Piano Sonata in A minor, D 784 (Schubert)
Franz Schubert's Piano Sonata in A minor, D 784 (posthumously published as Op. 143), is one of Schubert's major compositions for the piano. Schubert composed the work in February 1823, perhaps as a response to his illness the year before. It was however not published until 1839, eleven years after his death. It was given the opus number 143 and a dedication to Felix Mendelssohn by its publishers. The D 784 sonata, Schubert's last to be in three movements, is seen by many to herald a new era in Schubert's output for the piano, and to be a profound and sometimes almost obsessively tragic work. Structure I. Allegro giusto This movement, in the tonic key of A minor, employs a new, sparse piano texture not found in Schubert's previous works: indeed, over one-fifth of the movement is in bare octaves. Additionally, Schubert also offers a new method of temporal organization to the movement (its tempo and rhythm), and he very unusually does not use much modulation. The first subject's half-note rhythm, with some dotted notes, is related to the first subject of the D 625 sonata. The "sigh motive" first encountered in bars 2 and 4, (with an accented first