Process and Pendulum in Schubert's Expanded Type 1 Sonatas

Abstract

ABSTRACTThrough analysis of three of Schubert's expanded Type 1 sonatas – the Finales of the Piano Sonata, D. 960, the Cello Quintet, D. 956 and the ‘Rosamunde’ Quartet, D. 804 – this article brings to light a recapitulatory formal process that Schubert seems to have favoured for works in this form. The process is as follows: after the pieces under consideration are ‘expanded’ by interpolations of developmental material into their recapitulations, each of them then ‘counteracts’ the proportional imbalance that is wrought by these expansions by enacting a series of recapitulatory deletions. On my reading, these deletions of referential material are gestures towards symmetrical or proportional equilibrium; they seek to restore to the essentially two‐part form a rough balance of size between halves. The process is likened to the behaviour of a pendulum, which swings outwards as the initial developmental expansion distorts the ideal symmetry of the bi‐rotational structure. The pendulum then begins to swing inwards as the series of deletions pushes towards the restoration of the large‐scale proportional balance. An inverse example of the behaviour is shown to be present in the earlier Overture im italienischen Stil, D. 590. The pendular process is read as a specifically formal aspect of a Schubertian style characteristic that Michael Spitzer has recently referred to as his ‘general sensibility to balance’.