A Holistic Approach to Motive in the First Movement of Schubert's 'Arpeggione' Sonata
Evan Jones, Florida State University
The motivic design of Franz Schubert's music has been extensively investigated with reference to Schenkerian and Schoenbergian paradigms, as well as with regard to pitch-class recurrence (after E. T. Cone's "promissory note") and from a wider perspective of metrical, gestural, and textural parameters. While these scholarly efforts advance our understanding of the richness of Schubert's output within particular theoretical confines, analysts seem reluctant to bring the various motivic parameters to bear upon each other in a thoroughgoing way. The aim of this paper is to reach an integrated description of motivic content in the first movement of Schubert's Arpeggione Sonata D. 821 -- the neglect of which in the analytical literature is matched only by the neglect of the instrument for which it was composed. This description will identify a network of motives in non-pitch domains that coincide with and herald the concealed repetitions of two melodic fragments from the opening of the piece and, in turn, the recurrence of a particularly significant chromatic pitch class. A number of "resonant" phenomena are identified and interrelated, including the "super arpeggio" described by Karl Geiringer; a pattern of duple proportionality is also observed to influence the pacing of successive motivic statements and the expanding registral space of the exposition. By attending to motivic activity in multiple parameters, I hope to illustrate how musical motives of every kind intermingle and conspire to great effect in Schubert's music.