[75] The date is fixed by a fragment of the autograph found in 1901. See Richard Heuberger: Franz Schubert.
[76] See Max Kalbeck: Johannes Brahms, Vol. II, part 2, p. 442.
[77] Kalbeck has called attention to the resemblance between these two motives and the Erda-motif and the Walhalla-motif in Das Rheingold and Die Walküre.
[78] See William Ritter: Smetana. Paris, 1907.
[79] From the New World.
[80] See Schönberg’s own analysis in Die Musik, June 2, 1907.
[81] Der siebente Ring.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE PIANOFORTE AND OTHER INSTRUMENTS IN CHAMBER MUSIC
The trio—Pianoforte quartets and quintets—Sonatas for violoncello and piano—The piano with wind instruments—Chamber music for wind instruments by the great composers.
The pianoforte has always played an important part in chamber music, if, indeed, the best pianoforte music may not itself be considered chamber music. Few instrumental works were written during the seventeenth century in which the harpsichord was not supposed to furnish a foundation of harmony, or was not expected to contribute more specifically to the texture of the music. The concertos and sonatas of Corelli and Vivaldi, of Bach and Handel, of Couperin and Rameau, of Purcell; all these were founded upon a figured bass, to be played by harpsichord, lute or viol, or contained a part written for the harpsichord. The figured bass gradually dropped out of music as composers gained skill to manage their combinations of instruments sonorously. Out of this skill grew up the orchestra, and, in the realm of chamber music, the string quartet. But meanwhile composers were developing a great technique in writing for the harpsichord, so that it came little by little wholly to supplant the lute, and to win a distinguished, independent place of its own as a solo instrument. There are concertos of Bach and Couperin in which the harpsichord plays almost as brilliant a part as in the modern concerto, and the violin sonatas of Bach are virtually in the style of trios, because the harpsichord is treated always as adding two parts to the one of the violin. Finally, the modern trio really grew up around the harpsichord or the pianoforte.