Scholars of Franz Schubert\u2019s instrumental music have long felt pressured to justify their affinity for, and subsequent investigations of, this particular repertoire. The urge to defend Schubert is understandable given the tepid, and at times dismissive, reception of his instrumental compositions\u2014especially those in sonata form. Compounding the problem are analyses that frame differences between Schubert\u2019s sonata forms and theories of musical form as compositional faults, or failures. Complaints of this ilk, published in both academic and popular presses, abound in nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature on Schubert and his sonata forms.<\/p>\n
Thus, throughout Schubert\u2019s reception history the friction between musical work and analytical method has resulted in the marginalization of both the man (as a composer of instrumental works) and his compositions (in sonata form) for over a century. As Julian Horton<\/a> notes, such \u201cperceptions of structural inadequacy invoke the authority of an ideal type, which is validated through reference to a benchmark repertory\u201d\u2014a repertoire from which Schubert was, for many years, conspicuously absent.<\/p>\n The consistent othering of Schubert\u2019s sonata forms was due, in large part, to the rise of organicist aesthetics in the nineteenth century, combined with the championing of the sonata forms of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven (especially those from Beethoven\u2019s middle period). With the crystallization of sonata form as a teleological, goal-directed, and organically unified entity, the lyrical and repetitive characteristics of Schubert\u2019s compositions stand in stark contrast. <\/p>\n As Scott Burnham<\/a> notes in summarizing Adorno<\/a>\u2019s seminal essay on Schubert, many qualities of Schubert\u2019s sonata forms are in conflict with the mores of the formal genre: \u201cSchubert\u2019s themes are self-possessed apparitions of truth rather than inchoate ideas that require temporal evolution; his repetitive, fragmentary forms are inorganic rather than organic, crystalline rather than plantlike.\u201d Above all, it is Schubert\u2019s treatment of repetition in sonata forms that emerged as a critical point of weakness.<\/p>\n From the earliest days of Schubert\u2019s reception history, (excessive) repetition comes to the fore as perhaps the most commented upon aspect of the composer\u2019s instrumental music. Repetition is especially problematic with regards to sonata forms, for there are set expectations for when and how thematic material should be repeated; in comparison, Schubert\u2019s compositions break from the mold. According to critics, they repeat too much, too often, scarcely develop thematic material\u2014 and in so doing, fail. Such critics were not reticent to point out these shortcomings, and in so doing established a tradition of faulting Schubert\u2019s repetitions in sonata forms. Consider, for example, the following remarks by Henry Heathcote Stratham<\/a>, published in 1883: <\/p>\n [Sonata form demands] something more than beautiful melodies. A grasp of the whole materials as subordinate to one complete design must be evident; the constituent elements of the composition must be linked together as parts of an organic whole, presented in new and varied combinations, so as to bring out all their latent expressiveness as well as their harmonic or contrapuntal relationship \u2026 [In Schubert\u2019s sonata forms] lovely melodies follow each other, but nothing comes of them; or he repeats an idea without apparent aim or purpose beyond the wish to spin out the composition to a certain orthodox length.<\/em><\/p>\n Perceptions of structural inadequacy in Schubert\u2019s sonata forms, as manifest in publications by critics such as Stratham, continued to reinscribe Schubert\u2019s marginalized position as a composer of instrumental music. To avoid perpetuating the notion that Schubert\u2019s repetitions are incompatible with sonata forms, recent scholarship considers Schubert on his own terms. To accomplish this, many scholars adopt alternative modes of discourse. <\/p>\n Regardless of the interpretive or analytical framework employed, a concern for repetition and ways to frame it positively remains central to many discussions of Schubert\u2019s idiom. A common thread emerging in these analyses is the presence of variation in Schubert\u2019s sonata forms. <\/p>\n