The Conflict And Fusion Of Romanticism And Classical Form

Schubert,who lived in Vienna,Austria after the French Revolution,was struggling in the harsh social and cultural environment of the time.He admired the classical masters and tried to follow the steps of Haydn,Mozart and Beethoven.The genre of piano sonata was like a “private domain” of his compositional exploration and learning.However,the distinctive romantic spirit of Schubert's music is inconsistent with the classical sonata structure.This article analyzes the compositional characteristics of the first movement of seven piano sonatas by Schubert in his early,middle and late stages respectively,and finds that the first subject changes from dynamics to lyricism,and that the relationships between the first subject and the second subject turn from conflicting opposition to complementary contrast.The blending nature of exposing and narrating of the singing subject increases the scale of the Exposition;the Development replaces the motivational expansion with the variation of the theme,and replaces the open structure with a closed structure which from more perspectives,profoundly expresses the poetic music image instead of the dramatic conflict;the path to the Recapitulation has become a tortuous one.As a whole,the clear structure of the classical segment became blurred and difficult to separate;the tonal harmony with functional dynamics,which was used by classicalism to expand the dramatic process which was an unity of opposites,had become a colorful tonal harmony which depicted personal psychology and created scene and atmosphere.All this also reflects Schubert's efforts to integrate the romantic spirit into the classical form.