One of the most beautiful moments in Schubert
- shri8prak
- 6 days ago
- 1 min read
Everyone knows the famous slow movement from the D959 sonata. But in my perhaps controversial opinion, the most extraordinary aspect of this work is not the brutal meltdown about halfway through. My attention tends to wander to what comes immediately afterwards, perhaps one of the single most profound passages of music ever written:
It's a moment of extraordinary compassion- compassion so unadorned and genuine in its concern that it takes your breath away. Compare this moment from Chopin's fourth ballade, emerging, similarly, from chaos which is made to look materialistically overwrought in comparison.
And of course, as if the initial warmth of the major wasn't moving enough, Schubert takes it to the next level with that minor chord round 5.18, which really seems to capture life in all its weird beauty. I was trying to find words which at least palely reflected the poignance of the moment, and a line of Tennyson stirred in my memory, written in memory of a dear friend:
'But thou art turn'd to something strange,
And I have lost the links that bound
Thy changes; here upon the ground,
No more partaker of thy change.'
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