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A Candidate for the Canon?

A New Look at Schubert's Fantasie

in C Major for Violin and Piano

PATRICK MCCRELESS

The Fantasie in C Major for Violin and Piano, D. 934 (op. posth. 159), occupies a curious and uncomfortable place in the corpus of Schubert's late instrumental works.' Finding itself in the

distinguished company of the C-Major Sym- phony, the late string quartets, the string quintet, the piano trios, the late piano sonatas, and the F-Minor Fantasie for Two Pianos, the C- Major Violin Fantasie seems a pariah, an inter- loper in a neighborhood where it does not belong. Alfred Brendel, in his essay on Schubert in Musical Thoughts and Afterthoughts, makes this sentiment explicit. Referring to all the instrumental works composed after 1822, Brendel writes, "With the exception of a few pieces written for virtuoso display in the concert hall, such as some of the violin music and the Varia- tions on 'Trockne Blumen' for Flute and Piano [D. 802, 1824], nearly all these compositions are on the same high level of accomplishment."2

19th-Century Music XX/3 (Spring 1997). ? by The Regents of the University of California.

'I follow the modern convention of listing the melodic instrument first in duo works with piano, in contradis- tinction to the practice of Schubert's time: that is, Fantasie "for Violin and Piano" rather than Fantasie "for Piano and Violin." Schubert himself used the latter title, referring to the work as "Fantasie filr Pianoforte u. Violine" in a letter (21 February 1828) offering the Fantasie and a number of other works to B. Schotts S6hne. The autograph (Vienna Stadtsbibliothek MH3977/c) is untitled. See Otto Erich Deutsch, Schubert: Die Dokumente seines Lebens, Franz Schubert: Neue Ausgabe simtlicher Werke, ser. VIII, vol. 5 (Kassel, 1964), p. 495.

When the Fantasie was finally published by Diabelli in 1850 as op. 159, it was entitled Fantasie pour Piano et Violon composee par Franpois Schubert. See Deutsch, Franz Schubert: Thematisches Verzeichnis seiner Werke in chronologischer Folge, Franz Schubert: Neue Ausgabe simtlicher Werke, ser. VIII, vol. 4 (Kassel, 1978), p. 597.

2Alfred Brendel, Musical Thoughts and Afterthoughts (Lon- don, 1991), p. 58. The B-Minor Rondo, entitled simply "Rondo" on the autograph, was published in 1827 as Rondeau brillant pour Pianoforte et Violon . . . Op. 70. See Deutsch, Thematisches Verzeichnis, pp. 563-64.

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Brendel's passing reference to "some of the violin music" surely points to the Violin Fantasie, as well as to the Rondo in B Minor (or Rondeau brillant) for Violin and Piano, D. 895 (1826); both these compositions are commonly linked with the "Trockne Blumen" Variations as virtuoso pieces that fail to maintain the standards achieved in the other instrumental works of the period.

Brendel's assessment echoes the almost uniformly negative critical opinion that has always hounded the Fantasie. Schubert composed the lengthy and technically difficult work, which consists of four interconnected movements-Andante molto, Allegretto [all' ongarese], Andantino [theme and three variations on the song Sei mir gegriisst], Allegro [March]-in December 1827, presumably on a commission from the Czech violinist Josef Slavek. Slavek, who had been in Vienna at least since early 1826, premiered it in a public concert 20 January 1828. At the premiere neither the audience nor the critics were pleased. One reviewer wrote, "Herr Franz Schubert's Fanta- sia for Pianoforte and Violin ... lasts rather longer than the time that the Viennese are pre- pared to devote to their aesthetic pleasures. The hall gradually emptied and your correspon- dent admits that he, too, is unable to say how this piece of music ended."3 Another was even more dismissive: "A new Fantasia ... made no appeal of any sort. It would be a fair judgment to say that the popular composer has frankly gone off the rails here."4

Why did the hall empty before the piece was over? Why has the Fantasie fared little better in the assessment of twentieth-century Schubert scholarship? Why has it failed to establish for itself a place in the Schubert canon? The reasons for its absence from the canon are complex, but published critiques since the premiere

have tended to fault the work on three counts: (1) its technical difficulty, especially for the violin; (2) its appropriation (or misappropria- tion, as some critics have claimed) of the poi- gnant Sei mir gegriisst as the theme for a set of virtuoso variations-a set that many writers have found wanting in substance and in musical taste; and (3) its formal structure.

On the practical side one might simply argue that the piece is so formidable technically, for both pianist and violinist, that it is rarely played. Such a view might make it possible to preserve a favorable critical judgment of the work, since its lack of success could be blamed on its excessive technical demands. The occa- sional proponent of this admittedly minority view may be found both in Schubert's time and in our own. One review of the premiere praised the Fantasie as deserving of a hearing, but "only in a smaller room and by an audience of true connoisseurs," and only when played by per- formers "wholly fitted for it"-something that the pianist, Carl Maria von Bocklet, apparently was, but that the young violinist, Slavek, by universal consent, most assuredly was not.5 Over a hundred years later, Paul Mies echoed a similar opinion, praising the Fantasie as a work, but claiming that its technical difficulty has prevented it from becoming better known.6

That the Fantasie's ferocious technical demands have always had a negative impact on its reception and programming history is hardly disputable. The musicologist and violinist Boris Schwarz, in an enlightening 1971 essay, dubbed some of the violin passages in the work-for example, the arpeggiations in mm. 529-32 and 583-86 in the final movement--"virtually

3Review from the Sammler, Vienna, 7 February 1828. See Deutsch, Dokumente, p. 480. Translation from Alfred Einstein, Schubert: A Musical Portrait (New York, 1951), p. 276. The emptying of the hall before the end of the performance was particularly damning, given that the concert was a matinee. 4Review from the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, 2 April 1828. Deutsch, Dokumente, p. 480. Translation from Einstein, Schubert, p. 276.

5Review from the Wiener allgemeine Theaterzeitung, 29 January 1828. Deutsch, Schubert: A Documentary Biogra- phy (London, 1946), p. 715. The poor early reviews of the Fantasie were at least in part responsible for its not being published in Schubert's lifetime. The publisher H. A. Probst, on writing to Schubert of his acceptance of the E- Major Piano Trio, was at pains to insist that under no circumstances was the Fantasie to be included in the agree- ment, since the Leipziger allgemeine Zeitung had given Slavek's performance of the work there a negative review. Deutsch, Dokumente, p. 512. 6Paul Mies, Franz Schubert (Wiesbaden, 1954), p. 115.

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unplayable."7 Apparently such an opinion has ample precedent: in the late nineteenth century, the violinist August Wilhelmj published an edition of the Fantasie in which he transposed the Sei mir gegriisst variations in the third movement from Ab Major to A Major in an attempt to make them more idiomatic for the violin.8 And even in our own day, which boasts a surfeit of young virtuosos and recording artists, the Fantasie may claim only a handful of recordings and infrequent public performances.

Schwarz's essay situates the Fantasie con- cisely in the history of violin technique. Its place in that history is inseparable from the new trends in musical taste that were apparent in Vienna, and in Europe in general, in the late 1820s: the advent of the virtuoso, especially in the sphere of the public concert. A budding school of violin playing in Vienna, the appear- ance of young artists such as Slavek and Ignaz Schuppanzigh, growing public adulation of the virtuoso, the increasing prominence and mar- ket success of composers and composer-per- formers who hitched themselves to the new aesthetic-all were signs of a significant shift in taste. Schubert's composition, in 1826 and 1827, of the Rondo in B Minor and the Violin Fantasie testifies to his awareness of the change and to his willingness to turn it to his own advantage. But Schwarz points out that, although Schubert composed the Fantasie in what was, for him, a virtuoso idiom, he did so only a few months before Paganini took Vienna by storm in the spring of 1828.9 Paganini's arrival in Vienna served to articulate the fact that not only was there a revolution in taste under way, but also a revolution in violin technique--a

revolution conceived and carried out by Paganini himself. Schubert's technical writing for the instrument, though virtuosic in its own manner, was in fact awkward and unidiomatic. It was certainly no match for the wizardry of Paganini, whose pyrotechnical writing was born of a lifetime of experience playing the violin, and whose treatment of it quickly established a model for all future developments, thus leav- ing Schubert forever excluded from the main line of the instrument's technical traditions.'0

Whatever the effect of its technical difficulties on its checkered history, the most frequent objections raised against the Fantasie turn on the claim that it is aesthetically flawed, a mis- fire of taste or of compositional craft, or both- especially with regard to its use of the new virtuoso style. Maurice J. E. Brown describes the Fantasie as

a full scale work, containing much virtuoso writing for both instruments. But like the "Rondeau brillant" it fails to reconcile the claims of such technical display with those of his own genius. All four sections promise well at the start: the emotional under- tones, the poised themes, the exalted atmosphere; but all too soon the rich embroidery begins and the music grows turgid."

Without doubt, the butt of the most withering criticism has been the set of variations on Sei mir gegriisst. As with Brendel's comment noted earlier, it is here the issue of virtuosity that again is somehow linked to the failure of the piece. But not virtuosity in and of itself, or poor technical writing for the instrument-rather, "empty" virtuosity, as it were, applied thought- lessly, needlessly, to a song supposedly unde- serving of such treatment. In the eyes of critics like Einstein and Brown, Schubert's set of characteristic variations brillantes on Sei mir gegriisst visits on this song the same indignity that Donald Francis Tovey deplores in the "Trockne Blumen" Variations for Flute and Pi- ano: "['Trockne Blumen'] has a pathos that makes us grudge Schubert forgiveness for sub- sequently writing on it a set of variations, which

PATRICK MCCRELESS Schubert's Fantasie in C

7Boris Schwarz, "Die Violinbehandlung bei Schubert," in Zur Auffuihrungspraxis der Werke Franz Schuberts, ed. Vera Schwarz (Munich, 1981), p. 90. 8Schubert, Werke ffir Klavier und ein Instrument, Schubert: Neue Ausgabe sdimtlicher Werke, ser. VI, vol. 8, foreword, p. ix. 9Schwarz, "Die Violinbehandlung bei Schubert," p. 89. Paganini's first concert, on 29 March, was only three days after a now famous concert of Schubert's own works, in- cluding "the first movement of a new string quartet," possibly the G-Major String Quartet, D. 887 (Deutsch, Dokumente, p. 503). Although the 29 March concert was not well attended, Paganini's fame spread quickly in Vienna, and he stayed in the city for four months, giving fourteen concerts, of which Schubert went to at least one. Deutsch, Dokumente, pp. 505, 515.

'0Schwarz, "Die Violinbehandlung bei Schubert," p. 89. "Maurice J. E. Brown, Schubert: A Critical Biography (Lon- don, 1958), p. 270.

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was a bad thing to do; and writing them for the flute, which was worse; and making some of them brilliant, which was blasphemous."'2 Brown especially takes umbrage at the Fantasie's variations, dubbing them a "worth- less display" that constitutes the poorest variation set that Schubert composed, one in which the theme is "progressively filled in with scales, in unison, octaves or chords, thick figuration, arpeggios, broken chords, trivial syncopations, ornaments, all without the slightest elevation or distinction."'3

A recent and more detailed critical view of the variations is that of Arthur Godel, whose critique of the Violin Fantasie is the most extensive and most trenchant that has appeared to date.14 Godel finds fault not only with the variations themselves-like previous critics, he finds them shallow and meretricious-but also with how Schubert recontextualizes and rein- terprets the song in the Fantasie. For him, what is genuine and moving about the song is its poetic and musical representation of the Ro- mantic "tragic-ironic" trope in which love is fulfilled in the imagination, but denied in reality. What he finds objectionable about Schubert's co-opting of Sei mir gegriisst in the variations is that the song, with its touching Romantic subjectivity, seems isolated from its Romantic roots, and appears almost as a "foreign body" (Fremdk6rper) in the anonymous virtuosity of the Fantasie.'s

Godel focuses his argument regarding Schubert's (mis)appropriation of the song on the melodic setting of the formulaic text "sei mir gegruisst / sei mir gekiisst," and the use to which this melody is put when it is recalled for the last time in the coda of the Fantasie. The poem, from RiMckert's Ostliche Rosen of 1823, is a Ghasel (or ghazal), a Persian genre of mel- ancholy, mystical love poems, of which the most distinctive formal feature is a formulaic

refrain at the end of each short stanza.'6 Schubert follows the poetic pattern literally, always setting the formula to the same melody (see mm. 13-16 of ex. 1, which gives the song in its original key of B6; Schubert transposed it to Ab and significantly altered it when he trans- formed it into a theme for variations in the third movement of the Fantasie). For Godel, this melodic fragment encapsulates the circle of longing and despair of the Romantic subject: an intensification of longing through the up- ward motion to g2 (m. 13), then frustration and denial of that longing through the turn of the melody down through f#2 and f2, and thus back down to the tonic. Without acknowledging so explicitly, Godel seems to rely here on an assumption that the melody has an impulse to continue on toward the octave, bb2; otherwise, how could a turning back to the f#2 represent a denial or lack of fulfillment?'7

What this assumption gains for Godel when he moves from the song to the Fantasie is as follows. At the end of the Fantasie, the fourth movement, the March, gradually dissolves into a return of the opening measures of the song (as recomposed by Schubert for the variation theme)-first in A6 major, the key to which the original song is transposed in the Fantasie's variations, and then in C (mm. 639-64; see pp. 227-29, ex. 12), Godel's point (again, I make explicit certain details that he suggests ellipti- cally but does not fully articulate) is that the final statement of the concluding melodic gesture of the formula is not allowed to close (mm. 661-64). Rather, the penultimate dominant is left hanging (melodically on 2, harmoni- cally on the dominant), and after a pause, a purely conventional, presto, virtuoso C-major stretto sweeps the Fantasie to an incongruously brilliant conclusion. Such an ending to the Fantasie, according to Godel, utterly negates

'2Quoted (without source) in Brown, Schubert's Variations (London, 1954), pp. 53-54. '3Brown, Schubert's Variations, pp. 85, 87. 14Arthur Godel, "Zur Eigengesetz der Schubertschen Fantasien," in Schubert-Kongref3 Wien 1978, ed. Otto Brusatti (Graz, 1979), pp. 199-206. 'SIbid., p. 202.

'6See John Reed, The Schubert Song Companion (Manches- ter, 1985), p. 383. Riickert was a student and translator of Oriental poetry, the forms of which he frequently used in his own work. In addition to Sei mir gegriisst, Schubert set three other songs from Riickert's Ostliche Rosen. On the ghazal, see The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, ed. Alex Preminger and T. V. F. Brogan (Princeton, N.J., 1993), pp. 478-79. '7See Godel, "Zur Eigengesetz der Schubertschen Fantasien," p. 200.

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Langsam Mit erhobener Diimpfung

r . 7

O du Ent - ri - ne mir und mei -nem Kus - se,

I F; I

13

sei mir ge - gr St, sei mir ge - kiit, sei mir ge - kiit!

i

Example 1: Sei mir gegriisst, mm. 1-18.


the meaning of the song that is its centerpiece, precisely because it subverts the completion of the Romantic circle of longing and denial in favor of a (presumably unearned) triumph.'18 A crucial feature of this subversion (not mentioned explicitly by Godel) is that the musical motion of the coda is almost entirely ascending: indeed, at the very end the piano has a monstrous ascending C-major scale in octaves through its entire range, as though, in a bizarre deus ex machina, the melody's longing to complete an ascent to the higher octave is suddenly and inexplicably-indeed, almost comically-- fulfilled.

Finally, a third critical view of the work faults it on structural grounds. Weighed in the balance of Schubert's other two major efforts in

the genre-the so-called Wandererfantasie (D. 760) of 1822, and the F-Minor Fantasie for Pi- ano Four Hands (D. 940), the composition of which followed immediately after that of D. 934-the Violin Fantasie itself is, of course, easy to find wanting.19 On the one hand, it lacks the obvious motivic integration of the Wandererfantasie, since no motive of Sei mir gegriisst ties its movements together in the explicit and readily apparent way that the famous rhythmic figure from the song Der Wan- derer does for the earlier fantasy-hence the frequent criticism that the song citation in the

'8Ibid. p. 202.

'9In addition to these three well-known fantasies, some of Schubert's earliest works are for piano four hands: D. 1 (1810), D. 9 (1811), and D. 48 (1813). He also wrote an early Fantasie in C Minor, D. 2E (1811) and the so-called Grazer Fantasie, D. 605A, both for solo piano. See Deutsch, Thematisches Verzeichnis, pp. 8, 351.

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Violin Fantasie is less integral to the piece as a whole. Similarly, although the Violin Fantasie strings together four movements attacca, like the Wandererfantasie, it abandons the rigorous sonata argument of the earlier work and seeks an entirely looser structure. In this sense, it has been seen as merely an exercise in preparation for the greater work that followed, the F-Minor Fantasie, which dispenses both with the quotation of a song and with sonata rhetoric, yet manages to find in its freedom a convincing formal structure.20

II So the work has been censured for indulging

in cheap virtuoso variations, for violating the innocent Sei mir gegriisst, and for failing to articulate a comprehensible structure. Where does this sordid critical history leave us, as late-twentieth-century musicians? If the Fantasie is a flawed work, and we have a clear sense of why it is flawed, in terms of technique, taste, and structure, why even talk about it at all? Why subject it to analysis and criticism? Why not let it rest in peace? It seems to offer little hope as the subject for an analytical rehabilitation, according to the trope: I take a recognized or unrecognized masterpiece, un- cover the hidden beauties of its logic and coherence, and thereby either justify its established place, or plead for it a new place, in the musical canon. For D. 934 seems defective from the start, and thus to promise little gain for the analyst, and little hope for its own admission to the canon. We can hardly rehabilitate a piece that was never well received in the first place. Nor does the Fantasie seem promising for a new critical look: it has been picked over enough already, its blemishes already more than suffi- ciently exposed.

Yet problematic works can often reveal to us as much about a composer, a style, and a cul- tural practice as universally acclaimed ones. We can learn much from the anomalous-from the unstable, or from the unsuccessful. Thus it is a not uninteresting intellectual and artistic

problem that the Violin Fantasie, as one of Schubert's late instrumental works, does indeed keep the best of company, yet it has been judged to be flawed. Here I do not intend to question that judgment-at the end of the exercise we may feel the Fantasie to be just as flawed as before-so much as I wish to pro- blematize the piece in a new way: to ask what Schubert might have meant to communicate through the form and genre of the piece; to ask what it means that he should have undertaken such a project, so uncharacteristic of him, in virtuoso writing; to inquire about the nature of subjectivity in the work by questioning the ways in which it intermingles the subjectivity of the Romantic song and the subjectivity of the Romantic virtuoso piece; and to speculate on the question of whether Schubert was just tossing off a potboiler on commission to bring in some much-needed cash, or whether he took the piece seriously, in terms of the imagination and craft that he invested in it, but somehow miscalculated. Our search for answers to these questions will begin with analysis: with a few remarks on the formal structure of the Violin Fantasie. We will then wend our way into criticism with a consideration of genre and the role of virtuosity in the piece, proceed still further into critical territory with a look at the notion of subjectivity, only to find we need to return to the music for a much closer analytical pass through the work, in order to answer the questions that the critical pass has engendered.

The Violin Fantasie presents certain formal anomalies that render its structure more ambiguous than that of the fantasies that Schubert composed on either side of it-the Wanderer- fantasie and the F-Minor Fantasie. As Alfred Einstein has noted, D. 934, like the Wanderer- fantasie, is a structure of four interconnected movements, but the formal sequence is no longer governed by the conventions of the four- movement sonata cycle, as it was in the earlier Fantasie, with its clear Allegro (sonata exposition)-Adagio-Presto-Allegro structure (cf. fig. la to fig. lb).21 Nor is the Violin Fantasie so straightforward formally as the F-Minor Fantasie (fig. Ic), which, although the first movement is

20Brown, Schubert Essays (London, 1966), p. 90. See also William Kinderman, "Schubert's Tragic Perspective," in Schubert: Critical and Analytical Studies, ed. Walter Frisch (Lincoln, Neb. 1986), pp. 75-82. 21Einstein, Schubert, p. 276.

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a. I II III IV

Allegro Adagio Presto Allegro [Scherzo]

C-G c#-E AL C

(Exposition) (Development) (Recapitulation)

b. I II III (Reprise of IV (Reprise of CODA Introduction) song theme)

1-36 37-351 352-479 480-92 493-638 639-64 665-700

Andante molto Allegretto Andantino [And. molto] Allegro [Andantino] Presto A A A Dev. A Dev. Variations A B Dev. A B Dev. A

(aabab) (aabb)

C a-C A- a-C C- A6 C C C a-C A -- a-C A,-C

C

c. I II III IV

Allegro molto Largo Scherzo/ Tempo I moderato Trio

f/F---a-f f# f#-D-f# f/F

Figure 1: Schubert's three mature Fantasies: A formal comparison. a. Fantasie in C Major for Piano, D. 760 (November 1822).

b. Fantasie in C Major for Violin and Piano, D. 934 (December 1827). c. Fantasie in F Minor for Piano Four Hands, D. 940 (Jan.-April 1828).

a simple ternary form rather than a sonata exposition, resembles the Wandererfantasie in that it is in effect a "double-function" sonata cycle. The sequence of movements, Allegro molto moderato-Largo-Scherzo-Tempo I, simultaneously fulfills the functions of the single- movement sonata form and the sonata cycle, such that the first movement, in F minor, works as an exposition, the two middle movements, both in F# minor, function as a development, and the final movement, back in F minor, functions as a reprise.22

Rather, in the Violin Fantasie a slow introduction (Andante molto) in C major leads to a jaunty all'ongarese movement (Allegretto), which, with its faster tempo and rhythmic en-

ergy, behaves in a way like a traditional first movement (see fig. lb). This dancelike movement, however, is not in the global tonic of C but in the relative key of A minor. Further- more, it is not a sonata movement, as would be expected of an opening fast movement, but rather a looser structure in which a small part form (aabab) alternates with developmental material (A-Dev.-A-Dev.), the second developmental section ultimately metamorphosing into a transition to third movement, the variations in Ab major on Sei mir gegriisst. The latter movement, after the theme and its three variations, also dissolves into a transition, which modulates back to C major for a reprise of the introduction. The reprise, now varied some- what, in turn prepares the final movement, an Allegro that resembles the Allegretto in that it is in effect a character piece-now a march rather than a gypsy dance-and in that it adopts a similarly simple structure, A-B-(brief Dev. of

220n the double-function sonata, see William S. Newman, The Sonata Since Beethoven (3rd edn. Chapel Hill, 1983), pp. 134-35, 373-78.


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A)-A-B-(brief Dev. of A)-A.23 The return of the song theme near the end prepares for the coda.

What is striking about this structure is its lack of formal clarity. Is the opening Andante molto an introduction or a first movement? Its tempo, lyrical character, and brevity suggest that it is an introduction. But in terms of the tonal structure of the piece as a whole, it has to function as a first movement, since the Alle- gretto that follows is in A minor. Indeed, the introductory character of the section has led at least one critic, Godel, to view the Fantasie as a three-movement, rather than a four-movement work, combining the Andante and Allegretto into a single first movement.24 However improbable this interpretation may be from a tonal point of view, it manages to avoid hearing the Andante, which in reality consists of only two phrases--one in C major and one moving from C major to A minor-as a full-fledged first movement, and it is consistent in that none of the other first movements of Schubert's mature piano sonatas and chamber works, includ- ing the other two fantasies, has a slow introduction. On the other hand, the complete change of character that ensues with the Alle- gretto, combined with the fact that only the Andante is in the global tonic of C, forces us to hear the Andante as a separate movement.

The question of the formal function of the Andante arises once more after the third movement, when what seems to be a fourth variation on the Sei mir gegriisst theme turns into a transition that leads into a reprise of the beginning of the piece. Is this the reprise of an intro-

duction, or the reprise of a first movement? Again, both interpretations are plausible. Since the reprise marks a clear return to C major after movements in A minor and Ab major, it sounds as though it might be a reprise of a slow first movement. Yet at the same time, especially since only the first phrase of the original two returns, now adjusted to end on the dominant of C, one can easily hear it as an introduction to the final Allegro, so that it now functions "correctly" by preparing a movement in the right key.

The formal structure here lacks clarity in yet another sense. For all its change of character, the Allegro could be heard as a final extended variation, in C, on the variation theme. The opening ascending melodic gesture, the foursquare phrase structure (2 + 2 + 2 + 2 measures), the full melodic and tonal closure after exactly four phrases, and the rhythmic similarity to the cadential figure of the eighth measure of the song highlight the close, if not glar- ingly obvious, relationship between the two. Indeed, Einstein interpreted the Allegro as both a fourth movement and a final variation on the song.25

What are we to make of such large-scale formal ambiguities in the Fantasie? At the very least, we can see Schubert trying his hand at an extended instrumental work that would be indebted neither to the model of the single-movement sonata form nor to the conventions of the four-movement sonata cycle. In the Violin Fantasie, these bonds are loosened far more than they were in the Wandererfantasie, which, strikingly original in concept as it was at the time, nevertheless constitutes an absolutely un- ambiguous four-movement structure in the standard sequence, and which features a first- movement Allegro that preserves the connection to the sonata tradition by functioning as a clear sonata exposition. We could also see the Violin Fantasie as a stepping stone between the Wandererfantasie and the F-Minor Fantasie: D. 934 abandons the first-movement link to sonata form, experiments further with uncon- ventional key relationships in the inner movements, and also preserves the earlier work's

23The formal divisions in the Allegretto and Allegro are as follows. Allegretto: A (m. 37, a small aabab form, A mi- nor-C Major), Developmental section (m. 83, modulating, beginning in A major), A (m. 182, A minor-C major), De- velopmental section (m. 219, modulating, beginning in C major). Allegro: A (m. 493, a small aabb form, C major), B (m. 525, C major-A minor), Developmental section (m. 541, modulating, beginning in A minor), A (m. 555, C major), B (m. 579, A major), Developmental section (m. 595, modulating, beginning in F# minor), A (m. 611, A minor-C major). 24Godel, "Zur Eigengesetz der Schubertschen Fantasien," p. 202; unlike Einstein, Godel views the Violin Fantasie as a "Sonatenzyklus." The combination of an opening slow movement in C and a faster movement in A minor, within the context of a global tonic of C, exactly replicates Beethoven Sonata in C Major for Cello and Piano, op. 102, no. 1. 25Einstein, Schubert, p. 276.

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idea of composing a fantasy around a song, this time making the link between the song and the instrumental work both more and less obvious-more obvious by adapting the song as the basis for a lengthy set of variations, less obvious by not having it cite an important motive of the song in each movement. By this teleo- logical account, what the F-Minor Fantasie achieves with respect to the earlier two fantasies is to free the genre of the dependence on a previously composed song, to free it also from a dependence on the single-movement sonata form and its standard key plan, and thus to establish a more lyrical, less dynamic multimovement structure.

To see the Violin Fantasie as a transitional work between Schubert's two great fantasies is unexceptionable, so far as it goes. But surely it does not tell the whole story. For in many respects-the brief, lyrical opening Andante, the formal ambiguity of this movement and the Allegretto that follows, the placing of the first fast movement in the relative minor rather than the tonic, the returns of both the Alle- gretto and the song theme later in the piece-- the Violin Fantasie is a much more radical piece than the F-Minor Fantasie. That is, given the sorts of changes that Schubert institutes between D. 760 and D. 934, we would expect D. 940 to be even more radical, whereas it marks a return to a clearer structure, just dropping off any reliance on a sonata form and quotation of a song.

What makes the Violin Fantasie more radical, if at the same time less stable and successful, than its companions involves more than just its ambiguous form and the way it appro- priates one of Schubert's own songs. That the work was confusing to Schubert's audience- and that it seems confusing to us as well- turns on the way it situates itself in terms of genre. And its generic features are interwoven in telling ways with its play on the Romantic notion of subjectivity and with its use of virtuosity. We have seen above that the Fantasie is in many respects a formal anomaly. But to understand its formal idiosyncracies depends in turn on our understanding how to construe it in terms of genre. Recent work in the theory of musical genres-particularly that of Carl Dahlhaus and Jeffrey Kallberg-encourages us

to view genre not in terms of classification, but in terms of communication.26 That is, granting that there is an undeniable taxonomic function of genre-we do need to know what the characteristic features of different generic categories are-what is productive, critically speaking, is not simply to tabulate distinctive features in order to classify some pieces as toccatas, some as sonatas, and some as mazurkas, but to ask: What does it communicate if one entitles a piece toccata, or sonata, or mazurka? The question we should thus ask ourselves about Schubert's D. 934 is not "What features does this Fantasie share with other fantasies? ", but rather "What does it mean that Schubert entitled the piece 'Fantasie' in the first place? " To use genre in this way, as Kallberg points out, is to establish context; that is, to appropriate it as a way of hearing the intertext that the very title of a work implies. The intertext itself is both musical and social: the title conditions listeners to expect that it will probably behave according to particular formal conventions; but it also conditions them to expect that it will fulfill a particular expressive or social function.

And what did Schubert mean by giving the piece the title "Fantasie"? Surely he meant in part simply to communicate a sense of freedom from established forms, of spontaneity, of imagination, of dexterity-in short, of everything implied by the verb phantasieren, or even by the earlier Italian sonar fantasia or Spanish taijer fantasia, at the very inception of the genre in the sixteenth century. But his title must also have been intended to contextualize the piece more narrowly for his audience, so they would hear the piece in terms of what they, as listeners in the third decade of the nineteenth century, understood as a Fantasie. That understanding must have at some level included the

26Jeffrey Kallberg, "The Rhetoric of Genre: Chopin's Noc- turne in G Minor," this journal 11 (1988), 238-61. Dahlhaus's extensive writings on genre include discus- sions in Esthetics of Music, trans. William W. Austin (Cam- bridge, 1982); Foundations of Music History, trans. J. B. Robinson (Cambridge, 1983); and Nineteenth-Century Music, trans. J. B. Robinson (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1989). See also Alastair Fowler, Kinds of Literature: An Introduction to the Theory of Genres and Modes (Cam- bridge, Mass., 1982); and Adena Rosmarin, The Power of Genre (Minneapolis, 1985), both cited by Kallberg.


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notion, as it clearly does in the Wanderer- fantasie and the F-Minor Fantasie, of a binary opposition to the sonata; the title says, then, "This is a substantial, multipartite piece of which a central distinguishing feature is that it is not a sonata."

The Fantasie is one of the most volatile and unstable, yet simultaneously perhaps one of the most characteristic and vital genres of the early nineteenth century. As Peter Schleuning has shown, the free, improvisatory Fantasie of C. P. E. Bach, Haydn, and Mozart gives way, in the early nineteenth century, to a Fantasie that, while remaining structurally looser than the sonata, replaces the total freedom of the late- eighteenth-century Fantasie with an aesthetic that depends sometimes on quasi-improvised variations on a theme, and sometimes on the imaginative interlinking of conventionally in- dependent generic categories into a single multimovement work. Both of Beethoven's fantasies-op. 77 for piano (1810), and the Choral Fantasy, op. 80 (1811)--are of the variation type. They feature an improvisatory introduction and a set of variations on an original theme; we en- counter the same pairing of the title "Fantasie" and variation sets in the countless salon variations on opera themes in the 1830s and beyond.27 On the other hand, even more Fantasies of the 18 10s and 20s-the precursors of what Czerny called the potpourri fantasy28-combine generic categories in the most improbable ways, sometimes bringing in quotations from preexistent works. Dussek's F-Major Fantasie, op. 76 (1812), strings together a slow introduction, a free Al- legro, a menuet, a Marche solennelle, a prelude, a reprise of the introduction, and a Finale alla polacca; here, and in other pieces of this sort, phantasieren suggests more the skill of combining elements that do not really belong together than it does to improvise freely.29

Yet, paradoxically, in the 1820s, at the same time that the Fantasie experienced centrifugal forces that led it to spawn more and more movements that were less and less related to one another, it also began to experience centripetal forces that had the opposite effect: to take on aspects of the sonata and indeed to begin to merge with it. Schleuning notes the gradual disappearance, in pieces entitled Fantasie, of the unique, improvisatory forms of the eighteenth century in favor of formal plans that look more and more uniformly like sonata cycles: sonatalike movement (often preceded by an introduction), slow movement, scherzo or other dancelike or characteristic movement, and finale-a plan that well describes numerous Fantasies of Czerny and Kalkbrenner, in the late 1820s and 30s, as well as Schubert's own Wandererfantasie and Fantasie in F Mi- nor.30 We can profitably view Schumann's famous Fantasie in C Major, op. 17, in the light of both this tradition and that of combining different generic categories into a single work. The Schumann Fantasie works like a three- movement (rather than four-movement) sonata cycle, connects its movements without a break, and integrates into its structure not only the quotation from Beethoven's An die ferne Geliebte at the end, but also the puzzling Im Legendenton section of the first movement.

Now to claim that the Fantasie and the sonata gradually coalesce to a point where one is indistinguishable from the other may seem bla- tantly to contradict my earlier point that Schubert carefully circumscribed the expectations of his listeners by giving his violin piece the title of "Fantasie" rather than "Sonata." If two genres begin to eradicate the boundaries that separate them, what difference does it make whether a composer calls a piece one or the other? But that is precisely the point of Dahlhaus's and Kallberg's work on genre. To be sure, our fast ride through the history of the Fantasie from C. P. E. Bach to the 1830s has made it abundantly clear that, taxonomically

27Peter Schleuning, Die freie Fantasie: Ein Beitrag zur Erforschung der klassischen Klaviermusik (G5ppingen, 1973), p. 354. My discussion here is deeply indebted to Schleuning's monograph, and to his introductory essay in Die Fantasie II: 18. bis 20. Jahrhundert, Das Musikwerk, vol. 43 (Cologne, 1971), pp. 5-23. 28See Carl Czerny's discussion in A Systematic Introduc- tion to Improvisation on the Pianoforte, Op. 200, trans. and ed. Alice L. Mitchell (New York, 1983), pp. 86-106. 29See Schleuning, Die freie Fantasie, p. 355.

30Schleuning quotes an anonymous writer in the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung who in 1813 wrote that what had in previous years been called a Fantasie was by then regarded "only as a type of sonata." Schleuning, Die freie Fantasie, p. 355.

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speaking, Schubert's D. 934 is the perfect ex- emplar of the Fantasie of its time. If the work is anomalous, it is not so because of any failure to exemplify the structural expectations of its genre. The linking of its generically disparate types-lyrical introduction, the all'ongarese style, variations brillantes on a preexisting song, marchlike finale, reprises of earlier material-- with a virtuoso stretto at the end: all this reminds us of the Dussek Fantasie and others like it, just as its set of variations reminds us of the Beethoven fantasies and looks forward to Liszt.

Whatever the title Fantasie conveys in terms of structural expectations-and well-informed listeners must surely have had such expectations-it more importantly conveys a set of expectations concerning the expressive function of the genre. For here, no matter how closely the two genres intermingle structurally, they remain separate expressively. What remains of the older Fantasie (that of C. P. E. Bach, for example) is its intimate connection to the personal experience of the composer-a connection to which the early decades of the nineteenth century added the notion that the Fantasie is permeated by a poetic idea: that only the Fantasie can capture the experience of love or represent mystery.31 Surely this is a factor in Schumann's well-known difficulties in settling on a title for the piece that was ultimately published as op. 17; whatever his perfectly valid structural and generic reasons for entitling it "Sonata," he also knew that calling it a "Fantasie" would suggest a more personal statement.32 A similar reasoning was probably at work in the decision of the publisher to entitle the intimate first movement of Schubert's Sonata in G Major, D. 894, as a Fantasie, despite that Schubert himself did not do so. Likewise, there may be little doubt that the desire to signify a personal utterance, as well as the desire to acknowledge the structural similarity of these works to Fantasies he knew, led Schubert to entitle the three Fanta- sies under consideration here as he did.

But again, the nineteenth-century Fantasie is rife with paradox. We have already seen that it was in some respects the binary opposite of the sonata. Now, inasmuch as the Fantasie was valorized as a personal statement-in the manner, say, of C. P. E. Bach's redende Prinzip, in an earlier generation-we might expect that in the 1820s the sonata would be a public genre associated with a more formal rhetoric and a greater dependence on a culturally sanctioned convention, while the Fantasie would be a private genre associated with intimate personal statement. From the point of view of musical structure, this seems to be true: no matter how closely the two genres merged, the sonata cycle tended on the whole to retain fully articulated, separate movements in the conventional sequence rather than linking them together in the manner of the Fantasie; and it generally adhered to the tradition of having at least one movement in sonata form. The Fantasie, on the other hand, although it often did employ at least one sonata-form movement, was generally more free-ranging and thus by implication more imaginative and personal, in terms of formal structure.

From the point of view of social function and expressive intent, however, matters are more complex-and complex in two histori- cally interdependent ways. Early in the nineteenth century the concept of the Fantasie, or of phantasieren, gradually outgrew its associa- tion with a particular genre and began to per- meate the notion of musical composition-especially instrumental composition-in general. Schenker's notion of composition as improvisation is an apt, after-the-fact instantiation of this idea, just as the accounts of numerous early-nineteenth-century writers claiming that the Fantasie had penetrated into all other genres, so that it may hardly be regarded as a genre of its own any more, is a telling contemporary one.33 In the music of Beethoven and Schubert especially, this importation of the intimate,

31Schleuning, Die Fantasie II, pp. 16-17. 32For a thorough account of Schumann's many changes of mind regarding the title of op. 17, see Nicholas Marston, Schumann: Fantasie, Op. 17 (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 23-33.

33Schleuning (Die freie Fantasie, p. 358) cites an 1804 review that refers to Beethoven's Eroica Symphony as "eine sehr weit ausgefiihrte, kiihne und wilde Phantasie," and he supports with many contemporary accounts the claim that many of the composer's middle and late works were viewed as products of phantasieren.


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personal qualities of the Fantasie into the more conventional, more formal sonata makes it im- possible to claim for the music of these composers the same equation that we can claim for the music of C. P. E. Bach, Haydn, and Mozart: that is, personal utterance in the Fantasie, conventional utterance in the sonata. Indeed, the opposite often seems to be true: with the possible exception of Schubert's F-Minor Fantasie, the Fantasies of Beethoven and Schubert seem more conventional and extroverted, the sonatas more personal and intimate.34

Simultaneously, as the idea of the Fantasie extended its tentacles into other genres, in a related historical process the Fantasie itself gradually metamorphosed from an intensely private genre for connoisseurs to one that reached out to a larger public. The gift of phantasierien, previously reserved for the musically sophisticated few, became an item for public spectacle. C. P. E. Bach "fantasized" on Hamlet's soliloquy for a roomful of cognoscenti. Liszt fantasized on Don Juan in front of huge concert audiences, with a corresponding ad- justment of what was required, musically speaking, of the listener. Now the focus is less on the improvisational and compositional skill of the composer and more on the virtuosity of the performer. In the Fantasie, perhaps more than in any other genre, we begin to see the modern functions of composer and performer tease themselves apart.35

Schubert's Violin Fantasie is positioned at the very center of this change: nine months after the death of Beethoven, three months before Paganini's arrival in Vienna. In it we can hear, even feel, the tug of forces, the interac- tion of which makes the piece the anomaly it is. That the piece is anomaly, as we have seen, has little to do with the way it exemplifies the structural norms of its genre: it is a classic 1820s Fantasie-admittedly a genre that gave wide berth to eccentricity. The very features that set it apart from Schubert's other mature instrumental works-the experimental form, the ambivalent relations to the sonata cycle,

the excessive virtuosity, the self-conscious compositional craft of concatenating into a single work elements that do not necessarily belong together-are those that are in one way or another associated with the instability of the Fantasie as a genre in the late 1820s.

In the social and expressive sphere, what ties these various features together is the notion of Romantic subjectivity itself. If Roman- ticism marks the birth of the modern subject, as is so often claimed, then the Fantasie is a central locus in which that subjectivity becomes conscious. For Schubert, of course, it was not the Fantasie that was the primary form of subjective utterance, as it was, say, for C. P. E. Bach; it was the Lied. But in the Wanderer- fantasie, the Violin Fantasy, and the F-Minor Fantasy, the effects of the generic expectation of subjectivity are clear enough. That subjectivity is achieved in the first two of the Fanta- sies by importing one of Schubert's own songs as a basis for each work, and by a deliberate appeal to virtuosic effect, just as it is achieved in the last by a studied intimacy and by a re- placing of dynamic forms with lyrical ones. It is also achieved in all three Fantasies by a clear striving for originality and coherence of formal organization, albeit within the generic con- straints of the time.

We might speculate that much of what has been found wanting in the Violin Fantasie is the result of a collision between a commission for a virtuoso piece and Schubert's own generically conditioned expectations for subjective utterance in a Fantasie. If, to use Lawrence Kramer's apt phrase, the Romantic Lied presents subjectivity in action, that action can be heard in all sorts of musical and textual-musical aspects of Schubert's songs, and it can indeed be heard equally well in the instrumental music.36 But his natural voice is not virtuosity, which he employs to good effect only in the Wandererfantasie, some of the chamber music and piano sonatas, and a few select songs, in all of which other factors combine to contextualize and integrate it. Schubert lived on the cusp of a

34Alfred Brendel reminds us that only one of Beethoven's piano sonatas was performed in a public concert during his lifetime (Musical Thoughts and Afterthoughts, p. 69). 3aSee Dahlhaus, Nineteenth-Century Music, pp. 137-38.

36Lawrence Kramer, "The Schubert Lied: Romantic Form and Romantic Consciousness," in Schubert: Critical and Analytical Studies, p. 201.

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time when Romantic subjectivity would be embodied in the virtuoso: Paganini and Liszt were soon to become dominant figures in the 1830s. For Schubert, always in search of a public, the new virtuoso style was too tempting to resist, but too foreign to be comfortable. Just a few years after the composition of the Violin Fantasie, the Fantasie would be a centerpiece of the virtuoso style. Yet for him, even in 1827, the genre still had too many private, musically elitist connotations to write a wholly successful Fantasie in the new manner. Sensitive to the forces that were pulling him in both direc- tions, he found himself, in the Violin Fantasie, skewered on the horns of two conflicting con- cepts of the Fantasie that were, at least for the moment, incompatible.

But what about his subjectivity as a composer, pure and simple? What about his position with respect to the demand, carried over from the eighteenth century, that the Fantasie exhibit phantasieren of the highest level, that the composer prove his mettle by rising to the challenge of communicating clearly in the absence of established forms, or, in Schubert's own time, by linking together generic types that are not obviously compatible? Is there not subjectivity here, and is it not a subjectivity inherited and further developed from the phantasieren of Schubert's predecessors? This second issue of subjectivity-that of compositional craft-brings us closer to the Schubert we know than the issue of virtuosity did. It also brings us, paradoxically, closer to an understanding of the Violin Fantasie.

Paradoxically, because compositional craft is precisely what the Violin Fantasie has always been said to lack. What it has, supposedly, is an aberrant form and turgid variations on a song that is unrelated to the rest of the piece; it has not been praised for its compositional sophistication. But closer examination of the Fantasie suggests that Sei mir gegriisst is far better integrated into the structure than has been hitherto observed, and that as a result the whole piece gives evidence of a level of compositional craft for which it has yet to be credited. Whether this compositional sophistication saves the Fantasie, critically speaking, is, of course, a matter of opinion. Yet I would argue that, at the very least, it serves as evidence that

Schubert was not just mindlessly fulfilling a commission, but that he was invested person- ally and artistically in the work: that is, that although he wrote it as a Fantasie of the 1820s, he also was guided by the demand for personal utterance and for compositional skill that char- acterized the free Fantasie of the previous generation, and indeed that in the Violin Fantasie he betrays a certain anxiety, with respect to both the distinguished tradition of the genre and his own distinguished achievement in it- the Wandererfantasie.

III How did Schubert meet the challenges of

personal utterance, compositional craft, and originality in the Violin Fantasie? He did so in part, of course, by building it around one of his own songs-and one of an intimate, subjective quality at that. He did so also by developing a new and idiosyncratic form in the work-a form that may indeed be problematic, but certainly one that is original, and breaks new ground against the backdrop of the Wandererfantasie. But to what degree is his craft successful? Can analysis simultaneously explain the work's critical failure and demonstrate its craft?

Our assessment must begin with an evalua- tion of Schubert's recomposition of Sei mir gegrfisst as a variation theme. We have already observed one critical response to his use of the song in the Fantasie: Godel's claim that the virtuoso peroration in the coda negates its Ro- mantic essence. But there are aspects of Schubert's very recomposition of the song as a variation theme that already erase some of its most distinctive musical features.

In the song, Schubert sets Riickert's six- stanza poem in the following form, with the Ghasel refrain (R) concluding each stanza (text and translation given in fig. 2):

mm. 1-8 piano introduction mm. 9-18 stanza 1 (aR) mm. 19-29 stanza 2 (aR) mm. 30-44 stanza 3 (bR) mm. 45-60 stanza 4 (a'R [minor mode, expansion]) mm. 61-77 stanza 5 (b'R) mm. 78-99 stanza 6 (a"R) and piano conclusion

The progressive intensification of the successive stanzas, both through making each slightly


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O du Entri3ne mir und meinem Kusse, sei mir gegrfisst, sei mir gekiisst!

Erreichbar nur meinem Sehnsuchtsgru3e, sei mir gegriisst, sei mir gekiisst!

Du von der Hand der Liebe diesem Herzen Gegebne,

du von dieser Brust Genommne mir! mit diesem Trinengusse sei mir gegr~isst, sei mir gekiisst!

Zum Trotz der Ferne, die sich, feindlich trennend,

hat zwischen mich und dich gestellt; dem Neid der Schicksalsmichte zum Verdrusse

sei mir gegr~isst, sei mir gekiisst!

Wie du mir je im sch6nsten Lenz der Liebe mit Gruf3 und KuSi entgegenkamst, mit meiner Seele gliihendstem Ergusse

sei mir gegriisst, sei mir gekiAsst!

Ein Hauch der Liebe tilget Rium und Zeiten, ich bin bei dir, du bist bei mir, ich halte dich in dieses Arms Umschlisse,

sei mir gegrfisst, sei mir gekaisst!

(O you, who have been torn from me and my kiss[es], [might] I greet you, [might] I kiss you!

You, attainable only to the greeting of my longing, [might] I greet you, [might] I kiss you!

You, given to this heart by the hand of love, you, taken from my breast! with this flood of

tears [might] I greet you, [might] I kiss you!

In spite of the distance, which, separating us like an enemy,

has placed itself between me and you, and in defiance of the powers of fate,

[might] I greet you, [might] I kiss you!

As you came to me once in the brightest springtime of love,

with greetings and kisses, with the glowing warmth of my soul

[might] I greet you, [might] I kiss you!

A breath of love dissolves space and time, I am with you, you are with me, I hold you in the embrace of my arms,

[might] I greet you, [might] I kiss you!)

Figure 2: Sei mir gegriisst, text and translation.

longer than the preceding one, and through in- troducing musical contrast and development, counteracts the static tendency suggested by the recurring refrain, and imparts a clear dramatic structure to the whole.

In order to adapt the song for the Violin Fantasie, Schubert has to reduce the ninety- nine-measure Lied to a twenty-four-measure binary variation theme. For the first part of the binary form, he simply takes the initial stanza, aR, of the song (he omits the piano introduction). For the second part, he extracts stanza 5 (b'R, mm. 61-77), now making certain melodic and harmonic adjustments, and completely ex- cising three measures (mm. 63-65). The ends of the two binary sections, of course, rhyme, since the little refrain concludes both (see ex. 2).

Even if we concede that Schubert had of necessity to trim and simplify the song in order to turn it into a variation theme, it is difficult not to judge the transformation as resulting in a net loss. A crucial point here-one that may

account in part for the negative critical response to what happens to the song in the Fantasie-is that, whereas in the most successful instances of Schubert's taking one of his own songs as a basis for a set of variations-the slow movements of the "Trout" Quintet and the D-Minor String Quartet-he needed to make no adjustments in the form of the songs, which were strophic anyway, here he is obliged to alter the song radically and thus to do violence to its dramatic psychology. The song builds through formal repetition, variation, the ongoing reiteration of the formula "sei mir gegriisst / sei mir gekAisst," and other means of intensification to the final strophe, which clinches the stabbing pain of loss on the bitterly ironic words "ich bin bei dir / du bist bei mir / ich halte dich in dieses Armes Umschltisse." The variation theme, on the other hand, flattens this dramatic process into a seemingly endless pattern of repetition-especially as the refrain appears at the end of both parts of the binary form, and

218

352 Andantino

Andantino

P

0 -- -r 1y 1 rA l

p

F 1 mi -;f - I A L) J

372

Scresc I

I I I

Icesc

379

ppI

decresc. pe

! I.

f 1 w•

7 " t•i• : r, ,r • '< F- r M

, , M

_ i. . ..M I FNU Li i , ' p-, ifi i ,'-, , .' i . '

Example 2: Violin Fantasie, movt. III, theme (mm. 352-85).


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as each part is always repeated. Even the song itself, because it closely follows the structure of the poem, holds a threat of becoming too repetitive.

Adding to the liabilities ensuing from con- stant repetition is a certain regularity of harmony. The harmonic root progression that underlies the opening section of the song (and thus of the variation theme as well) begins with a sequential pair of descending fourths (I- V over four measures, vi-III over two measures), to which is appended a V-I cadence (two measures), so that the progression as a whole consists of three descending bass leaps: I-V, vi-III (V/vi), V-I (see ex. 2, mm. 352-59). An oddity of the progression is that, although not literally circular, it seems as though it is. For example, if the chromatically marked V/vi were to re- solve normally, rather than making the poi- gnant move directly to V and thus forcing the #5 to behave as 16, the progression would be palindromic (I-V-vi-V/vi-vi-V-I). Or, if the sequence of descending fourths, each a third lower, were to continue, a much longer (and quite improbable) diatonic sequence would result (I- V-vi-V/vi-IV-I-ii . . . IV-I). Either way, the fifth chord, the V, breaks the established pattern. Yet ironically, this short-circuiting of what could have been a perfectly circular progression does not have the effect of mitigating the impression of circularity. On the contrary, the continual reiteration of the successive harmonic pairs I-V, vi-III, V-I, provides both a sense of a circular journey and a sense of brokenness, thus serving as a harmonic analogue to Godel's melodic image of a (damaged) Romantic circle of longing and despair.

Compounding the harmonic predictability is that Schubert's recomposition of the fifth strophe manages to begin the second binary part of the variation theme with a transposed retrograde of the sequential four-chord pattern that begins the first part: V-i4-VII-bIII, as op- posed to I-V-vi-III (V/vi). (See ex. 2, mm. 372- 75.) What is gained by this clever move in terms of harmonic and motivic coherence is perhaps counterbalanced by the monotony resulting from an unyielding dependence on two-measure rhythmic units and on sequential root- position bass motions of fourths and fifths. In the entire variation theme, the only relief from

these rhythmic and harmonic regularities oc- curs in mm. 376-79. Again, the fact that we hear the whole structure four times (theme plus three variations), each time with both halves repeated, tends to accentuate the rhythmic and harmonic predictability, and even to render it irritating. (Of course, it is also possible that the whole point here is to draw us into the vortex of the variations, entrapping us in a loop of circular repetitions from which we cannot escape-a ploy not unusual for late Schubert, and one that would suggest our inter- preting his harmonic moves in a more positive light.)

Perhaps the most telling change wrought by Schubert in the variation theme is what he does to the melody-a change that may seem insignificant until we realize its ramifications. In Sei mir gegriisst, as in many other of Schubert's Lieder, a wonderfully expressive feature is the relation between the top voice of the piano accompaniment and the vocal line. The piano introduction lays out most of the essen- tials. The melody begins on 3, and its characteristic motion is the sequential 3-#4-5, 2-3-4, followed by the arpeggiation up to 6 (in structural melodic tones; the actual melody reaches the octave) and the descent back to the tonic. In Schenkerian terms, the melody's middleground line in mm. 1-4 proceeds from 5 to 4, at which point an inner voice leaps above this already established voice to achieve 6, after which the voices are separated into two different strands (see linear analysis in ex. 3, cf. score in ex. 1).

Another crucial feature is rhythm: the ascending gestures in the right hand are always on offbeats, syncopated against the left hand, which always plays on the beat. When the voice enters, it begins not on 3 but on 1. Since the melodic line of the piano's right hand retains the 3-#4-5, 2-3-4 motion, the singer (a tenor, presumably-we can assume a male subject here) in effect articulates an inner voice, a third below that of the piano, in its first four measures.37 But on the words "sei mir gegrtisst / sei

37Since the argument here turns on melodic scale-degree function rather than literal register, I will refer to the tenor's line as being a third below the upper voice of the piano, even though the interval is actually a tenth.

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A-- A

Example 3: Linear analysis of Sei mir gegriisst, mm. 1-8.

mir gekiisst," he reaches to the higher register established by the piano, even though the piano remains, on the whole, a third higher. Rhythmically the voice sings, of course, on the beat, while the melodic piano part remains off the beat.

Now when we compare the variation theme to the song, it is clear that Schubert has chosen the upper, piano line rather than the vocal line for the melody; how could he do otherwise, since the opening augmented second of the initial measure of the voice part in effect identi- fies it as a subsidiary, inner voice. Schubert also chromaticizes the new melodic line, 3-4- #4-5, thereby adding a slight schmalzig touch lacking in the original, and he necessarily places it on rather than off the beat.

All these changes are perfectly reasonable ones to make in changing the song to a variation theme for instruments. Yet these ostensi- bly innocent alterations of detail result in a transformation of expressive meaning, especially if in the first place we understand how the original details structured meaning. Because the normative melodic motion at the beginning of the song is 3-#t-5? and the singer always has the third below, 1-#2-3, we might well in- terpret the upper line as representing what the singer longs for but cannot attain: the beloved, "du Entrif3ne mir und meinem Kusse." And the Entriflung is literal. She always hovers in a space (the higher register) and time (the offbeat) that he cannot attain. In his hopes ("sei mir gegriisst / sei mir gekiisst") he can, through an act of will, in an unnatural motion that goes against the grain of the musical motion already established-that is, in what Schenker would call an Obergreifung-reach up to that higher register. But then the piano goes even higher,

and each time it turns out that he does not really establish the upper register anyway, but, on the words "sei mir gekiisst," leaps back down to the tonic from which he came, skip- ping the intervening steps of the descent.

In strophes 3, 4, and 5, the singer attempts to initiate a substantial (middleground) ascent that will legitimately attain the higher register, but without success (see analysis in ex. 4). But in the final strophe, a'R (mm. 78-97), inspired by the words "Ein Hauch der Liebe tilget Riium und Zeiten"-words that seem to connect him to his beloved in reality (in space and time) rather than in his imagination, he adopts one final strategy (see ex. 5). He shifts, for the one and only time in the song, to the present indicative mood ("ich bin bei dir, du bist bei mir," mm. 82-85), having thus far used either the subjunctive mood (in the formula) or the past tense (in the middle strophes). And it works! For four blissful measures (mm. 82-85), the singer is suddenly in the upper register for which he has always longed (3-#4-5, 2-3-4), the very same register as the melodic voice of the piano. Reacting to this unexpectedly happy situ- ation, the harmonic rhythm quadruples from what it has always been in support of this melodic figure (two harmonies to the measure rather than one every two measures), and for the first and only time in the song it alters its sequential pattern to a conventional circle-of- fifths rather than a sequence of pairs of thirds.

But the fortissimo bass C6 that breaks into the unreal and unprecedented harmonic sequence (a sequence too "natural" for this song) jolts the singer into a desperate fear that he is not in the real, indicative present, but the delu- sional present. The crashing CG motivates yet another Ubergreifung, this time with both


221

19TH CENTURY

MUSIC bR

30 34 39 42

3 4 3

45 49 54 57

61 65 72 75

Example 4: Linear analysis of Sei mir gegrfisst, strophes 3-5 (mm. 30-77).

singer and the top voice of the piano in the same register. But now the reaching-over is not to diatonic 6, as always before, but to 66; and while the singer shrieks the melodic gb, the piano's right hand hammers the same note re- peatedly, as if momentarily to help him hold on to the illusions, "ich bin bei dir, du bist bei mir," and "ich halte dich in dieses Arms Umschltisse." The final irony involves this gb: after countless f#s in the piece have resolved down to f, at the climactic moment this wrench- ing melodic gb (the only one in the song) is enharmonically changed to an f#, which for the first time resolves correctly, to g, only to see the g fall through f# and f and, in the inevitable return the status quo, leap back down to the tonic on the (again subjunctive) "sei mir gekiisst."

All this, of course, is lost in the Violin Fantasie's theme and variations, which smoothes over the rhythm, regularizes the form, standardizes the harmony, and, most of all, eliminates altogether the play of registers. What critics surely miss in the Fantasie's version of Sei mir gegriisst is not only its expressive effect, but the extraordinary craft that made that effect possible in the song.

Thus far, analysis has helped us to flesh out and perhaps explain certain aspects of the negative critical responses to the Fantasie, especially those that find it wanting in its adapta- tion of Sei mir gegrfisst. Can analysis at the same time offer evidence of Schubert's compositional craft in the work, evidence of his taking it as a serious challenge to his powers of phantasieren, in the tradition of his most ac- complished predecessors?

Strangely, it can. In spite of its flaws, the Violin Fantasie exhibits a formidable level of compositional skill. Despite the claims of critics to the contrary, the song Sei mir gegriisst is indeed integrated into the fabric of the composition, but in a different way from the integration of the song "Der Wanderer" into the Wandererfantasie. The crucial difference is that the motivic connection of the song to the rest of the piece is no longer on the surface, as was the case in the earlier Fantasie; there the connection is hard to miss, since a single motive from the song serves as a head motive for each of its movements. Rather, the connections are more hidden, more subtle: more, I might suggest, in the manner of Schumann's concealed motivic work in the early piano music; or, from

222

78

I I , I I Ein Hauch der Lie be til - get Rdum' und Zei ten, ich bin bei

83

dir, du bist bei mir, ich hal - te dich in die - ses Arms __ Um -

89 A I J.

schlus - se, sei mir ge - grift, sei mir ge -

94

S• kiifgt, sei mir ge - ktiift!

~- PP

Example 5: Sei mir gegrfisst, final strophe (mm. 78-99).

a theoretical point of view, in the manner of Schenker's verborgene Wiederholungen.

All that the Violin Fantasie has yielded previously with respect to motivic connectedness is the simple relation of the ascending thirds of the beginning of "Sei mir gegrtisst" to those of the Andante molto and the Allegretto (see ex.

6), and the previously mentioned similarity of the opening of the final Allegro and the first phrase of the song-not much reward for a few decades of analytical effort. Yet a closer hearing reveals a number of striking connections, both harmonic and melodic, just below the surface, and quite obvious once we notice them.


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a. Opening measures of variation theme.

A .I , A

b. Opening measures of Allegro.

Example 6: Melodic similarity of variation theme and Allegro (March) theme.

For example, as already seen, the harmonic progression of the first phrase of the song is I-V- vi-III (V/vi)-V-I. Transposed to C, this same progression underlies the second of the two long phrases of the Andante molto, since it is used as a simple means to move from the C major of the beginning to the A minor of the Allegretto second movement (see ex. 7). The same simple chords, now in A minor and in a different order, undergird the opening section of the Allegretto (ex. 8). In the second strain of the Allegretto theme, the bass line (A-E-G-C) is a literal transposition of the F-C-EVAb conclusion of the Sei mir gegriisst formula, although now put to different harmonic ends (i- III6-V/III-III in A minor; see mm. 53-56)-the inverted chords allow the bass el-gl-c2 to be canonic with the violin.

18 22

ivt- vi- J(v/

I V-- vi--HIII(V/vi

Example 7: Harmonic/Bass analysis of Andante molto, second phrase (mm. 18-36).

On the melodic front, a much richer net- work of motivic connections links the four movements. A link already noted is that between Sei mir gegriisst and the first eight measures of the final movement. Another is the connection of these eight initial measures of the finale and the violin melody of the Andante molto-a hidden, but nonetheless striking relationship (ex. 9).

A further relation between the Andante molto and the song involves the chromatic step between the fifth and sixth scale degrees. We have already noted that the chromatic descent

&6-#-5 is the crucial melodic element of the

formulaic refrain of the song, and thus of the variation theme as well. These same scale degrees, in the global tonic of C

major-A-A--G (the spelling and harmonic function of the notes here, of course, are different from what they are in the song and variation theme), initiate the first bass, and thus harmonic motion in the Fantasie. And the bass motion in the middle of the long opening phrase of the Andante molto passes through these same sensitive notes, now in the ascending form G-G#-A, in mm. 14-16, on the way to the cadence that overlaps with the beginning of the second phrase (see ex. 10).38

A particularly elegant relationship is that between the chromatic ascent from the third to the fifth melodic scale degree in the first two measures of the variation theme and the chromatically descending "tenor" voice of the piano accompaniment in the tremolo chords at the beginning of the piece (ex. 11)--a figure that is also transferred to the bass in mm. 19 and 21.

This ascending-third figure also plays a crucial role in the final turn to C major after the reprise of the song near the end of the Fantasie. As noted early in this essay, at m. 639 the song theme returns in its original key of Ab major, and its first half is stated in full (although now its two-measure tag is extended to four measures, mm. 649-52). Then at m. 653, the violin repeats the beginning of the theme, now with a diatonic variant of the ascent from 3 to 5 in Ab. This time, however, rather than sequencing this motion by moving it down a step, as it always has before, the melody continues to ascend, over an A?-G motion in the bass, through E-F-G-that is, through 3-4-5 in C, so

38In his classic essay "A Romantic Detail in Schubert's Schwanengesang," Joseph Kerman cites the Violin Fantasie-along with, for example, the song Am Meer and the first movement of the String Quintet-as works in C major that begin with a striking harmonic progression (usu- ally tonic-"common-tone" diminished seventh-tonic) that establishes a mood but is structurally unrelated to the rest of the piece. Although I show that important linear pat- terns that create the progression here are motivically related to other parts of the Fantasie, Kerman's point about the harmony remains perfectly valid: the colorful chords of the beginning never recur, except when this introduction returns near the end of the work. Kerman's essay is reproduced in Schubert: Critical and Analytical Studies, pp. 48-64.

224

37

Allegretto

43

.

II

57

bP

r-

Example 8: Allegretto, mm. 37-63.

that the two ascending third figures, one in Ab and one in C, are linked together (see ex. 12, which gives the music from m. 639 to the end of the Fantasie).

The reprise of the song and its sudden turn to Ab from C is also, of course, crucial from a tonal point of view. For here the fundamental harmonic progression of the opening of the song, to which we have heard references in both the introduction and the Allegretto, is stated in

succession in Ab and C: I-V-VI-III (V/VI)-V-I in Ab major in mm. 639-48 (the last four measures are repeated in mm. 649-52); and the same progression (with the LVI of mm. 653-54 substi- tuting for the initial tonic) in C major in mm. 653-60. What this tonal reprise accomplishes is a direct juxtaposition of the three structural keys of the song in a single progression (see harmonic analysis in ex. 12, mm. 639-60, and reduction in ex. 13). The C-major triad, it turns


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19TH CENTURY

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Andante molto

a.

AAllegro

b. A

--TI II ;-

I! I '

- I I -F

tl ,e

Example 9: Melodic relation of Andante molto theme and Allegro theme.

Andante molto

Violin Andante molto

simile

Piano P

A _ ______

Example 10: Andante molto, mm. 1-9.

m. 1 2 3 4 5 mm. 19 and 21 cf. variation theme

A A A

5 #4 44

tip-

Example 11: Chromatic third figure in Andante molto and variation theme.

226

639 Allegretto

A0 , ,

I I 1-

.

Allegretto

644I

vv

649

: V IC0 -:-

IA : I " Iffa 657

-•7 -:

A44 I

...... WO•0 _OW PJcec

Example 12: Violin Fantasie, mm. 639-end.


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19TH CENTURY

MUSIC

661 Presto

667

A1 t

de resc. P r

Idecresc. P P 3

S? I I 1 ,.

r- i r r RK

6 7

2........... . ..

678

•,, ..

Example 12 (continued)

228

689 s

i :

cre-- - -- - - - . .-----scen. ---------------- do cresc

cre------------------ scen-------------------- do cresc

695

3

Example 12 (continued)

IIFl f

A6: I V vi V/i =C:I V vi V/vi V I

a: i V

Example 13: Harmonic reduction, mm. 639-60.

out, is a fulcrum that joins the keys of Ab (the key of the song theme), C (the global tonic), and A minor (the key of the Allegretto). As shown in the example, the four-chord progression, beginning in Ab, leads to C. (It could lead to F minor; but because of the characteristic melodic turn in the formula, and the return to the tonic, it never does). Starting then from C, as the progression literally does in the Andante molto, it leads to A minor; here, unlike in the song theme, the submediant is actually tonicized: what is suggested but never accom- plished in the variations, in the foreign key of Ab, is fully realized in the Andante molto and the Allegretto. The entire process is summa- rized in ex. 13.

A final analytical point will return us to the critical concerns with which this essay began. I have already cited Arthur Godel's perceptive

critique of the end of the Fantasie: that the virtuoso conclusion violates the essence of the poem and its text. Having earlier noted the role of the unrelenting ascending motion in this peroration, I shall now take a brief moment to expand on that observation. The brilliant stretto that is the coda takes flight from the melodic figure of the two opening measures of the Alle- gro finale. After a quick ascent of two octaves- an ascent that one might suggest as having been effected by Obergreifung run amok-the figure gets stuck on the notes A and G, as though it cannot decide which way to turn: down to 5, or up to the tonic of the next octave (refer again to ex. 12). At m. 671 it seems to opt for the ascent, since it moves up a semitone to Bk, from which, however, it soon turns back. A repetition of the harmonic BV-F-G (bVII-IV-V; note the parallel to the formulaic I-V-vi)


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19TH CENTURY

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cadential progression in mm. 675-78 is extended to bring the conclusive harmonic cadence in m. 683. Thereafter, the melodic figure that is most emphasized is 7-8-that is, the attainment of the upper octave. Indeed, once this B-C figure (which quickly descends, canceling out the previous ascent) reaches its lowest octave, in m. 686, the piano begins its monstrous sweep through the ascending C-major scale that leads to the final cadence. So in the end, it is not only ascending motion in general, or even ascending motion as a scale, that concludes the piece, but

specifically the large-scale middleground motion 5-647-7-8, G-A-B--B-C, the completion to the higher octave of the ascending impulse-- the Romantic desire, as it were-embedded in the song's formulaic refrain.

Godel does not analyze in detail what happens to the melody, but he notes, more generally, that "the content of the song appears in the brilliant light of tragic-ironic alienation; the anxious virtuosity of the piece is that of despair.""39 Godel is surely right: there is something frighteningly empty about the final rou- lades of the piece. The brilliant ending that completes the octave ascent over twenty or so measures and then hammers it in from one end of the keyboard to the other is far from the tragic alienation of the Romantic poet and singer. Whatever subjectivity is present here is also far removed from the subjectivity of Schubert the song composer. There is alien-

ation in these measures; but the subject experi- encing that alienation is the lonely virtuoso in the glitter of the concert hall, not the wander- ing minstrel looking into bourgeois society from the outside. Schubert's piece misfires precisely because, perhaps in an attempt to keep up with the Fantasie of his time, he took on a subjectivity that was not his own.

But what about the piece as a whole? Analy- sis has shown that the Violin Fantasie is hardly the string of unrelated movements that is has long been thought to be. The whole piece is suffused with the harmonic and melodic mo- tives of Sei mir gegrfisst, to the point that its fundamental telos turns on the variations as its central core: the first two movements prepare the variation set, while the finale is in part a last, frenetic variation. Yet the Fantasie seems forever relegated to looking into the canon from the outside, much as the Romantic subject of Schubert's songs looks into bourgeois culture from the same perspective. Does the originality and the craft that, as we can now see, Schubert brought to it, as a composer in the great tradition of the Fantasie, of phantasieren, save it from critical purgatory, or at least from critical hell? This question, of course, we all must answer for ourselves. Perhaps a better question is: Does there need to be a critical purgatory, or a critical hell-or a critical heaven, for that matter? The Violin Fantasie offers us moments of artistic pleasure, and its odd position in Schubert's mature instrumental works stimulates useful and productive inquiry about form and genre, about virtuosity and subjectivity, about analysis and criticism. Need it do more?S

39Godel, "Zur Eigengesetz der Schubertschen Fantasien," p. 202.

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