THE POETICS OF SONATA FORM IN F. SCHUBERT: FROM COMPOSITIONAL PRINCIPLE TO PERFORMANCE EXPERIENCE

Abstract

Purpose of the study. The purpose of this research is to identify the artistic and aesthetic regularities of Schubert’s sonata style as a unique type of musical thinking in which the classical form acquires a new semantic dimension – personal, psychological, and existential. Scientific novelty. The scientific novelty of the study lies in a comprehensive examination of the Sonata in A minor, D. 784 as a key link in the evolution of Romantic sonata form, in which the transition from objective form-creation to a subjective-dramatic type of musical thought is realized. Methodology. The methodological foundation of the research is based on an interdisciplinary synthesis – combining analytical, hermeneutic, phenomenological, and semiotic approaches that allow the musical form to be regarded as a living process of meaning formation. The study employs the structural-analytical method, aimed at identifying the intonational and harmonic patterns of the sonata cycle; the phenomenological method, emphasizing the perception of musical form as the temporal experience of a subject; and hermeneutic analysis, which reveals the symbolic and existential meanings of the musical text. Conclusions. The conducted research allows us to assert that the Sonata in A minor, D. 784 is one of the most significant and exemplary works in Franz Schubert’s piano legacy, embodying the transition from the classical model of sonata form to the Romantic type of musical thinking. Within it, the sonata form loses the traits of external normativity, transforming into a space of spiritual self-expression where compositional logic is subordinated to the inner necessity of sound, and musical time becomes an expression of human existence. Schubert, without destroying the tradition of the Viennese classical school, radically reinterprets it, turning formal principles into the living tissue of psychological and intonational processes. The A minor Sonata demonstrates a rare integrity of the cycle, in which all three movements are united by a system of intonational and tonal interrelations that create a peculiar “polyphony of form”. The echoes of motifs, rhythmic figures, and tonal supports generate the impression of a single sonic organism, in which the memory of each element lives on in subsequent events. Thus, the idea of “the memory of form” is realized – a fundamental principle of Schubert’s musical thinking, built upon the re-experiencing of what has already been heard as a form of inner experience.