4 - Schubert the Progressive: Parataxis and the Dialectics of Lyric Teleology

Summary

Chapter 4 begins by exploring the productive tension that can exist between gestural articulation and formal continuity in Schubert’s music, and its affinity with Schubert’s paratactic forms which exploit unexpected disjunction as a formal premise. It focuses on the expositional interpolations in Schubert’s sonatas that exhibit characteristics normally associated with development sections. The three analytical case studies that follow have been chosen for their distinctive approach to this formal practice, and demonstrate its early stages of development in D36/i and D353/i as well as a mature example, D804/i. Three fundamental questions underline my analyses: first, in what sense do the interpolations in Schubert’s first-movement expositions function as development (D353/i); second, the question of whether or not synthesis of the formal dialectic is achieved (D36/i), and finally, what the implications of this are for the articulation of a lyrically conceived teleology (D804/i). This chapter also contains a methodological interlude wherein I define my extension of Edward T. Cone’s concept of stratification to Schubert’s music and its relevance to the sonatas.