{"id":5353,"date":"2019-04-15T08:00:21","date_gmt":"2019-04-15T06:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.henle.de\/blog\/en\/?p=5353"},"modified":"2019-04-15T08:21:29","modified_gmt":"2019-04-15T06:21:29","slug":"schubert-on-a-bach-trip-a-call-for-help-regarding-the-arpeggione-theme","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.henle.de\/en\/2019\/04\/15\/schubert-on-a-bach-trip-a-call-for-help-regarding-the-arpeggione-theme\/","title":{"rendered":"Schubert on a Bach trip? A call for help regarding the Arpeggione theme"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Johann Sebastian Bach<\/p><\/div>\n

The Henle blogging community will, we hope, not be disappointed that my text today has, at first glance, nothing to do with the daily Henle editing routine. Normally, we report here about tricky editorial problems and offer solutions. But today \u2013 not a sign of solving anything. My posting is a question, almost a cry for help on a topic that has been bothering me for weeks. But let\u2019s start with a domestic scene.<\/p>\n

A few weeks ago when I was cleaning up my stack of CDs at home, I came across a recording by Alfred Brendel, \u201cBrendel plays Bach<\/a>\u201d. Elated at the rediscovery, I immediately listened to it straight through \u2013 and got a real high in the end. Not only from Brendel, but also from Bach. For concluding the repertoire is the Prelude and Fugue in A minor BWV 904, a work (I must confess) that was completely unknown to me. What a find! Over the next hour, I kept listening to it, reading the score and looking for other postings on YouTube, including this one<\/a>, wanting to know if the music is so stunning on the harpsichord as well. I only came to myself again when my partner, who happened to be observing my Bach enthusiasm, brought me back to reality by saying, \u2018But that\u2019s Schubert!\u2019<\/p>\n

First of all, total incomprehension on my side. But gradually I got the feeling of having heard the fugue subject before in a very different context. Neither of us, though, was able to pinpoint the parallel. Only much later did it dawn on us: the fugue subject is strikingly similar to the opening of Schubert\u2019s Arpeggione <\/em>sonata<\/a>! Or vice versa: the sonata\u2019s first theme in the first movement literally seems to quote Bach\u2019s fugue<\/a> subject. This is how the music text looks:<\/p>\n

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Bach, Fugue BWV 904, mm. 1\u20134<\/p><\/div>\n

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Schubert, Arpeggione sonata, mm. 10\u201313<\/p><\/div>\n

Especially characteristic at the head of Bach\u2019s subject is the alternating leaps of a fifth\u2014sixth\u2014fifth, a<\/em>1<\/sup>\u2013e<\/em>2<\/sup>\u2013a<\/em>1<\/sup>\u2013f<\/em>2<\/sup>\u2013a<\/em>1<\/sup>\u2013e<\/em>2<\/sup>. And it was just this \u201cgesture\u201d that made the connection to the Arpeggione<\/em> theme in our musical memories. The same tonal sequence in Schubert\u2019s theme, harmonised here in a minor \/ d minor \/ a minor, produces the particular colour, the movement\u2019s characteristic inflection.<\/p>\n

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Schubert, mm. 1\u20134<\/p><\/div>\n

But not only does the intervallic constellation fifth \/ sixth \/ fifth match up, but even the pitches do, thus also the key of A minor and beyond that also the first 4 notes of both themes. The first leap a<\/em>1<\/sup>\u2013e<\/em>2<\/sup> in Bach\u2019s subject (measure 1) is solely filled in with Schubert\u2019s passing notes (b<\/em>1<\/sup>\u2013c<\/em>2<\/sup>\u2013d<\/em>2<\/sup>).<\/p>\n

Deliberate allusion or a coincidence? I myself am not certain. Usually, I\u2019m very sceptical about attempts to surmise profoundly similar quotations from random motif matches. Aren\u2019t these often about \u2018universal applications\u2019, musical \u2018everyday vocabulary\u2019 that you must compellingly find in countless compositions if only you select the right section?\u00a0 Isn\u2019t that also the case here? Then again, isn\u2019t the matching up going so far that you can hardly speak of coincidence? Especially since both motifs are so prominent at the opening of each piece?<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve already warned you in advance that I don\u2019t have an answer. But to find an answer, we would first of all have to settle another, indeed decisive matter: Can Schubert possibly even have known the Bach fugue? (And now it\u2019s finally time for sources!)<\/p>\n

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Franz Schubert<\/p><\/div>\n

I would have said \u2018No\u2019 spontaneously. Bach\u2019s fugue first appeared in print posthumously, in 1839, in fact, within the context of Czerny\u2019s Bach edition for the \u2018Bureau de Musique de C. F. Peters\u2019. Schubert had already died in 1828 and would consequently have been able to become acquainted with the fugue only from a manuscript copy (Bach\u2019s autograph is not extant). But around 1824, the compositional date of the Arpeggione<\/em> sonata (see preface<\/a> to HN 611 and 612), were there copies of Bach works circulating in Vienna, which Schubert could have looked at?<\/p>\n

This time the answer is \u2018Yes\u2019! We know that even before 1800, Bach was being cultivated in Vienna, led by such personages as Gottfried van Swieten<\/a> or Gottlieb Muffat<\/a>. Around 1800 we can even speak of a Viennese Bach renaissance, a renaissance much less known than its counterpart in Berlin (keyword: Mendelssohn Bartholdy and the revival of the St Matthew Passion in 1829). Ironically, an important source of the BWV 904 fugue<\/a> has a definite Vienna connection. It contains only the fugue and the source was perhaps in the possession of Gottfried van Swieten and\/or Gottlieb Muffat. At any rate, the famous Viennese autograph collector Aloys Fuchs is known to have owned the manuscript in 1837 at the latest. Fuchs, in turn, can be associated with Franz Schubert: Fuchs took part in the so-called Schubertiades in Ignaz von Sonnleithner<\/a>\u2019s salon; he is also said to have participated in the first performance of the vocal quartet \u2018Der Gondelfahrer\u2019 D 809 on 17 November 1825 in the Vienna Musikverein<\/em>. There would certainly have been ways that Schubert could have gotten to know Bach\u2019s fugue ca. 1824, at the time the Arpeggione<\/em> sonata was composed.<\/p>\n

Perhaps Vinzenz Schuster, for whom Schubert composed the Arpeggione<\/em> sonata, who likewise socialised at Sonnleithner\u2019s salon and was the owner of an Antiquar-Musikalienhandlung <\/em>[antiquarian music business] and a Musik-Leih- u. Copir-Anstalt <\/em>[music lending and copying establishment], played a role as a Bach intermediary? Was the theme borrowing perhaps a kind of \u201cinsider\u201d exchange between Schuster and Schubert?<\/p>\n

All this is, unfortunately, speculation; overall the evidence is weak. Nevertheless, I would like to put my find up for discussion to the blog readers. What do you think? Is this a quote? Can it even be one? Have I overlooked something? Has the matter perhaps already been far too much gone over \u2013 and I don\u2019t know that? You see me at a loss, but I am grateful for any clue! (Knowing well that the fugue does not need the Arpeggione<\/em> sonata and vice versa to succeed\u2026.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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