Schubert: Piano Sonata in A major, D. 959
Who was Schubert? Can he be said to have been a person at all? All he left behind was his music, and he is not to be found even there – at least not in the way that Beethoven is found in every one of his works, shaking his fist and shouting, “I am Beethoven!” Schubert is shadowy and shapeless – like those figures in Chinese landscape paintings with their backs turned to the viewer, whose only purpose is to show the scale of their surroundings. The self is shown as not the creator of its environment, but inextricably embedded in it. By exploring the contours of the emotional landscape, Schubert reveals a different vision of humanity – not the humanity that demands its rights and dignity, as in Beethoven, but the humanity of which most of us are ashamed in the West – the fleeting experience of living in a body made up of unquenchable fears and desires.
Schubert's provocation is that going astray is itself a path. Life needs no purpose and we are not here to accomplish anything in particular. He veers away from the straight and narrow logic of Western music and carves his own wayward, winding path through the wild. This path digresses deceptively, curving around to find the shortest way down into the depths. The A major Sonata moves by this pattern of deception and digression, constantly undermining our expectations. It does not develop from within, driven by a continuity of purpose, but constantly opens itself to strange new vistas. There is no ground to stand on. This constant alternation is what is so disturbing and at the same time liberating about Schubert's music.
The A Major sonata begins with a wall of sound, an impenetrable, seemingly solid rocky cliff. A trickle of water seeps from its base. A few pebbles come loose. The trickle turns into a stream, into a network of streams. Cracks open in the hard wall and the whole facade breaks apart in pieces, carried away on a roaring flood. But the flood soon runs dry and we are left again on parched earth. At the end of the first movement's exposition Schubert adds a tiny little flourish onto the end of the secondary theme, seemingly a frivolous ornament. But this ornament becomes the pattern for the whole development section, as if, walking in the mountains, we are distracted by the sound of water, and following it, we see a whole undiscovered valley in bloom through the cleft in the rock. The first movement paints the splendor and chaos of the emotions as a riveting landscape, strange yet familiar.
Yet by the second movement, all this richness seems like a delusion. A homeless man is trying to find shelter under the freeway. His steps echo in the vacuous night. The middle section depicts the convulsion of a body abandoned to unspeakable loneliness. This is the dark side of individuality – unspeakable loneliness in a world where everything cold, metallic, dead to the touch. The only logical response to such a world is madness.
The third movement is dancing on broken glass. It carries an echo of the madness from the second movement but maintains a jumpy, precarious balance.
In the last movement, the turmoil is not so much overcome as bypassed – in Schubert, there is no need for resolution, since everything happens and exhausts itself in the moment. Walking and singing are seen to be the thread that ties a life together. The ambling, song-like melody persists through endless harmonic and rhythmic shifts, at times light and ethereal, at times diving into jagged, dark regions, reappearing in different variations, yet staying true to its original pulse. There is finally a sense of “normal life” that gives continuity amid the unpredictable turns of life. Yet even this is undermined at the end – the melody finally thins out like a worn fabric – silences appear in between its phrases – it hesitates, then throws itself into overwhelming chaos. There are no conclusions to be made about life.
No comments:
Post a Comment