Schubert Arpeggione Sonata, D821

Last Saturday I got a chance to play the Schubert "Arpeggione" Sonata for the first time.  One of the interesting things about having been a violinist who didn't really pick up the viola until after the end of my formal training is that I missed out on a lot of the standard viola literature, and the Arpeggione Sonata is one of those pieces.

It's really funny how the Arpeggione Sonata is one of the staples of the viola literature, since it wasn't even written for the viola.  Schubert composed the piece for a new instrument, the arpeggione, which went in and out of fashion so fast that this sonata is pretty much the only piece for it.  The arpeggione is tuned like a guitar, with six strings and frets, but is bowed like a cello.

It's fascinating how carefully Schubert considered the strengths and weaknesses of the arpeggione in writing this piece.  The keys of the movements (A minor, E major, A major) work very well for the strings of the instrument.  The biggest drawback of the arpeggione is that, with six strings, the bridge has to be quite flat, and so it's very difficult to play loudly without hitting more than one string.  Schubert avoids this problem by having almost the whole piece marked "piano" or "pianissimo", except when there are double stops, or when the notes are to be played on the highest string (therefore making it easier to avoid hitting another string by mistake).

All this, of course, is lost when you play the piece on the viola.  Those keys aren't particularly good for the viola, and there's no need to play quietly all the time!  Not to mention that the viola can't actually play as low as the arpeggione, so some passages have to be taken up an octave. 

Still, it's a beautiful piece, filled with those amazing Schubert melodies.  But I want to talk about the beginning of the second movement, the first four notes of the viola in particular.

When I was a kid, I had the companion book to Leonard Bernstein's television broadcasts about music.  I didn't see any of the shows at the time; this was back when you had to watch what they were showing on television (how barbaric that seems now).  But the book was fascinating, and I remember one lecture in particular, The Infinite Variety of Music.  This discussed how much composers can get out of four notes: sol-do-re-mi, in that order, or, as Bernstein puts it, "How Dry I Am".  It's a wonderful exploration: well worth watching.  And here, in the slow movement of the Arpeggione Sonata, the same four notes!  Maybe Schubert wasn't as original as we suppose. :-)