The Characteristics Of Schubert’s Piano Sonatas

According to analyzing and concluding on the deep and extensive study of tempo, the form of the movement and theme, the characteristics of the theme, the scope of the theme, the source and the relationship of the theme, the keys, the harmony and the method of development, this paper takes Schubert’s 20 piano sonatas as the research objects and tries to summarize respectively the characteristics of each movement and draws some conclusions of them all.On the basis of the analysis of the scores, the author makes conclusions about the characteristics of Schubert’s 20 Piano sonatas as followings:1. All movements adopt moderate tempo;2.Schubert widens the form of the piano sonata compared with Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven;3. "Direct development" is the most significant feature in the structure of Schubert piano sonata. The main-theme group and the sub-theme group frequently adopt aba form or the re-presentations of the theme to "direct development", under the influence of which, the development is usually of smaller scale and the recapitulation is usually compressed and refined the theme;4. The themes of the main-theme are usually lyrical ones, thus, the sub-theme are usually lyrical too. They are usually complementary and have the relationship with each other. The themes of slow movements are frequently contrasted;5. Schubert favors Augmented 6 chord and Neapolitan 6 chord, transfers freely between Major and minor, uses a lot of chromatic scaled to create the colorful tone;6. Schubert’s three keys expositions are unique and follow the rule of from tonic to dominant adding the new key or new theme to expand process of tonic to dominant;7. Variation and spinning out the theme is featured in Schubert’s way of development;8.The composers after Schubert were influenced to a certain extent by his employment of cycle element and putting of melody under pedal point;...