Is it the lure of the unknown or the need to run away from something
that prompts the Romantic ‘Wanderer’ to roam the world without any
precise aim? If ever he encounters happiness where he is, his solitary
itinerary nevertheless retains an initiatory quality. The lieder of
Franz Schubert, here transcribed
for cello and piano, explore all the nuances of this inner quest, in
which a journey both painful and comforting finally leads to
tranquillity and a sort of transcendence.
In November 1824 Franz Schubert composed
a sonata in A minor (D821) specifically
intended for performance on the arpeggione,
a stringed instrument that enjoyed no more
than an ephemeral existence. Patented in 1823
by Johann Georg Stauffer (1778–1853), one
of the most important Viennese luthiers of the
early nineteenth century, the arpeggione (also
known as ‘guitarre d’amour’ at the time) offered
a compromise between the guitar and the cello.
While retaining several features of the guitar –
the six strings and their tuning, the neck with its
twenty-two frets for positioning the fingers and
the smoothly contoured body – it was played like
the cello, between the knees, with the vibration
of the strings produced by a bow. Today there
are no more than a dozen arpeggiones in the
world (either originals or copies); the timbre of these instruments was very close to that of the
nineteenth-century cello and to the viola, less
rounded and warm than the modern cello, but
richer in upper harmonics.
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