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Are there any particular features of Schubert's piano sonatas that sets them apart from other composers' piano sonatas?

How can you recognise a Schubert piano sonata when you hear one?

Well, there aren't a WHOLE lot of them, so for me, I can listen to them and become familiar with them, just like with Beethoven.

Is this the prompt for a homework assignment question?

Beethoven had an immense influence on his sonatas. Especially the late ones so there aren't many features. A well known feature is that Schubert's piano sonatas often have a great length. His famous late sonatas (D958, D959 & D960) don't fit on a single album.

Great question, and hard to answer. The first thing that would come to my mind is that he has long lyrical themes, but, I can't really think of any sonata besides the "little A major" (D. 664) that has such a theme that's particularly longer or more lyrical than in other composers, and heck, look at that melody in Chopin's B minor sonata (2nd theme of 1st movement) but then again that's Chopin and we don't really think of him when we're talking about sonatas.....

Schubert's sonatas are full of surprises and all kinds of different things, but so is Beethoven, probably even more......heck, what does characterize Schubert's sonatas....

I don't know.

And with Schubert in general, for most of us, I think we can't even necessarily say "we know it when we hear it." I think if we do recognize his pieces, for most of us it's mainly because we know the particular piece, rather than recognizing the composer. Like, there was this story that I told on here a while ago....

Unlike Beethoven's or Mozart's sonatas, they were written by Schubert. Another difference is that they are very awkward for the pianist.

The last sonata is the one that I have heard performed live more than any other: Rubinstein, Bachauer, Johanneson, Serkin, and a few others. It seems everyone was playing it.

I'm not overly familiar with the Schubert sonatas outside of D664 and the final trilogy (D958, D959, D960), but I do notice he tends to favor using four movements in his more mature sonatas.

I've also noticed that in a few of his first movements, he uses Moderato rather than the usual Allegro, e.g. D894.

Great point! That's as close to any generalization that I think we could make. Even when it's not marked "Moderato," often it sort of is.

Schubert's harmonic modulations are a recurrent feature and really wonderful in shifting mood and tone within the sonatas. Plus as someone else said.... they are long!!

Yes, he changes modes (major-minor-major) probably more than any other composer I am familiar with. Also much of his harmonic modulations are by 3rds.

Mark, I enjoyed your story! However, I do tend to recognise Schubert when I hear it. Even if I don't know the piece. It just sounds ... "Schubertian".

Except when it sounds "Beethovenian"!

It's more than modulating between major and minor on the same tonic. He likes to get to a dimished 7th chord and then modulate in quite a few different ways from there, rather than simply resolving the bottom note upward to the tonic. He also regularly goes to the flatted sub-mediant, which has a certain emotional effect that I recognize as Schubert.

I think of him as the father of the "music trance." Listen to the opening bars of "Nacht und Traueme" to see what I mean, (it sounds almost Wagnerian, or strangely, minimalist). Also, the g flat major impromtu is a music trance to me, almost in its entirety. Other composers, mostly later, did it too, but to me, it is his signature, and what causes me to recognize him. The modulation may be how he gets to the trance, but to me, it is the more subjective idea of the trance itself that is his signature.

Another thing to listen for is the long thematic line, as opposed to motivic development--the cello melody of the unfinished symphony, for example. Also, he could write a melody so intriguing that it can stand alone in lieu of any other musical context--the melody of Staendchen, without even a guitar accompaniment, can hold its own next to symphonies and sonatas.

He takes criticism for length and for not fitting his music to a pianist's hand. I like his length, and I find that at least some of it fits my hand extremely well. I don't find it, in general, to be a poorer fit than most other composers. I know that this not fitting the hand criticism is a common one, so maybe I just don't know.

All in all, I think he is a very great composer.

Tomasino

Schubert often uses repetitive rhythms (especially dotted) and melodic material at great length and it doesn't get old. At least not in competent hands.

There is also a certain blend of classical form and a restrained Romantic language which is hard to mistake for anyone else. The closest analogue would be Brahms or Schumann, but their sonatas are much wilder and rougher than Schubert's. Mendelssohn's sonatas, on the other hand, are too light to be mistaken for Schubert.

Tomasino has some very perceptive things to say about Schubert's style. Schubert's ability to modulate from major to minor, from bar to bar, within a bar, and sometimes by merely shifting one note in a chord, gives his music a sense of melancholy. This is easy to imitate on paper and many composers have tried, but there is an instinct that Schubert had for this bittersweet emotion that no one has been able to duplicate. His reliance on the diminished seventh as a stepping stone to unexpected chords is also characteristic.

His harmonic inventiveness is part of the sheer beauty of his music, but I think what moves people the most are his incredible melodies. He seemed to have an inexhaustible spring of lyrical treasures; he complained sometimes that he couldn't stop his brain from inventing them. He kept notation paper next to his bed so when he woke up he could write down what his brain had been working on while he slept.

Schubert was not the inventor of the long lyrical line in vocal music - Mozart certainly preceded him there - but he was the inventor of the art song in Romantic music, which relied on the lyrical line to match the meter and length of the line in the poetry chosen for the song. Schubert was also unmatched in his use of the piano as a partner to the vocalist. His writing for the piano was sparse - the pianist rarely plays the same note as the vocalist is singing. But his use of the instrument to mimic nature, such as babbling brooks, crows cawing, wind howling, a horse cantering, was unique. Schubert was an extremely gifted miniaturist because of his song writing skills, and this shows up in his piano solo and four hand pieces.

When he applied these talents to the piano sonata, his weaknesses became apparent. He wasn't very good at developing themes or creating interesting structure in his sonatas, so he often fell back on merely repeating entire passages in different keys. In this respect Schubert was a mere shadow compared to Beethoven's great talents in thematic development and architecture. But to accomplish what he did, and to imbue his music with the passion that he felt was the most essential ingredient, Beethoven used melodic motifs - little building blocks of his musical cathedrals (think of the opening of his 5th Symphony or almost any of his piano sonatas). Schubert was the complete opposite, using lyrical lines in his sonatas at the expense of architectural development. This is why his attempts at passion often sound forced. But we listen to his sonatas nonetheless because they are simply so beautiful melodically, and who then really cares that they are repetitive or too long?

Do not underestimate the importance of the "music trance" Tomasino discusses. Schubert did indeed invent this in piano literature, and his only rival in creating this effect on the piano has been Chopin. In his slow movements in his sonatas, Schubert overcomes his development problems by weaving a trance that can last ten minutes and keep you spellbound to the repeating beauty. He is especially good at this in his impromptus, which are shorter and more congenial structures for him, and in which he was able to create masterpieces.

Schubert wrote so much music that we often can't identify his unfamiliar pieces. But once you get used to his composing style, his voice becomes unmistakable and certainly that of a genius. Schubert worked hard at maintaining his own style; he often frequented the same tavern as Beethoven and was urged by his friends to go over an introduce himself to the great man. Schubert refused, somewhat out of timidity, but especially because he didn't want to get swallowed up in Beethoven's aura, and start mimicking his style. This allowed Schubert to become a very great man in his own right, and Beethoven predicted just before he died that Schubert would become an even greater composer that he was (and Beethoven was not shy about his own greatness). If Schubert hadn't died a few years later, Beethoven's prediction might well have come true.

I can tell a Schubert sonata just by looking at the score because everything is sort of neatly arranged and logical. It's hard to explain.

Numerian: Great post!
But hope you don't mind if I quibble a tiny negligible bit about this part....

You forgot Scriabin.

And also arguably Beethoven, at times.

But you and Tomasino mostly nailed it. This "trance" thing has been one of my own reasons for keeping on playing in public. Yes, it's a thing that can happen when we play for ourselves or for whatever, but for me, it can happen in a public performance to a much greater extent. I 'discovered' it in one of my first recitals, right on the spot (in a Chopin mazurka), and that was really what kept me going with the performing. In fact, for my next recital, I consciously tried to pick only "trance" pieces.
(One was a Schubert sonata.)

And I'd never thought of it till I saw Tomasino's post, but yes, I would agree that Schubert may have "invented" it in piano literature, or at least was the first one to give it such a presence. Funny.....this is such a subjective thing -- what is such a trance? where does or doesn't it appear? Yet, from Tomasino's post and yours (including your mention of Chopin), and from my own impression, it seems that this is something on which people might well agree on the specifics -- which surprises me, pleasantly.

While I wouldn't put Scriabin on the same plane as these other composers that we're talking about, and so maybe he's not even in the discussion, if we do consider him "eligible" I would put him on a tier with anybody in this "trance" department, especially with his later works but also even many of the earlier ones.

Really great insight, tomasino and Numerian! That "musical trance" definitely is something I've noticed in Schubert, especially in the D959 and D960 Sonatas, but I never knew how to put it in words. The passage that comes to mind for me when I was reading the post was the "B" section from D959's Rondo. Schubert almost manages to make you lose your sense of time and space (as if you were dreaming) just by repeating and modulating the relatively simple melodic material in that section before finally building up to the re-appearance of the Rondo theme ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39Cn76IRCpc from 1:52 to around 4:28 ).

It's definitely something that separates Schubert from Beethoven.

As per my above post, I'm not so sure.
Beethoven's late works, especially parts of the last 3 sonatas, are definite "trance pieces" to me.
And also, provided we're able to play it with a fresh vision, which isn't easy, IMO so is Fur Elise.

Didn't see your post at first, I think I was typing at the same time you posted.

Yeah I think you're right about Beethoven's last 3 sonatas. Now that I think about it, the Arietta from Op. 111 definitely contains some trance-like passages, especially in the second half. Perhaps what I meant was that I just feel there is a distinct difference in the means in which the two composers attain that state in their music.

Late Beethoven to me always seems to be more meticulous, as if every note meant something, whereas late Schubert is more likely to contain long spacious passages like the section from D959 I mentioned.

Most of my opinions are from listening though, much of late Beethoven/Schubert is still out of my league for playing. I've only played parts of D959.

Not sure if I'm on track here, but Schumann's Traumerei seems to do it for me. Whenever I play it I think of the Horowitz encore performance in Moscow.

Maybe that's my trigger for a trance, at least as I understand the intent of the phrase.