, as it seems a few bars later? Is it song or dance? Is it headed any-
where? Will it remain in the major, or will it succumb—like the other Mo-
ment musical in Ab major (op. 94, no. 6) or the Eb-Major Impromptu—to its
minor inflections? Will it ultimately prove serene or troubled? Because of
these ambiguities, the calm of the opening is su¤used with doubt, as if the
theme were asking if that calm—or the tenderness within it—could ever
become real. Only the arrival of a second, or B, theme (m. 18) brings clari-
fication. This theme leaves behind every ambiguity of the opening theme:
it is clearly a solo song with a distinct accompaniment; clearly in a new key,
toward which the opening theme headed at the last moment; clearly a par-
allel period, despite the di¤erent lengths of its two phrases; and also clearly
derivative of the opening theme, with its opening semitonal upper neigh-
bor figure. Because of its clarity, the new theme seems to embody some-
thing more real than the opening one, but the clarifications it brings come
only at great cost. This new theme—conceivably the answer to the open-
ing questions, the object of the initial search—is unambiguously sad; and
its key, F# minor, is remote enough from the opening Ab major to imbue it
with a sense of loss or even exile. Indeed, although it makes no clear refer-
ence to “Der Wanderer,” it once again approximates the character and tonal-
ity of the Fremdling stanza of that song closely enough to resonate with its
memory.
The ABA'B'A" form of this Moment musical—a kind of doubled ternary—
is a Schubertian specialty. We have encountered it already in the C-Minor
Impromptu and in the slow movements of the “Unfinished” Symphony and
the C-Minor Sonata. Those of the String Quartet in G Major, D. 887, and
the piano sonatas in C major (D. 840), D major (D. 850), and G major (D.
894) provide further examples. Instead of digressing in these movements to
example e.1 Moment musical in Ab Major, op. 94, no. 2, mm. 1–25
A Andantino.
14
D major I V/g =f
18 B
22
cresc.
new contrasting material—a C section—as Mozart or Beethoven would have
done in similar circumstances, Schubert brings back the same contrasting
material as before, but he often transforms it. Here in the second Moment
musical the return of the B music is violent and disjunctive in ways that dram-
atize the tonal distance of its F# minor from the Ab major of the A sections
(ex. E.2). After one anguished phrase, this B music reverts to its original
quiet disposition. But then, for its final measures, it turns suddenly to the
major (mm. 69¤.), in what feels like an epiphany, a transformative “moment
musical.” The change to major both stills the pain of the B theme itself and
brings it tonally closer (as Gb major) to Ab major. It illuminates a homeward
path from B to A.
Because Schubert’s authorship of “Mein Traum” corroborates and par-
ticularizes an implicit musical narrative of exile and homecoming so provoca-
tively, it is tempting to search, as Arnold Schering did, for a piece that di-
rectly corresponds to it, or that “tells” it in musical terms. No piece comes
closer to doing so than this Moment musical, which corresponds with the story
not only in its ABA'B'A" form but also in a stratified tonal plan that makes
the F#-minor B sections into potential musical realizations of its scenes of
exile. The violent beginning of the second B section mirrors the father’s
violence from which the narrator of “Mein Traum” flees into his second
exile; the F#-major epiphany that concludes that section corresponds equally
aptly with the narrator’s admission, as if by magic, into the circle around
the dead maiden’s tomb. Other aspects of the composition, to be sure, do
not find cogent parallels in the story: it is di‹cult to construe the ambigu-
ities of the opening music, for example, as consistent with an evocation of
home life or a happy childhood. They suggest, rather, the kind of existen-
tial malaise implied by the disjunctions that emerge so near the beginnings
of each of the last three sonatas. In any case there is nothing to be gained
from pursuing a Scheringian argument that Schubert intended the story as
a secret program, whether prospectively or retrospectively, for a specific piece.
This piece mirrors the patterns of exile and homecoming in the story closely
enough to corroborate the notion that the seemingly distinct personae gen-
erated by this piece and by the story can both be identified as revelatory self-
projections of the actual person—Franz Schubert—who created them.
Even though occurring within a single movement, the return of the B
section of this Moment musical is already a manifestation of a cyclic impulse:
example e.2 Moment musical in Ab Major, op. 94, no. 2, mm. 54–69
54 B'
57
60
63
67
F major
an urge to revisit an experiential realm already once traversed but not yet
fully integrated into the context in which it occurs, to experience it again
in the hope of a cathartic and reconciliatory transformation of it. In the
more extended and subtly cyclic explorations of his last piano music, Schu-
bert returned again and again to the divided world glimpsed in this piece
and laid open spaces within that world for further “moments musicaux” that
could illuminate paths to restore its continuity. Not only does the second
Moment musical encapsulate these explorations in a single movement; by
doing so in ways that so closely parallel the form and content of “Mein
Traum” it o¤ers the clearest evidence we have of a correspondence between
these musical explorations and the only known portrayal of that divided
world in Schubert’s own words. It furnishes yet another link in the inter-
textual network that I have summarized at the end of the preceding section—
a link that can virtually be taken, by itself, as a symbol of the entire network
to which it belongs.
VI
The accounts of Schubert’s late piano music presented here may seem to
attempt just the sort of historically uncontextualized personal and psycho-
logical interpretation of Schubert against which Leon Botstein has in-
veighed.7 To that potential charge I propose two replies. The first is that the
association of two of Schubert’s most sustained and original compositional
projects with specific contemporary poems about exile, coupled with a
unique story of his own in which he identifies himself as an exile, provides
a more clearly defined historical context for an interpretation of this music
than one can normally ever hope to discover for a corpus of instrumental
music.The second is that the widely acknowledged repressiveness of Bieder-
meier Vienna makes the personal sense of alienation attested by Schubert’s
strong attraction to poems and narratives of exile into a virtual certainty.
These texts, in their evident power over Schubert, provide a justification for
more personally nuanced interpretations than would otherwise be possible
of his responses to the circumstances of his life, as well as of how his music
came to reflect that life.
In the last two decades, as is well known, the field of musicology has be-
come much more open to explorations of so-called musical meaning. So-
phisticated explorations of this kind have been drawn more to cultural than
to personal meaning, and for good reason: cultural interpretation can draw
on every aspect of a composer’s social and intellectual environment with-
out having to attempt the reconstruction of the composer’s thoughts or feel-
ings that any substantiation of personal meaning must entail; moreover, we
can usually presume cultural meaning to have wider import than personal
meaning. But how does cultural meaning get into music? Why would Schu-
bert undertake the expression in his music of the alienation and disa¤ection
of his circle, as Gingerich so convincingly portrays him as doing? Why would
he explore the Romantic wandering archetypes that William Kinderman
hears as so pervasive in his music?8 Surely he did not set out, as another con-
sciously formulated “project” such as the one Gingerich identifies, to make
his music reflective of particular social or literary themes. It is rather his life
itself—or, at least, his implicit narrations of it—that exemplified those themes
and whose pervasive currents gave shape to his music, probably without his
conscious acknowledgment.
From all such narratives—be they personal, cultural, or even more purely
technical—we return, in the end, to the music. In a sense, in developing ac-
counts of the impromptus and last sonatas, I have carried out a kind of ver-
bal performance of these pieces. But in another sense, a performance takes
us in the opposite direction from any verbal exegesis: ideally it brings us back
to the music as a fully lived experience in itself. As I have written elsewhere,
musical experience thrives on the loss of meaning, on a kind of forgetting.9
This forgetting enables us to store aspects of ourselves in the music without
having to define or even acknowledge them explicitly. It did the same, if I
am right, for Schubert himself. When we return to the music and simply
allow it to take on its own life by surrendering ourselves to it, it gives us
back to ourselves—or, rather, our selves back to us. I can only hope that
what I have written will have expanded and deepened an awareness of the
scope of the particular kinds of forgetting—as well as of remembering—
that Schubert’s music makes possible.
e p i log ue 283
Afterword
One only becomes aware of the kinds of musical recurrences I write about
in this study, and of their potential expressive import, after becoming ob-
sessed with the music in which they occur. In one way, the source of my ob-
session has been a common one: the combination of love and fear involved
in preparing music for performance. But beyond these feelings lies some-
thing that has drawn me, from my student days onward, to Schubert more
than to any other composer: an identification with his music strong enough
to implicate it—even before I decided to become a professional musician—
in my own self-definition.
The sources of such identifications are perhaps always destined to re-
main mysterious, but in 1988 it felt almost overwhelmingly significant to
me that, in the same AMS meeting at which I o¤ered my first explorations
of a divided Schubertian persona, Maynard Solomon first presented in a
musicological setting his soon-to-become-famous speculations about Schu-
bert’s homosexuality. Years earlier, when I was listening to the last quartets
and the C-Major Quintet almost every day, and weaving the slow move-
ments of the last sonatas into my heart by playing them to myself almost
every night, I was also waging war against my own homosexuality and feel-
ing like a Fremdling on account of it. I do not explore Schubert’s possible
homosexuality in these pages, but I do believe, and do say, that if he was ho-
mosexual, that aspect of his life could only have intensified the sense of him-
self as an outsider about which I write at length.
284
Perhaps nothing helped me more in dealing with my own feelings of this
kind, at a time when I was all but consumed by them, than my sense that
the Schubert of Schubert’s later music “knew who I was.” In a sense, the
writing of this book is an act of gratitude, an attempt to repay this music
for what it has a¤orded me.
a f t e rw o r d 285
Notes
Prologue
1. Susan Youens, Retracing a Winter’s Journey: Schubert’s Winterreise (Ithaca: Cornell Uni-
versity Press, 1991), 103; Ludwig Sto¤els, Die Winterreise (Bonn: Verlag für systemati-
sche Musikwissenschaft, 1987), 178–201; Richard Kramer, Distant Cycles: Schubert and
the Conceiving of Song (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 151–187.
2. Sto¤els, 200.
3. Kramer, 164.
4. Youens, 24–28.
5. I return to the question of ascribing particular significance to “Mein Traum” in
the epilogue.
6. His brother’s heading may conceivably have been intended to discourage any spec-
ulation about the autobiographical content of Franz’s story.
7. This translation is taken from Otto Erich Deutsch, ed., Franz Schubert’s Letters and
Other Writings (New York: Vienna House, 1974), 60. The entire story is given on 59–61.
8. See Elizabeth Norman McKay, Franz Schubert: A Biography (Oxford: Clarendon,
1996), 84¤.
9. For a fuller interpretation of the story, see Maynard Solomon, “Franz Schubert’s
‘My Dream,’” American Imago 38 (1981): 137–154.
10. Kramer, 182.
11. In an article that appeared after this book had been drafted, William Kinderman
explores this question from more a cultural than a biographical standpoint; see “Wan-
dering Archetypes in Schubert’s Instrumental Music,” 19th-Century Music 21, no. 2 (1997):
208–222. His particular points and his articulation of them are di¤erent enough from
my own to be complementary to, rather than in conflict with or essentially similar to,
mine. He focuses especially on the way Schubert’s music, through its stark modal and
287
gestural contrasts, mirrors a dichotomy between inner and outer experience that is cen-
tral to the notion of the Romantic wanderer, and thus embodies the existential situa-
tion of a lonely, searching subject confronted by an inhospitable world that cannot be
mastered—a kind of existential homelessness.
12. Scott Burnham, Beethoven Hero (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995).
13. Admittedly, this new harmonization retains a link to the preceding one: the Neapoli-
tan of C# minor (m. 41) is reinterpreted as the subdominant of A in measure 47.
14. It may strike some readers as far-fetched to hear the third and fourth chords as
making a reference to motive b. But in measures 93–94 (see ex. 8.7), exactly the same
rhythmic configuration links a passage dominated by motive a to a passage dominated
by motive b.
15. Hans-Joachim Hinrichsen, Studien zur Entwicklung der Sonatenform in der Instrumen-
talmusik Franz Schuberts (Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 1994), 26–28. “Circle modulations”
are ones that return to their point of tonal departure.
16. Most recently, Richard Cohn has proposed a model that reconciles cycles of pro-
gressions by semitonal displacement with a diatonic framework of fifth-related func-
tions (tonic, dominant, and subdominant) by subsuming to each of these functions a
cycle containing the triad representing that function in a given key; see “As Wonderful
as Star Clusters: Instruments for Gazing at Tonality in Schubert,” 19th-Century Music 22,
no. 3 (1999): 213–232. Thus, in Bb major, the cycle consisting of the F-major, F-minor,
Db-major, C#-minor, A-major, and A-minor triads (or keys) comprises the dominant
region. In his account, the F# and the C# minor highlighted in the first movement of
the Bb-Major Sonata belong, respectively, to the tonic and dominant regions, rather than
to a separate region of their own, as in the account I will be developing. By divesting
these keys, through these assimilations, of the alterity they possess in a diatonic con-
ceptualization, his account also divests them of the dramatic tension with which I think
they are imbued.
17. Susan McClary, “Constructions of Subjectivity in Schubert’s Music,” in Queering
the Pitch, ed. Philip Brett, Elizabeth Wood, and Gary Thomas (New York: Routledge,
1994), 205–233; the quotation is from 223.
18. Arthur Godel, Schuberts Letzte Drei Klaviersonaten (Baden-Baden: Valentin Koerner,
1985), 242.
19. Alfred Brendel, “Schubert’s Last Sonatas,” in Music Sounded Out (New York: Far-
rar Straus Giroux, 1990), 72–141.
20. Edward T. Cone, The Composer’s Voice (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974).
21. Again, however, I have not attempted to work out exactly to what extent my use
of the term protagonist corresponds to Cone’s. My use of the term, which strikes me as
quite di¤erent from Cone’s, might be taken as the equivalent of “the persona’s self-
definition,” and as something that therefore can evolve or even change quite abruptly
in the course of a composition.
288 n o t e s t o pag e s 1 2 – 2 2
Chapter 1
1. Susan McClary takes a similar view of this impromptu in her article “Pitches, Ex-
pression, Ideology: An Exercise in Mediation,” Enclitic 7 (1983): 76–86. Schubert’s first
sketch of the impromptu does not yet include the opening G, but instead simply begins
with the monophonic melody. Some might wish to argue that Schubert’s inclusion of
the G as an afterthought diminishes its importance: that it is not as compositionally es-
sential as my account makes it. But one could just as plausibly argue the opposite: that
the G is implied, or even necessitated, by the way the music unfolds, and that therefore
it is more than a mere introductory gesture. The sound of the melody, as Schubert first
imagined it, did not require the G; but it is possible that its ensuing course, as Schubert
realized it, made the opening G essential.
2. See section III below.
3. John Reed, The Schubert Song Companion (New York: Universe, 1985), 495.
4. Susan Youens, Retracing a Winter’s Journey: Schubert’s Winterreise (New York and
Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991); Richard Kramer, Distant Cycles: Schubert and the
Conceiving of Song (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994); Ludwig Sto¤els, Die
Winterreise. Band I: Müllers Dichtung in Schuberts Vertonung (Bonn: Verlag für systemati-
sche Musikwissenschaft, 1987).
5. Edward T. Cone, “Schubert’s Beethoven,” Musical Quarterly 56, no. 4 (1970):
779–793.
6. Alfred Einstein, Schubert: A Musical Portrait (New York: Oxford, 1951), 287.
7. Joseph Kerman, The Beethoven Quartets (New York: Norton, 1979), 371.
8. I should also mention here the finale of the Octet, the menuetto of the String Quar-
tet in A Minor, and the Andante un poco moto of the String Quartet in G Major, as
well as “In der Ferne” from Schwanengesang of 1828—all somber, mysterious openings
like that of the impromptu.
rar Straus Giroux, 1990), 124.
10. Arthur Godel, Schuberts Letzte Drei Klaviersonaten: Entstehungsgeschichte, Entwurf und
Reinschrift, Werkanalyse (Baden-Baden: Valentin Koerner, 1985), 247–248. “Sie machen
sich ihre Aufgabe schwer, indem sie nicht einfach konsequent zu Ende führen, was in
den vorangehenden Sätzen aufgebaut wurde, sondern indem sie gleichsam den Zusam-
menhang verlassen, und von ‘aussen’ hinzutretend einen Neuansatz wagen.”
11. Brendel, 75.
12. These motivic connections are noted on pages 118, 105, and 110, respectively.
13. Konrad Wol¤, “Observations on the Scherzo of Schubert’s B-flat major Sonata,
op. posth.” Piano Quarterly 92 (1975-76): 28–39.
14. The left-hand figuration of these measures, finally, shares certain features with that
of the finale theme: the left thumb plays repeated Gs in measure 14, thus anticipating
n o t e s t o pag e s 2 5 – 33 289
the melodic motive of the finale; in the following measures this G alternates with F and
Eb, just as it does in the finale’s accompaniment.
15. Franz Schubert, Drei grosse Sonaten für das Pianoforte, D958, D959 und D960 (Frühe
Fassungen). Faksimile nach den Autographen in der Wiener Stadt- und Landesbiblio-
thek, Nachwort von Ernst Hilmar (Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 1987).
16. Alfred Brendel, Musical Thoughts and Afterthoughts (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1976), 62.
Chapter 2
1. Charles Rosen, Sonata Forms (New York: Norton, 1980), 321.
2. Ivan Waldbauer, “Recurrent Harmonic Patterns in the First Movement of Schu-
bert’s Sonata in A Major, D. 959,” 19th-Century Music 12, no. 1 (1988): 64–73.
3. Some readers are likely to doubt the importance of this return. In response to such
potential doubt, I can begin only by referring to my own first awareness of it. I noticed
it as a teenager, and observed it again every time I listened to a recording that I had ac-
quired of the sonata. It always stood out for me with the quality of a distinct recollec-
tion of the Adagio.
4. In each case, a chromatic deflection from E to Eb initiates the modulation by trans-
forming the V chord of F (major or minor) into the iv chord of G minor. This recur-
rence has been observed by Ludwig Sto¤els; see his Die Winterreise: Band I, 360.
5. The translation is from Philip L. Miller, The Ring of Words: An Anthology of Song
Texts (New York: Norton, 1973), 251.
6. Miller, 251.
7. Miller, 251–252.
8. See Arthur Godel, Schuberts Letzte Drei Klaviersonaten (Baden-Baden: Valentin Ko-
erner, 1985), 161–165.
9. The subphrase containing the focal progression (mm. 9–12) begins as a restatement
of the movement’s opening phrase—as if to initiate the consequent portion of a sixteen-
measure period—and fundamentally changes only its last measure (cf. m. 12 with m. 4),
replacing the semicadence of the first subphrase with the already described activity and
hesitation around Db. While the second subphrase (mm. 5–8, the four-measure contin-
uation of the antecedent phrase) builds from the first, becoming rhythmically and con-
trapuntally denser as it reconfirms and tonicizes the dominant, what would have been
the fourth four-measure subphrase, while recalling rhythms from the second subphrase,
immediately reduces harmonic and contrapuntal activity. Heard in the context of the en-
tire theme, measure 13 ought to begin a new full sub-phrase like the three already heard.
The fermata clarifies the situation of measure 13 within the structure of the theme by
inhibiting the perception of measures 9 through 14 as a single six-measure unit and by
thus suggesting the ending of one subphrase and the subsequent beginning of another.
290 n o t e s t o pag e s 35 – 4 8
10. Schubert here changed Müller’s text slightly.The original reads: “Und ist’s mir denn
entgangen” (And has it then happened to me).
11. The C in measure 13 is a passing tone; the actual resolution from Db to C occurs
in measure 14.
12. Another, even if somewhat fainter, echo is the arpeggiated melodic descent from
the third scale degree in even eighth notes (m. 21). This is, admittedly, of the dominant
rather than of the tonic triad. It may feel significant only because it occurs in the con-
text of another, more explicit reference.
13. Measure 55 did not exist in the first draft.
14. This F-major phrase ends, incidentally, with exactly the same harmonic progres-
sion (F major: viiI–ii–ii6–V7–I) as the last line of “Das Wirtshaus.”
Chapter 3
1. In a recent article, Maynard Solomon argues that Schubert may have come to re-
gard the “Unfinished” as a completed work; see his “Schubert’s ‘Unfinished’ Symphony,”
19th-Century Music 21, no. 2 (1997): 111–135.
2. Some observations about this role: In the song the focal progression, a kind of re-
frain following every climax, is the emergence of a half cadence in the relative minor
for every occurrence of the culminating line from which the song derives its title. Sung
to the last syllable of this line, “sei mir gegrüsst,” the leading tone of the V of vi never
resolves properly, but instead vanishes, like the illusory presence of the loved one, through
a chromatic descent into the home dominant itself. By introducing the song into the
Fantasy in Ab Major, Schubert makes the unresolved V of vi of this “refrain” into the
C-major triad itself, the underlying tonic triad. When, near the end, the opening of
“Sei mir gegrüsst” is recalled in C major (mm. 655¤.), this refrain comes in A minor,
thus recalling the key of the Allegretto, the second movement (mm. 37–351). The cul-
minating leading tone of this refrain is now G#, the enharmonic equivalent of the Ab;
here it is resolved as if it were an Ab. The highlighting of this refrain in relation to the
C-major tonic near the end of this fantasy makes explicit the reinterpretation of its fo-
cal G# as an Ab, thus helping to explain the curious juxtaposition of its A-minor Alle-
gretto and the Ab-major song-variations in its earlier course.
3. Whereas this fugal opening feels like a recapitulation in the “Wanderer” Fantasy,
in the F-Minor Fantasy the fugue follows an actual recapitulation of the composition’s
opening theme, building instead upon its powerful successor—what William Kinder-
man calls its “dark-hued second subject”—to a conclusion as tragic as that of the “Wan-
derer” Fantasy is triumphant. See William Kinderman, “Schubert’s Tragic Perspective,”
in Schubert: Critical and Analytical Studies, ed. Walter Frisch (Lincoln: University of Ne-
braska Press, 1986), 65–83.
4. Christoph Wol¤, “Schubert’s ‘Der Tod und das Mädchen’: Analytical and Ex-
n o t e s t o pag e s 5 0 – 6 2 291
planatory Notes on the Song D. 531 and the Quartet D. 810,” in Schubert Studies: Prob-
lems of Style and Chronology, ed. Eva Badura-Skoda and Paul Branscombe (London: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1982), 143–171.
5. This description of the transition from the first movement is taken from my “Ques-
tions about the Persona of Schubert’s ‘Wanderer’ Fantasy,” College Music Symposium 29
(1989): 19–30. Peter Gülke describes this transition in a way that seems quite consistent
with my own description in his Schubert und seine Zeit (Regensburg: Laaber, 1991), 204,
as a movement from one aesthetic “Ufer” (shore) to the other, a transition so extended
in comparison to all those in the first movement that one might well forget what has
gone before (i.e., in that first movement) (“dass es wohl vergessen machen könnte, was
zuvor geschah”). According to Gülke, the first, quasi-sonata movement becomes de-
moted to a mere introduction (“der ‘Einbruch’ der ‘Wanderer’-Strophe das Vorange-
gangene fürs erste zur vorbereitenden Introduktion herabstuft”).
6. Augmented sixths also occur prominently at climactic moments within movements.
See mm. 152–153, 160–161 (here in inversion, as a “pseudo four-two”), 210–213,
359–363, 704–708 (the climax of the entire fantasy).
7. In Gülke’s formulation it is a fundamental harmonic tension between the poles of
C major and C# minor–E major rather than a fundamental tonality (“eher als von einer
Grundtonart könnte man hier von einer Grundspannung sprechen: zwischen den Polen
C und cis bzw. E”); Schubert und seine Zeit, 203.
8. See also Gülke, Schubert und seine Zeit, 202, where he claims that in the song’s end-
ing, the “traumatic weight” of the C#-minor stanza cannot be entirely reckoned with.
9. In fact, the exact harmonies of this cadence, in the same A minor, occur in the
song: at the end of the fifth stanza, an E-major setting of a hallucinatory text about the
land of which the protagonist dreams, the music pulls back into this A-minor semica-
dence for his doubt-filled question: “O Land, wo bist du?” (O land, where are you?)
10. Gülke may be right in claiming that no full integration of the fantasy’s “aesthetic
subject” is possible, in view of the enormous disparity between the C#-minor desola-
tion of the song and the C-major exuberance of the outer movements; see Schubert und
seine Zeit, 205. Nonetheless, one surely cannot claim that the fantasy is a tragic piece or
that full tonal integration and closure into C major are not fundamentally achieved.
11. For a full presentation of this terminology, see William Caplin, Classical Form: A
Theory of Formal Function for the Instrumental Music of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1988), chap. 3.
12. William Kinderman also hears motivic echoes of “Der Wanderer” in this devel-
opment, although he does not note the emphasis in this movement of C# minor. See
his “Schubert’s Piano Music: Probing the Human Condition,” in The Cambridge Com-
panion to Schubert, ed. Christopher H. Gibbs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1997), 164.
13. Of the passage’s fifty-five measures, this gesture fills twenty-four.
292 n o t e s t o pag e s 6 3 – 7 9
14. John Reed, in The Schubert Song Companion, cites only three besides “Der Wan-
derer”: “Genugsamkeit” (D. 143), which like “Der Wanderer” ends in E; “Der Jüngling
und der Tod” (D. 545), which ends in F, and “Mahomets Gesang” (2) (D. 721). No other
key of less than six sharps or flats is represented by so few songs except G# minor, which
has none (F# minor has only five).
Chapter 4
1. Peter Gülke, Schubert und seine Zeit (Regensburg: Laaber, 1991), 197.
2. The poem is by Marianne von Willemer, revised by Goethe.The translation is taken
from John Reed, The Schubert Song Companion (New York: Universe, 1985), 396.
3. See William Caplin, Classical Form: A Theory of Formal Function for the Instrumen-
tal Music of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988),
chap. 3.
4. Edward T. Cone makes fundamentally the same point in his “Schubert’s Unfinished
Business,” in Music: A View from Delft (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989),
201–216. On page 205 he writes: “At mm.6–8 the F#, as an extended dominant, gives
the opening phrase the feeling of an upbeat. It exerts a similar influence over the first
subject proper, for that theme is twice interrupted by its recall, in mm. 20–21 and 28–30.
Only on its third appearance, mm. 34–37, is the dominant integrated into the prevail-
ing progression and allowed to proceed to a perfect cadence on the first strong down-
beat of the movement. At the same time the passage introduces a 5–#7–8 melodic for-
mula that will play a crucial role in what is to follow (it is most clearly heard in oboe I,
mm. 35–38).”
5. For a provocative discussion of horn calls as evocative of distance and memory, see
Charles Rosen, The Romantic Generation (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995),
116–122.
6. Gülke, 198: “verstummt es jählings, wie angesichts eines Grauens, als welches das
erste Tutti des Orchesters nach einer Generalpause hereinbricht.”
7. In both cases suggestive of a German sixth of E minor, but in neither case resolved
as one.
8. Cone, 206–207.
9. The original coda is reproduced on page 55 of the Norton score: Franz Schubert,
Symphony in B Minor (“Unfinished”), ed. Martin Chusid (New York: Norton, 1971).
10. Gülke, 199.
11. The contrasting tutti passage in the first group of the Andante (mm. 33–44) grows
from this movement’s opening motto, but in doing so it again recalls a motivic element
from the first movement (see ex. 4.2), the dotted upper neighbor figure that in measure
18 introduces Fn , negating B minor’s dominant in its attempt to move away from it to
D major. Later, the rhythm of this motive characterizes the second theme (see ex. 4.4,
n o t e s t o pag e s 8 0 – 1 0 3 293
m. 44). In its recurrence in the Andante, this figure retains neither the chromatic
poignancy of measure 18 nor the dancing lightness of the later theme. Instead it be-
comes insistently exuberant, as if in an attempt to make real something that could never
become so in the first movement.
12. Cone, 209.
13. Gülke, 199–200.
14. See, for example, Michael Steinberg, The Symphony: A Listener’s Guide (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1995), 482; and Susan McClary, “Constructions of Subjectiv-
ity in Schubert’s Music,” in Queering the Pitch, ed. Philip Brett, Elizabeth Wood, and
Gary Thomas (New York: Routledge, 1994), 205–233.
15. The pull of the C#-minor undercurrent again makes itself felt in the ensuing forte
episode, a development of the opening refrain (mm. 33¤.). After rising from E major
to its dominant, the intensifying harmony rises a step further, culminating in a C#-mi-
nor half-cadence with its leading tone in the melody (mm. 41–44). Instead of resolv-
ing up to its tonic, this B# slides quietly down to B to reintroduce the opening motive
of the theme. Melodically, this progression reenacts the C-to-B progression of measures
14–15. But unlike that earlier C, the B# of this new passage feels unresolved. As if in
response to this withheld resolution, the returning phrase of the theme turns out to be
its second phrase, the phrase that provisionally tonicizes C# minor. Here the return so
soon to this key (in mm. 48–49) comes as a delayed resolution of the B# in measure 44.
This phrase, originally the second phrase of the theme, concludes as it did the first time,
with the C again intruding upon the momentary C#-minor tonic to draw the music
back to E major. Thus this time the C is implicated in two disengagements from C# mi-
nor rather than in only one. In compensation, the ensuing cadential garland comes not
once but three times, and even the final refrain is repeated.
16. See Brian Newbould, Schubert and the Symphony (London:Toccata Press,1992), 201.
17. If the second group, in its recapitulation, followed its earlier course, it would bring
a return, in measure 252, of the imitative texture of measures 111¤., now in F rather
than D. Instead, the leading motive of the second group turns back on itself over the
F-major harmony, which moves on, as a Neapolitan, to the dominant seventh of E. The
ensuing resolution of this dominant seventh chord is deceptive, bringing back the C#-
minor triad (m. 256). Once again, this triad calls forth the intrusive C, whose gesture
of resolution this last time comes twice in succession. In this extended cadential pas-
sage, the harmony associated with this C is finally allowed to resolve first as a dominant
seventh, to the F-major triad in measure 252, before it returns as a German sixth in
measures 257 and 259. The F-major harmony thus intervenes, this one time, between
the C dominant seventh and the B dominant seventh that every time has immediately
followed it, as if to signal a final quieting of the disturbance brought by the C, and of
the memories it stirs of the first movement. In the subsequent deceptive resolution of
the dominant seventh to the C#-minor chord, the relationship between first and second
294 n o t e s t o pag e s 1 0 4 – 11 0
themes reaches its most overt expression. A progression originating in the first phrase-
group of the first theme (mm.13–15), and coming there as a first dramatic disturbance,
now reveals its full significance by bringing hitherto withheld closure to the second group.
18. Arnold Schering, Franz Schuberts Symphonie in H-Moll (“Unvollendete”) und ihr
Geheimnis (Berlin: Kleine Deutsche Musikbücherei, 1938), 15.
19. The best-known biographical studies of Schubert in English—those of Alfred Ein-
stein, Maurice Brown, John Reed, Brian Newbould, and Elizabeth Norman McKay—
show no awareness of it. It is even absent from Martin Chusid’s bibliography for the
Norton score of the symphony (see n. 9 above), an edition that incorporates “critical
commentary” and “some possible answers to important questions about the work that
have arisen during the past hundred years” (from the preface to the first edition). It
probably owes its absence there to the ridicule Otto Erich Deutsch casts upon it in his
article “The Riddle of Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony,” which Chusid does include
on pages 91–99. Although Peter Gülke notes it in his bibliography for Schubert und seine
Zeit, he makes no mention of it in his discussion of the symphony.
20. Arnold Feil, “Orchestermusik,” in Franz Schubert, ed. Walter Dürr and Arnold
Feil (Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam, 1991), 214–241; the discussion of Schering’s analysis
is on 234.
21. Maynard Solomon, “Schubert’s ‘Unfinished’ Symphony,” 19th-Century Music 21,
no. 2 (1997): 111–133; see 130, n. 55. This article appeared after I had drafted my en-
tire book; I regard it as only corroborating the account of the symphony that I propose
here.
22. Solomon, 129.
23. Schering, 19: “wie eine phantastische Schilderung dessen, was der Jüngling als ‘Wan-
derer,’ d.h. als aus dem Vaterhaus verstossener ‘Fremdling’ in der Ferne erlebte oder zu
erleben sich ausmalte.” Schering, 20: “die Hinwendung zu einem neuen, tatenfrohen
Leben, zu den Freuden des Diesseits, zu dem Entschlusse, das Schicksal um jeden Preis
zu meistern (Schussfuge).” The sentence continues: “das scheint unmittelbar, das zu sein,
was Schubert seiner Symphonie nicht mehr anvertrauen konnte und um dessentwillen
er nach wenigen Takten den Versuch eines Scherzos aufgab” (this appears to be exactly
what Schubert could no longer entrust to his symphony and because of which he gave
up his attempt at a scherzo after a few measures). Schering overstates his case with the
scherzo, much of which exists in a piano sketch.
Chapter 5
1. See Richard Kramer, Distant Cycles: Schubert and the Conceiving of Song (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1994), 16–17. Kramer also seems to imply that the with-
holding of op. 90, no. 3, from publication was related to its unusual key. He further ar-
gues, subtly and convincingly, that the choice of such a key is intrinsically related to the
n o t e s t o pag e s 111 – 115 295

character of the music. In my view, there is no reason why Schubert’s choice of Gb ma-
jor for this piece cannot reflect, at once, both the character of this impromptu in itself
and the deepening of this character through its dramatic and tonal relationship to that
of the preceding impromptu.
2. William Kinderman sensitively discusses Schubert’s dramatic o¤setting of major and
minor both in “Schubert’s Tragic Perspective,” Schubert: Critical and Analytical Studies,
ed. Walter Frisch (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1986), 65–83; and in “Schu-
bert’s Piano Music: Probing the Human Condition,” in The Cambridge Companion to
Schubert, ed. Christopher H. Gibbs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997),
155–173.
3. See especially Walther Dürr, “Klaviermusik,” in Reclams Musikführer: Franz Schu-
bert, ed. Walther Dürr and Arnold Feil (Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam, 1991), 304: “ein Zyk-
lus hat Schubert nicht gestalten wollen: die Tonartenfolge schliesst das aus” (Schubert
did not wish to create a cycle: the sequence of keys precludes that).
4. Susan McClary, “Pitches, Expression, Ideology: An Exercise in Mediation,” Enclitic
7 (1983): 76–86.
5. Christopher H. Gibbs, “The Presence of Erlkönig: Reception and Reworkings of
a Schubert Lied” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1992), 195–199.
6. Edward T. Cone, “Schubert’s Promissory Note,” in Schubert: Critical and Analytical
Studies, ed. Walter Frisch (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1986), 13–30.
7. No. 3 was first published in 1823, no. 6 in 1824, and the other four in 1828. See
Walther Dürr and Andreas Krause, eds., Schubert Handbuch (Kassel: Bärenreiter-Metzler,
1997), 433.
8. The hammering long note in the melody (ex. 5.3, m. 80), supported by its minor
triad, preceded by its hammering leading tone (m. 79), supported by the dominant har-
mony of that triad, can easily arouse the memory of the similar melodic and harmonic
gestures that introduced that middle section (ex. 5.2, mm. 82–83), as well as its return
in that impromptu’s coda.
9. Within the final return of the theme, an elision occurs that can seem awkward if its
contribution to the final articulation of the dramatic role of the Cb is not understood. In
place of the cadential tonic that would have occurred in the theme’s sixteenth measure
(now m. 70) comes a subdominant chord in first inversion, supporting a melodic leap
up to Cb in place of the Gb tonic. The melody rises from this Cb through Db and Dn to
recover the Eb goal, again over subdominant harmony, of the preceding phrase. The
melodic fall from this Eb to the Db of the following measure incorporates Ebb, as it did be-
fore in the concluding phrase of the theme. The tonicized subdominant is thus realized
this last time without recourse to the upwardly striving subphrases that have preceded it
before. At the same time, it incorporates the chromatic melodic motion most associated
with the establishment and negation of Eb minor, as if to give expression to a lingering
uncertainty, a residual striving that the subdominant harmony still needs to bring to rest.
296 n o t e s t o pag e s 1 2 2 – 13 8
Chapter 6
1. Quoted in Leon Plantinga, Schumann as Critic (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1967), 223–224. The quotation is from the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 9 (1838), 193.
2. Plantinga, 223.
3. Alfred Einstein, Schubert: A Musical Portrait (New York: Oxford University Press,
1951), 284–285.
4. Walther Dürr, “Klaviermusik,” in Walther Dürr and Arnold Feil, Reclams Musik-
führer: Franz Schubert (Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam, 1991), 304–305.
5. The manuscript is in the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York. It is briefly dis-
cussed by Dürr in Reclams Musikführer, 302–303, and by Andreas Krause in Die Klavier-
sonaten Franz Schuberts: Form, Gattung, Aesthetik (Basel, London, New York: Bärenreiter,
1992), 79–80.
6. Schubert, letter of 21 February 1828 to the publisher Bernard Schott in Mainz, as
included in Otto Erich Deutsch, ed., Franz Schubert’s Letters and Other Writings (New
York: Vienna House, 1974), 134–135.
7. Einstein, 284–285.
8. For reasons explained at the beginning of chapter 3, I apply the term mature to the
instrumental music beginning with the “Unfinished” Symphony of late 1822. Since the
impromptus come near the end of this period, from 1822 until his death in 1828, con-
sideration of the sonata works of that period should su‹ce to determine what kinds of
movements and procedures he would be likely to have incorporated into a piece of this
kind in 1827.
9. The Sonata in A Major of 1817 for violin and piano, D. 574, has a scherzo as its
second movement. Several of the early string quartets also experiment with the order
and character of movements.
10. In the String Quartet in D Minor (“Death and the Maiden”), D. 810, composed
in 1824; the Piano Sonata in A Minor, D. 845, composed in 1825; and of course in two
of the three fantasies, the “Wanderer” Fantasy, D. 760, composed in 1822, and the Fan-
tasy in C Major for violin and piano, D. 934, composed in 1827.
11. In the Piano Sonata in A Minor, op. 42 (D. 845), the actual moment of recapitu-
lation is deliberately, and very dramatically, obscured.
12. Again, one exception to this pattern is the first movement of the Piano Sonata in
A Minor, D. 845, in which a new theme marks the first strong tonic arrival, initiating
the transition to the second theme, and becomes itself transformed into the second theme.
In this same movement, the first theme later appears in an alternating interchange with
the second, and returns as well to dominate motivically the development.
13. Again, the quotation is from NZfM 9 (1838), 193. As this portion of the review is
not quoted by Plantinga, the quotation here is taken from Konrad Wol¤, ed., Schumann
on Music and Musicians (New York: Pantheon, 1946), 119.
n o t e s t o pag e s 1 4 1 – 15 4 297
14. Peter Gülke, Schubert und seine Zeit (Regensberg: Laaber, 1991), 301–302.
15. The audible relationship is only that between measure 83 and measure 5, not be-
tween measure 83 and measure 4. A more recognizable reference to the afterbeat in its
original (m. 4) form is established at measure 88.
16. The opening melodic Eb of the Ab-Major Impromptu not only neighbors the clos-
ing F just heard, when these pieces are performed together, but also realizes the sup-
pressed implication of a further descent from the descending figure, F to E, which is so
prominent in those closing measures. Implicitly, motive z thus links the ending of the
first impromptu to the beginning of the second. At the same time, the sarabande rhythm
of the new beginning, which will persist throughout the second impromptu, carries the
echo of the accented o¤beat chord that has every time jolted the enigmatic basic idea
of the first impromptu and that has infiltrated the contrasting idea (see ex. 6.1, m. 5;
ex. 6.5, m. 118).
17. The translation is from Plantinga, 224. The German text, from the Neue Zeitschrift
für Musik 9 (1838), 193, reads as follows: “Was das dritte Impromptu anlängt, so hätte
ich es kaum für eine Schubert’sche Arbeit, höchstens für eine aus seiner Knabenzeit
gehalten; es sind wenig oder gar nicht ausgezeichnete Variationen über ein ähnliches
Thema. Erfindung und Phantasie fehlen ihnen gänzlich, worin sich Schubert gerade auch
im Variationsgenre an andern Orten so schöpferisch gezeigt.”
18. The translation is from Wol¤, 119.
19. Even the first impromptu of opus 142 may have a partial source, as well, in that
same Minore interlude. Not only does that impromptu begin with the same emphasis
of 5 in minor (see ex. 6.1), and then of its upper neighbor in measure 4, it then con-
tinues, in measure 5, with the same upward leap of a fourth, from 5 to 8, that in the
third measure of this Minore I responds to the falling fourth in its second measure.
20. In measures 94 (see ex. 6.4) and 207 of the first impromptu, for example, just as
the major finally reemerges from the minor of the quasi-trio, or in measure 121 of the
third, where the Gb momentarily reintroduces a shadowy memory from the agitated
Minore variation into the serene concluding coda. This motive also recalls the color of
both the retransition (see ex. 6.6, mm. 27–29 et sim.) and the final cadences (ex. 6.6,
mm. 36–38, as well as 44–46 et sim.) of the second impromptu.
21. Einstein, 284–285; Brian Newbould, Schubert: The Music and the Man (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1997), 343–344.
Chapter 7
1. These variations, although without opus number, were published in 1807. It is there-
fore very unlikely that Schubert did not know them.
2. See Walther Dürr, “Klaviermusik,” in Walther Dürr and Arnold Feil, Franz Schu-
bert (Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam, 1991), 289.
298 n o t e s t o pag e s 155 – 1 8 0

3. See Arthur Godel, Schuberts Letzte Drei Klaviersonaten (Baden-Baden: Valentin Ko-
erner, 1985), 248–249. See also the notes by Harris Goldsmith for Richard Goode’s
recording of the C-Minor Sonata (Nonesuch 79064). Of the development Goldsmith
writes: “Although full of the quintessential Schubertian moodiness, this working out is
again ‘Beethovenian,’ in the thoroughgoing way that the sonata’s materials are broken
up, digested, combined, and sometimes transformed beyond immediate recognition.”
4. See Edward T. Cone, “Schubert’s Beethoven.” Musical Quarterly 56, no. 4 (1970):
779–793. Also Godel, 248–249.
rar Straus Giroux, 1991), 72–141; the quote is on 138.
6. Andreas Krause, Die Klaviersonaten Franz Schuberts: Form, Gattung, Aesthetik (Basel,
London, New York: Bärenreiter, 1992), 217.
7. Hans-Joachim Hinrichsen, Untersuchungen zur Entwicklung der Sonatenform in der In-
strumentalmusik Franz Schuberts (Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 1994), 322–323.
8. As in Beethoven’s “Pathétique” Sonata, Schubert’s melody begins on middle C, an
octave lower than in Beethoven’s variations. It then shifts up an octave through the as-
cending scale that highlights E natural in the third measure.
9. Through this Gb the second theme might be said to appropriate and, to an extent,
to master the memory of the harsh, threatening F# within the first theme.
10. This theme is an elaboration of the same melodic kernel, 1–7–1–2–3–4–3 (first
heard in mm. 14–15), that is the basis of the second theme.
11. Although this gestural dramatization of Db arises quite suddenly, the several toni-
cizations of Db in the preceding theme have prepared for it, as has the harmony that
mysteriously colors every melodic turn to Ab in the delicate C-major return of the theme
just preceding this proclamation of Db (mm. 85, 87, 89). Enharmonically respelled, that
D#–F#–Ab–C chord becomes the dominant seventh of Db, and the reemergence of Db
indirectly realizes this implication. Within its immediate context this chord engenders
an attenuating haze, imbuing the fading of C major with a darkening color.
12. At the same time, this closing theme—in its emphasis through repetition of the
sixth and then the fifth scale degrees, and in its highlighting of these degrees through
augmented sixth chords—recalls the closing theme of the first movement. By completing
a melodic descent to the tonic, in contrast to the cadence on the third degree of the
earlier closing theme, it brings this memory, also, to rest.
13. The dominant of Db subsides uncannily into a C-minor chord in second inversion,
recalling a progression characteristic of the “Death and the Maiden” Quartet; it occurs
in the closing theme (both exposition and recapitulation) of the first movement of the
quartet.
14. John M. Gingerich, “Schubert’s Beethoven Project” (Ph.D. diss., Yale University,
1996).
n o t e s t o pag e s 1 8 0 – 2 0 3 299
Chapter 8
1. Charles Rosen, Sonata Forms (New York, London: Norton, 1980), 321.
2. Arthur Godel, Schuberts Letzte Drei Klaviersonaten: Enstehungsgeschichte, Entwurf und
Reinschrift, Werkanalyse (Baden-Baden: Valentin Koerner, 1985), 247–248.
3. Ivan Waldbauer, “Recurrent Harmonic Patterns in the First Movement of Schu-
bert’s Sonata in A Major, D. 959,” 19th-Century Music 12, no. 1 (1988): 64–73.
4. Maurice J. E. Brown, Schubert: A Critical Biography (New York: St. Martin’s, 1966),
303.
5. As it happens, the sudden modulation in measure 27 was an afterthought; it does
not occur in Schubert’s first version of this exposition, or even in his second; see Franz
Schubert, Drei grosse Sonaten für das Pianoforte D958, D959, D960 ( frühe Fassungen), Fak-
simile nach den Autographen in der Wiener Stadt- und Landesbibliothek, Begleitebder Text und
Kommentar von Ernst Hilmar (Tutzing: H. Schneider, 1987). In these early versions, the
arpeggio that breaks the gestural pattern in measure 27 simply reinforces the A-major
triad, and the ensuing flight of harmonic fancy begins in A instead of E major, contin-
uing through F major and Db major to return to A, exactly as it does in the recapitula-
tion. Hans-Joachim Hinrichsen argues convincingly that Schubert only introduced the
sudden modulation, the dominant of E in measure 27, after composing the recapitula-
tion, and that he made the change in order to align exposition with recapitulation—to
allow the second theme to arrive functionally in the same way, from its own dominant
prolongation, in both places. In Schubert’s original conception of the exposition, the
dominant key of the second theme comes without preparation; the dominant harmony
of A major simply becomes the tonic of E as the second theme begins. Hinrichsen rea-
sonably takes Schubert’s retention of this version of the transition until the final stages
of his work on this movement as evidence for the weakening of the tonic-dominant
axis in his tonal thinking. The final version restores the polarity between the tonic of
the first theme and the dominant of the second to an extent; in both versions, however,
the modulatory flight of fancy, the chain of descending major thirds that dominates the
transition, plays no functional role in establishing its harmonic goal.
6. Rosen, 287–291.
rar Straus Giroux, 1990), 86.
8. Edward T. Cone, “Schubert’s Unfinished Business,” in Music: A View from Delft
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989); see especially 212–214.
9. See Godel, 166–167.
10. See Brendel, 126–127. He summarizes the emotional character of the Andantino
as one of “desolate grace behind which madness hides.”
11. Brendel, 112. He places the two variants of the motive that I am comparing here—
300 n o t e s t o pag e s 2 0 4 – 2 2 1
from the first and second movements, respectively—side by side, as his examples 72
and 73.
12. A return of the basic idea like that of measures 9–12 is “expected” at m. 27 but
never occurs; instead measure 27 parallels measure 13 (see ex. 8.4).
13. I have twice come across this characterization in liner notes for recordings: first in
Rosen’s notes for his own recording (Epic LC 3855), in which he proposes this charac-
terization as a simple fact, and later in Kurt Oppens’s notes for Richard Goode’s 1978
recording (Nonesuch 78028). Oppens mentions in passing that Artur Schnabel called
this movement an “unearthly barcarole.”
14. Alfred Brendel, “Schubert’s Piano Sonatas, 1822–1828,” in Musical Thoughts and
Afterthoughts (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), 57–74; see especially 67.
15. Robert S. Hatten, “Schubert the Progressive: The Role of Resonance and Gesture
in the Piano Sonata in A, D. 959,” Intégral 7 (1993): 38–81.
16. Martin Chusid has observed this, along with several of the other cyclic recurrences
of rhythmic motives in this sonata, in his short article “Cyclicism in Schubert’s Piano
Sonata in A Major, D. 959,” Piano Quarterly, no. 104 (1978–79): 38–40.
17. See especially Edward T. Cone, “Schubert’s Beethoven,” Musical Quarterly 56, no.
4 (1970): 779–793; and Charles Rosen, The Classical Style (New York: Norton, 1971),
456–458. For a recent example of the unquestioning assumption of Cone’s and Rosen’s
conclusions, see William Kinderman, “Schubert’s Piano Music: Probing the Human
Condition,” in The Cambridge Companion to Schubert, ed. Christopher H. Gibbs (Cam-
bridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 162.
18. In an article that appeared after this entire account had been drafted, William
Kinderman beautifully describes the way this F#-major passage in the Rondo embodies
“a vision of the slow movement theme glimpsed through the veil of the rondo theme.”
See his “Wandering Archetypes in Schubert’s Instrumental Music,” 19th-Century Mu-
sic 21, no. 2 (1997): 208–222; the quotation is from the final page of the article.
Chapter 9
1. See chapter 3, sections VI and VII.

2. Brendel does recognize the derivation but does not comment on it; see “Schubert’s
Last Sonatas,” in Music Sounded Out (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1990), 110.
3. The quote is from Brendel; see chapter 1, n. 11.
4. Charles Rosen, Sonata Forms (New York: Norton, 1980), 249.
5. Joseph Kerman, “A Romantic Detail in Schubert’s ‘Schwanengesang’” in Schubert:
Critical and Analytical Studies, ed. Walter Frisch (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press,
1986), 48–64.
n o t e s t o pag e s 2 2 1 – 2 4 1 301
Epilogue
1. See Otto Erich Deutsch, ed., Franz Schubert’s Letters and Other Writings (New York:
Vienna House, 1974), 59n.
2. Maynard Solomon, “Franz Schubert’s ‘My Dream,’” American Imago 38 (1981):
137–154.
3. John Reed takes up Maurice Brown’s conjecture that it may have been the prod-
uct of a party game; see John Reed, Schubert (London: The Master Musicians, 1987),
94; and Maurice J. E. Brown, Schubert: A Critical Biography (New York: St. Martin’s,
1966), 115–116. If so, we have apparently lost touch since Schubert’s time with how
much fun a party can be. More recently Elizabeth Norman McKay has advanced a bizarre
hypothesis that may nonetheless, for some, account more plausibly for the strangeness
of the story. She suggests that it could be the product of an opium-induced reverie, one
that might have arisen under the influence of the writings of Novalis; see Elizabeth Nor-
man McKay, Franz Schubert: A Biography (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 126–129. For
additional support of Reed and McKay, see Brian Newbould, Schubert: The Music and
the Man (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 180.
4. John M. Gingerich, “Schubert’s Beethoven Project” (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1996).
5. Arthur Godel, Schuberts letzte drei Klaviersonaten (Baden-Baden: Valentin Koerner,
1985), 242.
6. See, for example, James Webster, Haydn’s “Farewell” Symphony and the Idea of the
Classical Style (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), especially 175–176,
179–182.
7. Leon Botstein, “Realism Transformed: Franz Schubert and Vienna,” in The Cam-
bridge Companion to Schubert, ed. Christopher H. Gibbs (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1997), 15–35; see especially 19.
8. William Kinderman, “Wandering Archetypes in Schubert’s Instrumental Music,”
in 19th-Century Music 21, no. 2 (1997): 208–222. This article, published after my entire
book had been drafted, strikes me as fundamentally in agreement with much of what I
have explored here. It o¤ers, among other insights, yet more characterizations of cyclic
aspects of the A-Major Sonata, consistent with and yet di¤erently worded than my own.
This is one work on whose cyclic nature increasingly many writers—among them
Chusid, Waldbauer, Brendel, Hatten, and Kinderman—have come to agree. I myself
discussed cyclic aspects of the finale in my paper “Schubert’s Last Finales,” presented at
the annual meeting of the American Musicological Society at Oakland, California, in
1990. Kinderman cites this paper in his “Schubert’s Piano Music: Probing the Human
Condition,” in The Cambridge Companion to Schubert, ed. Christopher H. Gibbs (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 155–173, but he does not mention it again
in the article in 19th-Century Music.
9. Charles Fisk, “What Schubert’s Last Sonata Might Hold,” in Music and Meaning, ed.
Jenefer Robinson (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997), 179–200.
302 n o t e s t o pag e s 2 7 0 – 2 8 3
Index
Italic page numbers denote music examples and figures.
alienation theme Thirty-two Variations in C Minor, 180,

in A-Major Sonata, 221–222, 235–236 181–184, 183, 185, 190
in Bb-Major Sonata, 78, 242, 267 “Waldstein” Sonata, and Schubert’s C-
in C-Minor Sonata, 192, 203 Minor Sonata, 180
and late instrumental music, 7–8, 23 Botstein, Leon, 282
in “Unfinished” Symphony, 111–112 Brendel, Alfred, 35, 216, 222
and Viennese social restrictions, 282 on A-Major Sonata, 221, 222, 300n10,
in “Wanderer” Fantasy, 6, 60, 66–67, 301n11
69–72, 112 on Bb-Major Sonata, 63
in Winterreise, 5–6, 28–29 on C-Minor Sonata,181
See also “Fremdling” theme on sonatas, cyclic elements, 20–21, 32,
“Auf dem Flusse,” 52, 53, 192 33, 36
Brown, Maurice, 295n19, 302n3
Beethoven, Ludwig van, 115 Burnham, Scott, 12
Bb-Major String Quartet (op. 130),
29–31, 30 Chusid, Martin, 295n19, 301n16
C-minor sonatas (op. 10, no. 1; op. 13), Cohn, Richard, 288n16
and Schubert’s C-Minor Sonata, 180, Cone, Edward T.
191, 299n8 on A-Major Sonata, 217
G-Major Sonata (op. 31, no. 1), and on C-Minor Sonata, 180
Schubert’s A-Major Sonata, 228, The Composer’s Voice, 22
232–235 on protagonist concept, 288n21
influence of, 29–31, 203, 271, 299n3 on Schubert compared to Beethoven,
and Schubert’s sonata form, 148, 29, 31
274–277 “Schubert’s Promissory Note,” 136
303
Cone, Edward T. (continued) Allegro, 63–66
on “Unfinished” Symphony, 103, 104, and A-Major Sonata, 2–3, 234
293n4 and Bb-Major Sonata, 62–63, 78–79,
cyclic elements, 3, 5, 42 237–240
A-Major Sonata, 2, 13–16, 204–205, and cyclic impulse, 3, 11, 113–114
218, 229–230; finale, 227, 233–235; and Impromptus, op. 90, 140
Scherzo, 225–227 and last instrumental works, 21–22,
as atypical of Schubert, 12 72–80
Bb-Major Sonata, 237–241 motivic unification in, 61–63
C-Minor Sonata, 191–202 Scherzo, 67
Impromptus, op. 90, 115–125, 137–138 and Schubert life narrative, 269–270
Impromptus, op. 142, 146–148, 159– and “Unfinished” Symphony, 112–
163, 171–172, 177–179 114
impulse toward, 21–22, 280–282 variations in, 66–67
in late fantasies, 61–62 See also “Der Wanderer”
in late keyboard compositions, 38–41 Fantasy, piano four hands, F Minor
in late sonatas, 1 (D. 940), 62, 277
in Moments musicaux, 137 Fantasy, violin and piano, C Major,
motivic vs. formal, 276–277 (D. 934), 61, 297n10
and overcoming alienation, 23 father relationship, 9, 134, 280
in “Unifinished” Symphony, 81–85, Feil, Arnold, 111–112
100–110 form manipulation, and cyclic organiza-
in “Wanderer” Fantasy, 61, 64–68, tion, 20, 278
113–114 “Fremdling” theme, 8, 28–29, 287n11
in Winterreise, 4 in Ab-Major Impromptu (op. 90, no. 4),
See also homecoming theme 74–77
in Bb-Major Sonata, 79, 254
“Death and the Maiden.” See Quartet, critical approaches to, 274–277
strings, D Minor (D. 810) and late instrumental music, 21, 23
death theme, 44–46, 53, 196–197, 203 and “Mein Traum” story, 134, 280
Deutsch, Otto Erich, 270, 295n19 and Schubert’s life narrative, 8, 269–270
“Der Doppelgänger,” 222 in “Wanderer” Fantasy, 7, 71–72, 112
dramatic tension, 19, 274 See also alienation theme; homecoming
Dürr, Walther, 142, 180 theme
“Einsamkeit,” 53, 192 “Gefror’ne Tränen,” 50–52, 51, 192

Einstein, Alfred, 29, 141–143, 159, 178, Gibbs, Christopher, 134
295n19 Gingerich, John, 203, 271, 274–277, 283
“Erlkönig,” 127, 129, 130, 133–135 Godel, Arthur, 274–277
“Erstarrung,” 187, 192 on Beethoven’s influence, 299n3
on C-Minor Sonata, 47, 180
Fantasy, piano, C Major (D. 760), on formal procedures, 19
“Wanderer,” 60–72, 64, 65, 67, on Schubert’s finales, 32, 37, 204
292nn5–7,10, 297n10 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von: “Erlkönig,”
Adagio, 64, 66–67, 78–79, 254 129, 133–135
304 index
Goldsmith, Harris, 299n3 Impromptus, piano, op. 90 (D. 899), 39,
“Gretchen am Spinnrade,” 221 115–140
Grob, Therese, 9 as cycle, 123–125, 124, 273
ground bass pattern —no. 1, C Minor, 26–27, 128–129,
Beethoven’s use of, 182 131
in “Unfinished” Symphony, 85–88 cyclic elements in, 1, 125–126
Gs, opening, 25–28, 38 and “Erlkönig,” 127–130, 133–134
Gülke, Peter five-part form of, 278
on C-Major Fantasy, 292nn5,7,8,10 and no. 2, 135–136
on F-Minor Impromptu (op. 142, no. 1), opening G, intertextuality of, 27–28,
154–155, 157 31, 32, 135
on “Unfinished” Symphony, 85, 91–93, and “Der Wegweiser,” 28–29
102, 295n19 and Winterreise, 132–134, 140
“Gute Nacht,” 28, 52, 192 —no. 2, Eb Major, 41, 59, 118, 121
cyclic elements in, 46, 122
Hartmann, Fritz von, 8 and no. 1, 135–136
Haslinger Publishers, 115, 142 and no. 3, 39, 41, 42, 115–120, 137–
Hatten, Robert, 225 138
Haydn, Josef, 115 —no. 3, Gb Major, 41, 59, 116, 119
“Drum Roll” Symphony, 31 and A-Major Sonata, 225
and sonata form, 148 cyclic elements in, 122, 296n8
Hinrichsen, Hans-Joachim, 274–277 and no. 2, 39, 41, 42, 115–120,
on A-Major Sonata, 300n5 137–138
on Bb-Major Sonata, 17, 18 —no. 4, Ab Major, 73, 75–76
on C-Minor Sonata, 181 and earlier impromptus, 123
Ho¤mann, E.T.A., 166 and “Der Wanderer,” 72–74, 77, 123,
homecoming theme, 5, 7 140
in “Mein Traum,” 10–11, 111, 270– Impromptus, piano, op. 142 (D. 935)
271 as cycle, 141–148, 146–147, 159, 166,
and tonal compositions, 271–273 178
and tonality, 20 and sonata form, 141–145, 148, 179
homeless wandering. See alienation; —no. 1, F Minor, 142, 148–159, 149–
“Fremdling” theme 150, 153, 154, 156, 158, 161–162,
homosexuality, 8, 284 174
and Rosamunde, 298n19
illness and sonata form, 142–143, 154, 158–
and A-Major Sonata, expression of, 159
222, 223 —no. 2, Ab Major, 1, 159–166, 160, 164,
and “Mein Traum” story, 135 170, 177
and Schubert’s life narrative, 8, 60, and sonata form, 142–143
269 —no. 3, Bb Major, 144, 166–172, 167,
Impromptus 178–179
cyclic elements in, 2 —no. 4, F Minor, 171–178, 173,
tonal network, and homecoming 175–177
theme, 272–274 and rondo form, 144, 178
index 305
improvisatory quality, in A-Major Sonata, Moments musicaux, piano, op. 94 (D. 780)
Scherzo, 13. See also tonal networks Ab Major (no. 2), 278–282, 279, 281
“In der Ferne,” 289n8 as cyclic works, 137
motion by thirds, 17, 19
“Die junge Nonne,” 157, 158 motivic unification, 276–277
and cyclic procedures, 6
Kerman, Joseph, 30, 241 “Wanderer” Fantasy, 4, 60–63
key organization Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 115
A-Major Sonata, 17 Müller, Wilhelm, 5, 133–134
Impromptus, op. 90, 120
late fantasies, 61–62 narrative quality
major vs. minor, 69; C-Minor Bb-Major Sonata, 267
Impromptu, 132; Impromptus, musical expression of, 282–283
op. 90, 115–123; impromptus, urgency of, 269–274
and Winterreise, 122 after Winterreise, 6
remote keys, use of, 7, 17, 19 Neapolitan harmony, 66, 130, 155,
Kinderman, William, 283, 287n11, 291n3, 288n13
292n12, 296n2, 301n18, 302n8 Newbould, Brian, 178, 295n19
Kramer, Richard, 4, 11, 28, 295n1 Novalis, 302n3
Krause, Andreas, 181
Kupelweiser, Leopold, 8 Oppens, Kurt, 301n13
“Der Leiermann,” 5, 7, 189, 203 pleasure garden, in “Mein Traum” story, 9,

life narrative, in music, 8–11, 60, 269– 134–135
270, 271, 283, 284 progression by thirds. See motion by thirds
“Der Lindenbaum,” 187, 192 protagonist concept, 7, 22–23, 155. See
also self
major vs. minor. See key organization;
tonal networks Quartet, strings, A Minor (D. 804), 166–
mature work, defined, 297n8 169, 289n8
McClary, Susan, 19, 289n1, 294n14 Quartet, strings, D Minor (D. 810), 62,
McKay, Elizabeth Norman, 295n19, 196, 234, 297n10
302n3 Quartet, strings, G Major (D. 887), 278,
“Mein Traum” (story), 8–10, 60 289n8
and A-Major Sonata, 236 Quintet, piano and strings, A Major
and Bb-Major Sonata, 242, 256, 268 (D. 667), “Trout,” 60, 61
and C-Minor Sonata, 203 Quintet, strings, C Major (D. 956), 277,
reconciliation in, 9, 60 284
and second Moment musical, 280, 282
and Schubert life narrative, 8–11, 133– Reed, John, 28, 293n14, 295n19, 302n3
135, 270–271 Romanticism, 11, 133, 166, 196–197
and “Unfinished” Symphony, 111–113 Rosamunde, incidental music (D. 797),
and “Wanderer” Fantasy, 113–114 166–171, 168, 172, 298n19
memory, and Impromptus, op. 142, 154, Rosen, Charles, 204, 216, 241, 293n5,
157, 163–165, 170–171 301n13
306 index
salvation, in “Unfinished” Symphony and Sonata, piano, Bb Major (D. 960), 32–37,
“Wanderer” Fantasy, 60. See also 58, 237–268
homecoming theme and A-Major Sonata, 17–18, 253, 255,
Schering, Arnold, 111–113, 280, 295n23 263, 267–268
Schnabel, Artur, 301n13 Andante sostenuto, 78–79, 237–241,
Die schöne Müllerin, 6, 271 238–239, 254–260, 257–258;
Schumann, Robert, on Impromptus, op. “Wanderer” key in, 62–63, 78, 237,
142, 141, 142, 154, 159, 166, 178 241
Schwanengesang (D. 957), 289n8 critical approaches to, 274–277
“Sei mir gegrüsst,” 61, 291n2 finale, Allegro ma non troppo, 26,
self 239, 264–267, 266; and Beethoven
concept/assertion of, 6, 12, 57; in A- Bb-Major String Quartet (op. 130),
Major Sonata, opening, 235; in C- 29–31; and C-Minor Impromptu,
Minor Sonata, 192 35; and C-Minor Sonata, 32, 35
and Schubert’s life narrative, 270–273, opening G, intertextuality of, 27–28
283 Molto moderato, 34, 241–254, 243,
sexual orientation. See homosexuality 244–246, 249–251, 254–255
Solomon, Maynard, 112, 270, 284, 291n1 Scherzo, 260–264, 261–262
Sonata, arpeggione and piano, A Minor tonal progression in, 17
(D. 821), 20 trills in, 33, 36, 241–242, 247, 252,
Sonata, piano, A Major (D. 664), 60 253, 272
Sonata, piano, A Major (D. 959), 204–236 and “Der Wanderer,” 248, 249, 255
Allegro, 204–218, 208–209, 211–214, Sonata, piano, C Major (D. 840), 278
272 Sonata, piano, C Minor (D. 958), 180–
Andantino, 13, 80, 218–225, 219, 223, 203
224, 227–228, 232 Adagio, 39, 40, 42–44, 47–57, 54,
and Bb-Major Sonata, 17–18, 38, 253, 55, 80, 191–193, 196, 197, 200,
255, 263, 267–268 201; cyclic elements in, 47–50,
and Beethoven, G-Major Sonata (op. 53; five-part form in, 278; and
31, no. 1), 228, 232–235 “Gefror’ne Tränen,” 50–52, 51;
critical approaches to, 275 and other Winterreise songs, 52–53
cyclic elements in, 2, 204–205, 220, Allegro, 180–191, 183, 185, 188–189,
227–228, 229, 230, 233 197
and Gb-Major Impromptu, 225 and Bb-Major Sonata, 32, 35
opening, compared to Rondo, 204–205 finale, Allegro, 38–39, 40, 57–59, 196–
opening, vs. Viennese tradition, 235 202, 198, 199, 201
Rondo, 38, 204–205, 206, 207, 209, Menuetto, 193–196, 194–195, 197
227–233, 229, 231, 234–236 and Winterreise, 187, 192
Scherzo, 13–18, 14–15, 58, 225–227, Sonata, piano, D Major (D. 850), 278
227, 236 Sonata, piano, G Major (D. 894), 278
and “Wanderer” Fantasy, 2–3 Sonata, piano and violin, Ab Major
Sonata, piano, A Minor (D. 537), (D. 574), 297n9
204–205, 206 sonata form, 274–277
Sonata, piano, A Minor (D. 845), and Impromptus, op. 142, 141, 145,
297nn10–12 148, 154, 158–159, 179
index 307
sonata form (continued) “Unfinished” Symphony. See Symphony,
and Schubert’s life narrative, 275 B Minor (D. 759)
song cycle. See Die schöne Müllerin;
Winterreise Viennese society, 275, 282
Spaun, Joseph, 8
Sto¤els, Ludwig, 4, 28, 290n4 walking tempo, 28
“Suleika I” (D. 720), 88–90, 89, 140 “Der Wanderer” (D. 489), 2, 4, 7, 68–72,
Symphony, B Minor (D. 759), 70–71, 78–80, 79
“Unfinished,” 60, 81–114 and Bb-Major Sonata, 248, 255
Allegro moderato, 81, 85–100, 86–87, song text, 68–69
92–93, 94–97; development, 93–99; See also Fantasy, piano, C Major
first theme, 90–91; recapitulation (D. 760); “Wanderer” key
and coda, 99–100; second theme, “Wanderer” Fantasy. See Fantasy, piano,
91–93 C Major (D. 760)
Andante con moto, 81–85, 82–84, 101– “Wanderer” key (C# minor), 63, 68, 80
102, 102–108, 270; cyclic elements and A-Major Sonata, 3, 7
in, 100–104; five-part form of, 111, in Bb-Major Sonata, 62–63, 237–240
278; recapitulation and coda, 109–110 and “Unfinished” Symphony, 110–113,
and “Mein Traum” story, 111–113 294n15
“Wanderer” key in, 110–113, 294n15 “Der Wegweiser,” 5, 28–29, 42–46, 43,
syphilis, 8. See also illness 135, 192, 193
Willemer, Marianne von, 293n2
text, in relation to music, 42–46, 68–71, Winterreise
88–90, 133–135, 269–270 and C-Minor Impromptu, 132–135
tonal networks, 18–19 and C-Minor Sonata, 50–53, 192, 196,
in A-Major Sonata, 7–8, 210, 226; 203
Scherzo, 13–17 as cycle, 3–4, 6
as atypical of Schubert, 12 cyclic elements in, and text, 41–46
in Bb-Major Sonata, 268 and Eb-Major Trio, 277
and diatonic conceptualization, and “Erlkönig,” 133
288n16 and impromptus, 2, 122, 140
and homecoming theme, 273–276 and later works, 1, 3, 21
in Impromptus, op. 90, 123–125 text changed by Schubert, 291n10
in late fantasies, 61–62 themes and motives in, 3–6
sonata form, and Impromptus, op. 142, walking motion in, 28
146–147 and “Wanderer” Fantasy, 3–6, 72
in “Unfinished” Symphony, 110 See also titles of songs
in “Wanderer” Fantasy, 7–8 “Das Wirtshaus,” 43, 42–46, 53, 192,
Trio, piano, Bb Major (D. 898), 277 291n14
Trio, piano, Eb Major (D. 929), 2, 3, 61, Wol¤, Christoph, 62
277 Wol¤, Konrad, 33, 35
“Trout” Quintet. See Quintet, piano and
strings, A Major (D. 667) Youens, Susan, 4, 8, 28
308 index
Designer: Steve Renick
Compositor: Integrated Composition Systems
Music Setter: Rolf W. Wulfsberg
Text: 11/14 Bembo
Display: Bembo
Printer/Binder: Edwards Brothers, Inc.

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The publisher gratefully acknowledges the generous contribution

John and Jola Anderson

Carol Franc Buck Foundation

Frank A. Campini Foundation

Ann and Gordon Getty

David B. Gold Foundation

William and Flora Hewlett Foundation

1. Between Romanticism and Modernism: Four Studies in the Music

Contexts for the Interpretation of Schubert’s

u n i v e r s i ty o f ca l i f o r n i a p r e s s be rke ley lo s ange le s london

University of California Press, Ltd.

© 2001 by the Regents of the University of California

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Manufactured in the United States of America

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum

Portions of chapter 3 and the epilogue are reprinted from

Prologue: Schubert after Winterreise 1

3. The Wanderer’s Tracks 60

4. Retelling the “Unﬁnished” 81

5. Expanding the Scope of Schubertian Tonality:

6. Displacing the Sonata: The Opus 142 Impromptus 141

7. Beethoven in the Image of Schubert:

8. Recovering a Song of Origin:

9. Schubert’s Last “Wanderer”:

Epilogue: Telling, Retelling, and Untelling Schubert 269

I am grateful to Wellesley College for the sabbatical leave in 1995–96 in which

My personal thanks go ﬁrst to Joseph Kerman, who took an interest in this

The questions addressed in this study of Schubert’s piano music originated

The argument emerging here—the answer to this question—may seem quite

Cyclic organization, both in the form of occasional obvious references to

The interpretation suggested here depends not only on hearing C# minor

In some ways, especially with respect to tonal progression, Schubert usually

As I have indicated, overtly cyclic recollections—ones reminiscent of the

Allegro ma non troppo.

b. Impromptu in C Minor, op. 90, no. 1, mm. 1–17

Is the ﬁrst impromptu of opus 90 “a kind of keyboard paraphrase of ‘Der

How close is the resemblance? Joseph Kerman aptly characterizes Bee-

I have already mentioned, in my prologue, a substantial and provocative study

All of these contextualizations of the ﬁnale of the Bb-Major Sonata—Cone’s

This preliminary investigation of a network of musical associations to the

b. Allegro, mm. 377–383

b. Impromptu in Gb Major, op. 90, no. 3, mm. 53–56

b. “Das Wirtshaus,” mm. 5–9

Was vermeid’ ich denn die Wege,

Einen Weiser seh’ ich stehen

One might assume the Wegweiser, the signpost, to be an emblem of death,

The minor ending of the Eb-Major Impromptu is extraordinary, perhaps even

In the C-Minor Sonata, as already indicated, the progression that returns

Gefror’ne Tropfen fallen

Ei Tränen, meine Tränen

Und dringt doch aus der Quelle

The wanderer’s feelings are so painful that he is compelled to numb them,

This upward shift of a semitone has an enigmatic e¤ect. The inclusion of

As in the A-Major and Bb-Major Sonatas, the recurrences of components of

The Wanderer’s Tracks

semicadence followed abruptly by silence and a pianississimo return of the

an exploration in imagination of the relationship between terror in a lonely

Ich wan dle still, bin we nig froh, und im mer

Dort wo du nicht bist, dort ist das Glück.

ing neighbor motion, lingers on a D# that is intensiﬁed by an upper neigh-

In thinking about the legacy of “Der Wanderer” for Schubert himself, we

Retelling the “Unﬁnished”