Schubert's Last Sonatas - Legacy

Legacy

Schubert's last sonatas mark a distinct change of compositional style from his earlier piano sonatas, with several important differences. The typical movement length has increased, due to the use of long, lyrical, fully rounded-off, ternary-form themes, the insertion of development-like passages within expositions, and the lengthening of the development section proper. Texturally, the orchestral grandeur of the middle-period sonatas gives way to a more intimate writing that resembles a string ensemble. New textures appear in the last sonatas – scale-like melodic elements, free counterpoint, free fantasia, and simple accompanimental patterns such as Alberti bass, repeated chords, and ostinati; the orchestral unison texture, abundant in the preceding sonatas, has disappeared. The harmonic language has also changed: more distant key relationships are explored, longer modulatory excursions, more major/minor shifts of mode, and more chromatic and diverse harmonic progressions and modulations, using elements such as the diminished seventh chord. In general, the last sonatas seem to enact a return to an earlier, more individual and intimate Schubertian style, here combined with the compositional craftsmanship of Schubert's later works.

Certain features of Schubert's last sonatas have been mentioned as unique among his entire output, or even that of his period. Here one can mention the profound level of cyclic integration (especially the cancrizans which "parenthesize" the A major Sonata); fantasia-like writing with a harmonic daring looking forward to the style of Liszt and even of Schoenberg (in the slow movement of the A major Sonata, middle section); exploitation of the piano's ability to produce overtones, both by use of the sustain pedal (in the slow movement of the B-flat Sonata), and without it (in the A major Sonata); and the creation of tonal stasis by oscillating between two contrasting tonalities (in the development sections of the opening movements of the A and B-flat major sonatas).

As mentioned above, Schubert's last sonatas have long been historically neglected, dismissed as inferior in style to Beethoven's piano sonatas. However, the negative view has changed during the late twentieth century, and today these works are usually praised for their conveying of an idiosyncratic, personal Schubertian style, indeed quite different from Beethoven's, but holding its own virtues. In this mature style, the Classical perception of harmony and tonality, and the treatment of musical structure, are radically altered, generating a new, distinct type of sonata form.

Schubert's last sonatas are sometimes compared to Mozart's last symphonies, as unique compositional achievements: both consist of trilogies with one tragic, minor-key work, and two serene, major-key works; both were created during an astoundingly short period of time; and both creating a culmination of the composer's lifetime achievement in their respective genres.