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Arpeggione’ Sonata _ Introduction and Variations on a Theme from |

‘Die Schone Miillerin" a - | Serenade

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"The state should take care of me; | i was born to compose, and no-

thing else”, remarked Schubert on more than one occasion to his friend Josef Hiuittenbrenner. It was in fact Hiittenbrenner, along with other good friends, who looked after Schubert's modest financial needs dur- ing most of his short (1797-1828) life. Unlike Beethoven, Schubert had no talent for dealing with publishers, few enough of whom were willing to take a gamble on a young and unknown > composer whose music they often found too difficult and harmonically adventurous for their clientele, and the proceeds from his sole public concert, organised by his friends in March 1828, were barely sufficient for the re- payment of debts and the purchase of a new piano.

The musical life in Vienna at this time was lively and competitive, with a torrent of concerts, wrote one news- paper in 1819, “penetrating into the house through the cracks in the wind- ows every morning, afternoon and evening.” Schubert profited little from all this activity, with only a handful of his songs gaining popularity during his lifetime. He remained on the peri- phery of the Viennese musical world and had scant tolerance for the social stratum which populated and nurtured it. Anselm Hiittenbrenner, Josef's brother, recalled one musical soirée where Schubert's songs were being performed. Schubert, increasingly im- patient with the demands of being polite to everybody, turned and whispered to Hiittenbrenner, “I can't stand these ladies with their good man- ners. They understand nothing of music and what they say to me doesn't come from the heart. Go, Anselm, and fetch me secretly a little glass of wine’.

Schubert felt most at home in the company of his small circle of close

_ friends, with whom he spent most of his. evenings at a neighborhood inn, and at the famous “Schubertiads", eve- nings of music-making at the homes of a few. genuine music lovers and amateur musicians who had grown de- voted to the good-hearted little man with his seemingly inexhaustible out- pouring of inspired melody. Many of Schubert's songs, four-hand piano pieces and chamberworks received their first (and often, at least during his life, only) performances at these gatherings, and indeed: many were especially written for them. Among Schubert's most fervent ad-

mirers were the four Frohlich sisters, in whose home he spent many happy hours. Kathi Frohlich has described him thus: “Schubert was a wonderful soul. Never was he jealous or scorn- ful, as so many others are. On the con- trary, he was enraptured when beauti- ful music was being performed. He would place his folded hands against his lips and sit as if enchanted. The in- nocence and sweetness of his spirit were indescribable. "

One of the sisters, Barbara, married the flutist Ferdinand Bogner, who later became a professor at the Vienna Conservatory. It was for him that the Trock'ne Blumen variations were written, although there is no record of their having been performed, even pri- vately, in Schubert's lifetime. They were published by Diabelli in 1851 as Op. 160. The manuscript is ‘dated January 1824, which is to say, within

a month after Bognor might first have heard the song Trock’ne Blumen in the Frohlich household and _ asked - Schubert to write him a set of variations on it. |

The work consists of an introduc- tion, theme, and seven variations. The introduction begins quietly in E minor with darkly shifting harmonies underscored by the canzona rhythm (J) f2) which virtually became Schubert's motto: it is equally promi- nent in his two other best-known in- strumental compositions based on songs, the Wanderer Fantasy and the fourth movement of the Trout Quintet, and in many others as well. Melodic fragments are heard, all based on and foreshadowing the Trock'ne Blumen theme. The song itself has been modified, both melodically and formally, for use as a theme. Schubert has cast it in an unusual trip- artite form moving first to the relative major, then to the dominant, and finally to the tonic major, as (in the text) the withered flowers are exhor- ted to blossom again with the coming of Spring. This motion in the theme, from a quiet and melancholy minor key to a euphoric and full-throated conclusion in the major mode, is re- flected and magnified by a similar motion through the work as a whole. The structure of the entire work is marked by a tightly conceived sym- metry, the harmonic instability of the brooding introduction balanced by bold harmonic excursions in the codas of the final two variations. Of the central five sections of the piece, vari- ations I and V feature the flute in bril- liant decorative figurations and II and IV place the piano in the foreground with equally virtuosic demands. Vari- ation III, the midpoint of the piece, balances the two instruments evenly in a tender duet in E major. Variation VI,. in°C sharp minor, treats the theme contrapuntally. Its extensive coda modulates through a sequence of descending thirds reaching, in an aug- mented sixth cadence reminiscent of both the introduction and the theme, a climax on the dominant of E. This prepares for the sprightly, march-like final variation in E major. i 1823 a Viennese instrument maker named Johann Georg Staufer invent-

ed a six-stringed instrument with frets, played with a bow, which he called a guitarre d'amour. Among its few expo- ‘nents was a musician named Vincenz Schuster, who published a book of studies for the instrument (which he termed ‘guitar-violoncello’) in 1825. Schubert was prevailed upon to com- pose a piece for it and he obliged with the Sonata for Arpeggione and Piano which he wrote in 1824, the same year in which he wrote the variations. It received its premiere performance by Schuster in November of that year. The name ‘Arpeggione’ was favoured (or even coined) by Schubert because of the instrument's suitability for playing arpeggios. When the sonata was finally pub- lished in 1871, any memory of the in- strument for which it was composed had long since been covered by the sands of time, and the first edition in- cluded ‘cello and violin parts. Now it is also frequently performed on the viola or even viola damore, occasion- ally on the double bass, and here, on the flute.

The sonata is in three movements,

Timings: Side A—8:26, 13:48 Side B—15:22, 3:54 Public performance clearance—ASCAP

of which the second and third are con- nected by a short solo cadenza. The first movement is in A minor, the second in E major, and the last in A major. The work is formed and prop- elled by an almost unceasing flow of long-spun melodies rather than the short motives typical of the classical sonata, and indeed owes much of its appeal thereto. In the outer move- ments, the principal theme is lyrical while the subordinate: theme in both cases is jaunty and brilliant. The three scale tones, rising and returning to the tonic note, which characterize the principal themes of all three move- ments, as well as the charming E major episode in the last movement, were a favourite motive of Schubert. Similar motives begin the Unfinished Symphony, the great C major Sym- phony, the Bb Piano Sonata op. posthumous, and the Lied der Mignon, among others. In all three movements of the Arpeggione sonata, the theme strives upward a second time, now to the sixth degree of the scale, before re- solving downward again to the tonic. The tension between the sixth and fifth degrees (F-E, first movement, bars 3-4, reflected in the bass line at bar 8) is integrated by Schubert into the larger harmonic, as well as the smaller motivic structures of the three movements. This is done with near- obsessive insistence in the develop- ment section of the first movement, and with equal insistence, though with a restraint which seems to sus- pend all sense of forward motion, at the end of the slow movement, with its endlessly sustained, pianissimo high C's in the melody.

he last movement is a benevolent rondo, with the form A-B-A-C-bridge -B-A. The little bridge passage is the only place in this movement where the piano departs from its accompany- ing role. The passage again recalls the significant F-E tension, the two notes sounding here simultaneously, with the F resolving stepwise downward to the tonic (A minor). As a counter- point, Schubert uses the first 5 notes of the principal theme, transposed and inverted. Once again we are im- pressed by Schubert's attention to con- ceptual coherence, in evidence throughout this serious and charming sonata.

The famous Standchen, or Serenade, was among the last songs Schubert wrote, thirteen of which were pub- lished after his death in November 1828, under the title Schwanengesang or Swan-Song. The poet Rellstab had sent this and others of his unpublished poems to Beethoven, but the great composer was too ill at the time to set them to music, though he did mark in pencil the ones he liked. Beethoven. died soon afterward, in March 1827, and Rellstab had no idea what became of the manuscripts until the Schwanen- gesang appeared containing, to Rellstab's astonishment, six of his lost children including the serenade. Evi- dently Beethoven's secretary Schindler, whether on Beethoven's in- structions, or aware of his master's ad- miration for Schubert's musical gifts, on his own initiative, had brought the poems to Schubert. A worthy substi- tute, one concludes, listening to the plaintive and impassioned strains of the world's best loved serenade.

Phillip Moll © 1983

(s) Registrada(s) RCA Corporation * © 1984, RCA Limited, Record Division * Manufactured and Distributed by RCA Records, New York, N.Y. ¢ Printed in U.S.A.

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