Schubert's Arpeggione Sonata and the "Super Arpeggio"

Author(s): Karl Geiringer

Source: The Musical Quarterly , Oct., 1979, Vol. 65, No. 4 (Oct., 1979), pp. 513-523
Published by: Oxford University Press

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 Schubert's Arpeggione Sonata
and the "Super Arpeggio"
KARL GEIRINGER

IN November, 1824, Franz Schubert composed a Son

peggione and Piano-Forte (D. 821). The autograph of
(see pl.) is rather hastily written, makes frequent use of ab
and contains a number of subsequent corrections as well
teristic erasure.' Yet, there are no major changes in the
the manuscript is legible and unambiguous. For a long
whereabouts of this autograph was unknown. After it w
off in Berlin,2 Eusebius Mandyczewski, the main edito
Schubert Collected Edition, certified its authenticity i
it was then acquired by Charles Malherbe, the famous
lector in Paris, who bequeathed it to the Bibliotheque d
toire.3 Today, it is housed in the Bibliotheque Nationale
This essay is an enlarged and revised version of a paper read at a
the American Musicological Society, held in Minneapolis, Minnesota,
incorporates information from an earlier article of mine: "Die Bogen-
berts 'Arpeggione')" in Schubert-Gabe der Osterreichischen Gitarre-Zeit
1928). Valuable advice on technical matters was kindly provided by
tuoso Turan Kamal. Dr. Otto Biba, Archivdirektor of the Gesellschaft der Musik-
freunde, Vienna, was most helpful in assembling the necessary source material. The
Bibliothcque Nationale, Paris, supplied a photographic reproduction of the autograph
of Schubert's Sonata. The suggestion to investigate the Arpeggione problem was made
to me long ago by the late Otto Erich Deutsch.

1 See below, p. 514.

2 See Georg Kinsky, Musikhistorisches Museum von Wilhelm Heyer in C61n,
Zupf- und Streichinstrumente II (Leipzig, 1912), 175/2.
3 The autograph contains at the beginning on a separate page in Mandyczewski's
handwriting the remark: "Die Echtheit dieses Autographs bestaitigt E. Mandyczewski,
Wien 22. Februar 1898." Rubber stamps with "CHARLES MALHERBE" and "CON-
SERVATOIRE Na~ DE MUSIQUE * PARIS" are to be found throughout the manu-
script.

513

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 4:i':i

E5:

I _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
-Sit

.4' Q-il/

First page of Autograph of Schubert's Arpeggione Sonata. Bibliotheque N

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 Schubert's Arpeggione Sonata 515

The Sonata remained in limbo for several decades, sharing

fate of many highly valuable Schubert compositions. The very
"arpeggione" was virtually unknown during the second and
quarters of the last century. Strangely enough, various refe
books do not mention the term.4 Even the Schubert biog
Kreissle von Hellborn was perplexed by this term and in
offered the theory that the arpeggione was a small harp.5 Appar
he had never seen the Sonata, which clearly prescribes chang
tween pizzicato and arco. The earliest reference to the instr
seems to have been made in the first edition of Grove's Dicti
of Music and Musicians, published in 1879. Nevertheless Jac
Dictionnaire des instruments de musique of 1886 still ignore
existence.

The information contained in Grove's was obviously based on

the first publication of the Sonata in 1871. J. P. Gotthard in Vienna
printed the work from a manuscript copy preserved in the Spaun
Collection of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna. Gott-
hard's edition, which contained a valuable preface that serve
the basis for all later references to the Sonata and the arpeggio
states that "arpeggione," "guitarre-violoncell," "Bogen-guitarre,"
"guitarre d'amour" are different names for the same instrum
which was invented in Vienna by G. Staufer in 1823. The pref
further states that the Sonata, soon after its composition, was
formed in public by Vincenz Schuster who also contributed a tu
on how to play the instrument.
Although the term "arpeggione" had been generally unknow
until the publication of this preface, the other designations w
quite familiar. They referred to instruments which were q
popular in Central Europe during the 1820s. The A llgemeine Mu
alische Zeitung6 in Leipzig and the newly founded Ciicilia7 in M
devoted comprehensive articles to Staufer's invention, and the
lishing house of Diabelli in Vienna printed Schuster's Anleit

4 Thus, for instance, Wilhelm Schneider's Historisch- Technische Beschreib

der Musikalischen Instrumente (Leipzig, 1834) does not mention it. Nor is it
in the music encyclopedias of Schilling (1835-36), Gassner (1849), Bernsdorf (1
Birnbach (1861), and Mendel (1874).
5 See his Franz Schubert, 2nd ed. (Vienna, 1865), pp. 325, 566, 614.
SXXV/18 (1823), col. 280.
71 (1824), 168.

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516 The Musical Quarterly

zur Erlernung des ... neu erfundenen Guitarre-Violon

editions.8

The idea of a "bowed guitar" or "guitarre-violoncell" was certain-

ly not a new one; the dividing line between bowed and plucked
instruments had always been thin and often completely ignored.
There were plucked vielles in the Middle Ages, and even today a
guitar is called a "Zupfgeige" (plucked fiddle) in Germany. On the
other hand, there were bowed lutes during the Renaissance, and the
method of tuning the members of the viola da gamba family was
derived from that of the lute. And the pizzicato which is used in
playing bowed string instruments is likewise a result of this tradi-
tional ambiguity.
Thus it was by no means a revolutionary idea when early in the
nineteenth century - a period of great invention in the field of
musical instruments - French violin makers, under the leadership
of the brilliant Francois Chanot, constructed violins, violas, and
cellos which adopted the gently curving body of the guitar. The
traditional division of the instrument's body into upper, middle
and lower bouts, separated by distinctive corners, was considered
unfavorable to their sound quality and was discarded. Vienna, which
had been a center of guitar playing for some time, eagerly adopted
this idea and started to manufacture bowed guitars with six strings
that were tuned like those of a guitar in E A d g b e'. Music for
these instruments was generally notated in the treble clef, an octave
higher than it sounded, but occasionally in the bass clef without
transposition. The instrument, equipped with twenty-four fixed frets
which were eventually replaced by lines on the curved fingerboard,
was larger than a guitar, but smaller than a cello, and was held be-
tween the knees of the player. Various Viennese manufacturers such
as J. Ertl and P. Teufelsdorfer made these instruments,9 but the
main contributor was apparently J. G. Staufer.'o Their idea was
to provide new opportunities for guitar players and at the same
time to furnish to devotees of the old viola da gamba a more effi-
cient replacement for that obsolete instrument. Some instrument

8 The price of the first was 1 fl., that of the .second 1 fl. 15 x, a sign of the in-
flation rampant in Austria at that time.
9 See Mendel's Musikalisches Conversationslexikon, art. "Guitarre d'amour"; and
Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung, XXV/38, col. 626.
10 All the sources seem to agree on this fact.

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 Schubert's Arpeggione Sonata 517

makers, possibly to win over a larger number of players of cello

gambas, no longer made their instruments according to the p
of Chanot, but returned to the ordinary tripartite body
"guitarre-violoncells" were simply somewhat smaller, frette
stringed cellos. The hopes of the manufacturers were only p
fulfilled. The guitarist Vincenz Schuster" and the cellist
Birnbachl2 were two virtuosos who worked assiduously to
larize the instrument. However, most guitar players were app
not tempted to change to the bowed variety, and the numb
viola da gamba aficionados was very limited in the nineteenth
tury. Thus, after an existence of hardly more than a decade
instrument disappeared from the musical scene. We are for
in possessing specimens which have survived in the Leipzig, B
and Salzburg collections of ancient musical instruments.13
Apparently the only valuable outcome of this short-lived e
ment was the creation of Schubert's Sonata. However, we cannot
help wondering why Schubert's string instrument was given the
quite unusual name of arpeggione and not one of the current desig-
nations.

In a paperl4 delivered in June, 1978, at the Schubert Congres

in Vienna, Dr. Veronika Gutmann suggested that the sound o
11 The firm of Diabelli also published a composition by Schuster, Potpourri pou
le Pianoforte et Guitarre (No. 2783). Dr. Otto Biba kindly drew my attention t
number of concert programs preserved in the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vien
which show that Schuster had made a concert tour through Southern cities like Ma
bor, Trieste, and Venice in the years 1810 and 1811. In these concerts, Schuster acco
panied, on the guitar, the flutist Anton Heberles. We also know that the artist pe
formed around 1820 in the house of the Viennese patrician Joseph Sonnleithner. S
Rezensionen und Mitteilungen iiber Theater, Musik . . . VIII/24, 374.
12 Birnbach (1782-1840) was a respected cellist who later became a guitarist
The bowed guitar therefore attracted his special interest. He performed on the
instrument first in Vienna and then from 1826 in Berlin (See Carl Ledebur, Ton-
kiinstlerlexikon Berlins von den liltesten Zeiten bis auf die Gegenwart [Berlin, 1860-
61]). W. Schneider (loc. cit., p. 87) even ascribes the invention of the "guitarre
d'amour" to Birnbach, a statement quickly refuted by Schilling (loc. cit.)
13 This instrument is at present preserved in Leipzig. The Berlin Instrumenten-
museum owns as its No. 4678 an instrument attributed to Staufer's pupil Anton Mitteis,
who was active in Vienna and Leitmeritz. Schubert's Sonata was recently recorded on
this instrument (see nn. 21 and 22). A third guitarre-violoncell was built by Roboty
Tomasza in Krakow, in 1828. It is today kept in the Salzburg Museum (No. 102).
See K. Geiringer Alte Musikinstrumente im Museum Carolino Augusteum (Leipzig,
1932), p. 21.
14 "Arpeggione - Begriff oder Instrument?"

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518 The Musical Quarterly

broken chords, in which single notes played one a

several strings (see Ex. 1) produce a kind of arpeggi
be responsible for the name used by Schubert. Th
have some merit, but the fact cannot be overlooked that similar
broken chords also appear with a certain regularity in the violin
and other string instrument parts of this composer. In the following
analysis, I will suggest another approach to the problem.

Exi
/60-61 1 " . . .

I/117-21

'"dim .

UM/260-262

m/335-341

The arpeggione part of the Sonata contains a small number of

four- and five-part accords that are found at strategic points: at the
end of the first and last movements and at the end of the first move-
ment's exposition. It is also important to consider that Schubert
chose the key of A minor, which is particularly well suited for an
instrument with one string tuned in the tonic of A minor, two in its
dominant, and one in the subdominant.
Schubert made full use of these favorable conditions. He em-
ployed in every one of the end chords at least one open string, in
some of these chords, two, and in three chords as many as three
open strings. However, a peculiarity of these chords is that in most
cases the open strings can only be sounded if one or two strings
lying between the notes are skipped.
It is a well-known fact that in an accord of four notes played on
a bowed instrument, the individual notes can only be sounded in

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 Schubert's Arpeggione Sonata 519

quick succession and not simultaneously. An arpeggio effect

inevitable. But in this Sonata, Schubert takes one additiona
in the same direction: he prescribes some four- and five-part ac
which require for their realization a kind of "super arpeggio
In Example 2, seven of the chords in question are reprodu
analyzed. The first four chords are played pizzicato, the la
are played arco. The empty circles represent the open string
sounded in each case; the filled black notes represent those
which are produced by shortening the strings with the fin
the left hand. The asterisks indicate the position of tho
strings located between the notes of Schubert's accord, but
be sounded.

Ex.2 I/71a I/71b,72a I/72a I/72b 1/204 1/205 M11/476

A- -A

The very
to the per
chord look
fact that
open strin
player. It w
on the A
procedure
the botto
aforement
Nothing
chord I/7
major cho
the lowest
skipping t
15 A strange
72, prima vo
a high g' abo
makes the c
on the same
the high g' a
16 In the on
E-major cho
Terzetto for

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520 The Musical Quarterly

The player who fails to avail himself of this oppor

forms the whole chord in a higher position on the fiv
of the instrument, of course, loses the chance of s
open strings at the top of the chord. Most likely
contradicted Schubert's intentions.

At the end of the exposition, the autograph of the Sonata re-

veals a conspicuous erasure in measure I/72b. Apparently, Schuber
did not want to repeat the bland C-major chord for the fourth time.
(He had previously used it in mm. 71b and 72a of prima volta, an
in 72a of seconda volta.) He therefore replaced it with a dominant
seventh chord c bb c' el which, by skipping the open string d, aga
allows for the use of the "super arpeggio."
Of particular interest are the final chords of the first movement
(mm. 1/204 and 1/205). The avoidance of open strings and thus th
production of "super arpeggios" seem to be here prescribed by Sch
bert himself. In the autograph, the bass notes of the two chords
assigned to the arpeggione, have a stem pointing downward whil
the remaining three notes are attached to a stem pointing upward
Thus Schubert clearly indicated that the two bass notes were
separated from the rest of the chord. In the E-major chord, two
strings (A and d) have to be skipped, in the A-minor chord only
the d string. Unfortunately, both the editors of the old and the new
Collected Editions of Schubert's works failed to understand the
significance of these precepts. They tied all the notes of each chord
to a single stem, thus making it very difficult for the performers to
comprehend Schubert's wishes.
In the last two measures of the finale, there is an A-major chord
(111/476) which can easily be played on five adjoining strings. Schu-
bert used it twice; once in fortissimo and immediately afterwards in
piano. The second time he prescribed even the arpeggio in the tradi-
tional manner with the help of a wavy line preceding the notes of the
chord. He wanted to prevent the player from pulling the bow too
rapidly over the strings and thus destroying the delicate effect he
had in mind for the conclusion.

of his father on September 27, 1813. Interestingly enough, the note B, so conspicu-
ously absent from the accords in the Sonata, is carefully inserted in the chords
written by the sixteen-year-old composer. A new edition of the Terzetto was edited
by Karl Scheit, together with a facsimile of the autograph in the collection Gitarre
Kammermusik (Vienna, 1960). Professor Karl Tritzmiiller of Vienna kindly drew my
attention to this publication.

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 Schubert's Arpeggione Sonata 521

Since it seems obvious that Schubert included in this Sonata

several four- and five-note chords in which the bass is separated f
the rest of the notes by one or two strings which are not sounded
we must ask ourselves: how are these peculiar "super-arpeg
actually executed? Possibly the performer put a little more em
on the bass note by plucking the string somewhat harder or by p
ing extra pressure on the bow. The respective string, which in
case sounds the root of the chord, would then reverberate som
stronger and longer, thus partly bridging the tiny interval of
before the next-sounding string is reached. It might also be po
to "up-bow" the bass note, and to "down-bow" the rest of the cho
In any case, the "super arpeggio" is bound to provide extra em
sis on the chords and perhaps also slightly retard them. This w
seem quite appropriate in view of the strategic position of th
chords in Schubert's Sonata.
Considering the various kinds of arpeggio Schubert's composi-
tion favored, the name "arpeggione" for the instrument on which
the Sonata was to be played seems to be justified. That Schubert
himself invented the term seems doubtful. We have no indication
that he gave fanciful names to the instruments he composed fo
More likely, a Viennese instrument maker, eager to show his ind
pendence from the inventions of his colleagues, was responsible f
it. The flat statement of the preface to the first edition of the Sona
that the terms "arpeggione," "guitarre-violoncell," "Bogen-guitarr
and "guitarre d'amour" had identical meaning need not be tak
too literally. After all, this assertion was made almost half a century
after the composition of Schubert's Sonata, at a time when all pe
sons concerned with it were dead and when the arpeggione h
disappeared from the musical scene. We know that bowed guita
were made in guitar or cello form, with solid frets or frets mere
drawn on the fingerboard, and that various names were given t
the new instrument. Are we not accordingly justified in assumin
that the arpeggione also differed, at least in small details, from othe

17 The three-note chords in 1/145 and 1/146 were not included in our investi
tion. Neither chords which consist of only three notes nor chords which have mer
the length of an eighth note (in tempo Allegro moderato) are suitable to sound
"super-arpeggio." Since substantial stretching and reaching of a high position
necessary to perform these chords, Schubert facilitated the technical aspect by hav
each chord preceded by an eighth rest.
18 This was suggested by Professor Boris Schwarz.

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522 The Musical Quarterly

types of the instrument? Perhaps its bridge and fi

constructed in such a way as to facilitate the producti
and of the "super arpeggio" in particular.
No doubt the makers of the new instrument ex
achievements from it than it actually delivered. T
boast of its great facility in the execution of pass
thirds and of chromatic runs19 and Schuster's tutor r
claim in its introduction. However, its numerous m
contain no such bravura passages, and they are miss
Sonata. Likewise, contemporary sources state that "
instrument is of magic beauty resembling in the h
sound of an oboe, in the lower one that of a bassethorn."20 This
contention can easily be put to the test since Schubert's Sonata was
recently recorded by Klaus Storck and Alfons Kontarsky.21 Mr. Storck
uses the guitar-shaped instrument of the Berlin Collection, attributed
to Staufer's pupil Anton Mitteis, a bowed guitar with a small but
pleasant sound, which would hardly qualify, however, for the en-
thusiastic designation of "magic beauty."22
The music of Schubert's Sonata is too valuable to be heard only
occasionally when a specialist has an opportunity to perform it and
when one of the rare instruments that have survived is at hand. We
are therefore justified in availing ourselves of the alternatives already
suggested by the editor of the first edition when he indicated on
the title page, "Sonate fiir Arpeggione oder Violoncello," adding,
moreover, that a separate violin part was also available.23 It is obvious
that in such an arrangement the arpeggione part must be adapted to
the special requirements of instruments equipped with only four

19 See Cdcilia, loc. cit.

20 "Der Klang des Instrumentes [ist] bezaubernd sch6n . .. in der Hohe dem
Oboentone, tieferhin dem Bassetthorn ihnlich." (Cdcilia, loc. cit.; similarly in All-
gemeine Musikalische Zeitung, loc. cit.)
21 Archive Production No. 253388 175 of 1974.
22 In the recording, the "super arpeggio" can only be heard in the final measures
of the first movement. In the pizzicato chords 1/71 and 72, the notes of the string
instrument are covered up by the loudly played chords of the clavier so that no
technical details can be observed. Mr. Storck plays the very last arpeggio of the
sonata pizzicato, although the autograph prescribes arco.
23 The autograph of the Sonata is likewise accompanied by a violin part in the
hand of a copyist. Cf. H. Wirth in the new Schubert Collected Edition, VI/8, IX f.;
and 0. E. Deutsch, Schubert Catalog, 2nd German ed. (Kassel, 1978), pp. 516-17.

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 Schubert's Arpeggione Sonata 523

strings and tuned in fifths. A skillful editor cannot only cop

this problem, but he might even manage to preserve some o
flavor of Schubert's "super-arpeggio" effect.24

24 The Canadian double bass virtuoso Gary Karr has even made a succ
attempt to interpret the arpeggione part on his instrument.

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