David Dalle
Thursday December 18th, 2014 with David Dalle
Schubert's Dark Night of the Soul

My annual tradition nearing December 21st narrates a musical drama from darkness to light. Today the darkness will come from one of Schubert's most tormented works: his penultimate piano sonata. Unexpectedly so, because it is a work in a major key, though much of Schubert's most disturbing music are in major keys. This work was composed in the final months of Schubert's brief life. The first movement of the sonata does not prepare the listener for what's to come despite later movements recalling the first movement extensively. It is music of almost pure innocence, a blissful dream that will be lost. The second movement is the tortured heart of this work, it is f# minor which is the relative minor of A major, however the relative minor is never hinted at in the first movement and the harmony here just emphasizes its alienation from the first movement. The theme is a sigh, muffled sobbing from a distance, this sad lonely texture is violently ripped apart by a central section full of harsh modulations that sounds like madness, a mind coming apart. It leads into a brief major section where the opening dream is remembered, but remembered with grief as something lost before the lamenting minor theme comes back and brings the movement to a muted close. The third movement is a bright scherzo which provides an almost necessary respite from the despair of the previous movement. There are hints of violence and reminiscences of the first movement, and the overall brightness of this movement is not convincing. The closing lyrical rondo suggests we are back in the comforting embrace of home, but anxiety pervades underneath until it is brought to the surface in the coda where the music seems uncertain how to resolve, it pauses and pauses again where fragments of the main theme are presented in unexpected keys before another briefly violent section and the sonata is hammered close with an invocation of the opening of the sonata. Though it seems to have come full circle, this ending sounds forced, frustrated, this sonata is ultimately about grief and loss. Schubert himself could provide the light that follows this dark episode with his final sonata in B-flat major, but that will be on another show. Instead, we reach out for the light with exuberant, festive and joyful music from around the world as humanity has always done at the Winter Solstice, to rage against the dying of the light.