SCHUBERT – The Arpeggione ‘Cello Quartet’, D.821 – SOLOIST CELLO AND THREE OTHER CELLOS

Other Identification:
The Arpeggione (also known as the “Guitarre d’amour”) was a bowed instrument with six strings somewhat mixing together a guitar and a cello, and invented by the Viennese guitar-maker Johann Georg Stauffer (1778-1853) in probably 1823.

Schubert composed the now famous “Arpeggione” Sonata in A minor in November 1824 shortly after returning from Zseliz, where he had spent his second summer (the first one being in 1818) teaching music to the Count of Esterházy’s two daughters. By then he was a composer of full maturity. However, the arpeggione became obsolete after about 10 years, long before Schubert’s sonata was even first published in 1871. However, today the arpeggione is receiving somewhat of a revival (for example, see the notes about the dedicatee of the Johnstone ‘quartet’ version!).

The three-movement Sonata (duration almost 25 mins) must be altered somewhat if it is to be played on modern cello or viola or double bass: the arpeggione possessed six strings, tuned to the same pitches as a guitar’s, and the resulting extended range can cause problems when the piece is transcribed. Therefore in most editions, certain portions of the piece are transposed up or down an octave from their original position to avoid the extreme registers. However, Schubert by and large avoided the kind of idiosyncratic guitar-like arpeggiations that earned the original instrument its nickname, focusing instead on the same focused lyricism that drives a traditional sonata for string instrument and piano; in this way, the work readily adapts to modern performance, especially on cello.