Sonata in A minor for Arpeggione and Piano, D.821(1824)
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| Arpeggione |
The arpeggione was a very short-lived instrument invented by the Austrian luthier Johann Georg Stauffer. He had received, together with Johann Ertl, an imperial commission to improve the guitar. In 1823, Stauffer built his Arpeggione, a sort of hybrid between a guitar and a cello. The first models resembled more a guitar with similar shape of the body and of the sound holes, but a few years later the instrument morphed into something closer to the cello (like the one shown at the Metropolitan Museum in New York). The Arpeggione is a six-stringed instrument, fretted and tuned like a guitar (E-A-D-G-B-E), but bowed like a cello and without an endpin, thus held between the knees. A few original instruments have survived and one can be found at the Metropolitan Museum in New York.
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| Met Museum - Arpeggione |
The sound was quite gentle and couldn't therefore compete with the other louder string instruments. The instrument was quickly forgotten and not much literature for it survived, other than Schubert's masterpiece.
The Sonata, written in 1824, is dedicated to Vincenz Schuster, a virtuoso of the instrument who commissioned the piece to Schubert. After Schubert's death, the Sonata was forgotten until 1871 when it was printed but in a transcription for cello, being by then the arpeggione already a forgotten instrument. Today it is performed usually on either the viola or the cello.
The Sonata is in three movements, with the second, a beautiful short Adagio, flowing into the Allegretto with a small cadenza.
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