Scholarly record

TYPOLOGIES OF THE SONATA FORM IN THE PIANO SONATAS OF FRANZ SCHUBERT - LANDMARKS OF CONTINUITY AND INNOVATING ELEMENTS

G. Vlahopol

Abstract

“The typology of the classical sonata reflects, with distinct intensity, the great theme of the classical age: the art of leading musical ideas.” [1] After Beethoven, the sonata became an ideal of the composing conception, that could only be accessed by the creators following the “pure” music. Romanticism represented, on a certain level, a regression of rigorous structural organizational efforts in instrumental music, this decline being due to the views of romantic composers upon the tonal system, the relations of functionality and tonal gravity, their attempts to renew this trend leading to a tonal uncertainty, in the end, equivalent to the disintegration of the system itself. A first step into the transition from the Beethoven sonata to the purely romantic one is the creation of Franz Schubert, his sonata representing not only the masterpiece of the genre, but also a source of knowledge of "the great composing problems of that time, emerging at the crossroads of two epochs, at times when it seemed that further advances in the light of classical art commands would be stunted forever.” [2] Schubert penetrated the meaning of all Beethoven’s renewals, comprehending, in a synthesis vision, the stylistic elements asserted by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, therewith defining his own way within the new conditions of mutations in language and conception. The present study, focused on the piano sonatas by Franz Schubert, is a first step of a broader research project, aiming at systematizing the typologies of the sonata form found in the chamber’s creation of the composer, highlighting the constructing elements of classical tradition and the innovative ones.

Publication details

Back to publication list