Fissures in time : temporality in Schubert's late music

Abstract

Schubert’s late music evokes the relation between music and time. The structural properties of his late music actively articulate listeners’ experience of time in this music, bringing our attention to certain characteristics of time. In particular, the cyclic organization of the formal structure in his late music invites listeners to experience time in a certain fashion. In the construction of the distinctive formal structure, Schubert’s compositional strategies on musical form serve as a foundation for an aesthetic experience of time that is disjunctive and non-teleological. What has long been regarded as a deficiency in his compositional ability to build up large-scale forms is rather the product of unique formal procedures that engender a disjunctive experience of time, including off-tonic returns, numerous repetitions, harmonically closed themes, modal mixture, and the use of extremely expanded diatonic relations. Especially, the repetitions occurring at the formal level—namely, the reappearance of phrases, thematic segments, and recapitulatory returns—play a critical role in shaping our experience of time in a rather cyclic fashion. The cyclic experience of time created by the repetitions further emphasizes the paratactic properties of the formal structure. This study aims at providing an analytical and hermeneutical interpretation of how Schubert’s late music conveys a sense of time by means of musical form, and how his formal practices shape listeners’ experience of time.

This study begins in Chapter 1 by addressing important theoretical concepts surrounding the temporality and musical form in Schubert’s late music, which serves as a conceptual foundation for my analytical approaches in the subsequent chapters. Chapters 2 to 5 deal with the major formal junctions that reorient listeners to hear the temporality in Schubert’s music. Providing a contrast to the forward-moving and future-anticipating sense of time delivered by the Classical transitional sections, Chapter 2 investigates how Schubert’s transitional sections shape time in an unconventional manner. By focusing on the repetitive nature of the formal sections and the effects they have on listeners, Chapter 3 reconsiders the role of the repetitions in the secondary theme area of the sonata form. Chapter 4 deals with how vocal music brings the listener’s attention to the musical temporality at important cycle-making moments by scrutinizing the changing relation between the text and music at the thematic return. Chapter 5 discusses how Schubert’s codas invite listeners to look back on the past trajectory through their repetitive structures. Ultimately, this thesis will propose that the various temporalities embedded in Schubert’s musical form serve as a hermeneutic window through which the meanings of his late music are engendered.