Schubert Fantasie Insights

Audio & Insights

Franz Schubert Fantasie in C Major, D.934, for Violin and Piano

The Schubert Fantasie stretches from start to finish in a great arc. Part of what supports that arc is a wildly flexible use of harmony, cannily employed. It's worth a brief mystery tour: to take note of a few sound-landmarks can give enough information that one can go back and hear more of what's going on in the whole performance.

What follows is a very brief outline of the main harmonic directions, along with a tour through the central theme and variations (Part III).

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Part I

The piece begins in C Major (red), but it takes a surprisingly dark turn at the second chord, and a still darker turn at the third. C Major comes back by the end of the phrase. But even after a few seconds, it is clear that this piece will have a long way to go.

Part II

Part II is in A minor. A minor is not far from C Major, so it's not an unconventional turn for Schubert to have taken. There's even a good bit of C Major to hear even at the second phrase, but the mood is changed and unsettled.

Part III – Theme and Variations

Theme

When the Fantasie does finally settle, it sets itself in a song (Schubert's own song, Sei mir Gegrüsst, D.741), and it places that song on a chord which brings us all the way back to the strange third chord of the piece. (Not coincidentally, the lyrics of the song are about overcoming distance.) The variations which follow the theme are quite consistent in their harmonic outline—the harmonies of the song are kaleidoscopic enough. Over these changes, the instruments create variations above all through sheer virtuosity.

Variation 1

The theme lies unhidden in the low notes of the violin, and seems to yield virtuosity as a kind of celebration.

Variation 2

The second variation belongs to the piano in waves; the violin gives commentary and chords by pizzicato.

Variation 3

The third variation belongs more to both instruments: the violin line is purest virtuosity; the piano outlines the theme in trills.

Variation 4

It seems as though there will be a lyric variation, but the theme disappears, and so does its key.

Part IV (re-introduction)

There's no point boiling the whole thing in an analysis—at least not in this context. It is perhaps enough to say that by the fourth part something seems to have been settled. The music of the opening comes back, but without the same troubled purple departures. Something, clearly, has changed, and not just the octave of the violin.

The Schubert Fantasie is a long piece, but it is not heavy. Its harmonic changes provide enough sustaining difference in mood and color that they are worth at least a few moments' thought. Attention given in their direction will pay back richly in listening and music-making alike.