Franz Schubert composed this sonata in October 1826, the year in which he completed his Great C-major Symphony and his dark and brooding G major string quartet.
He was already ill, and much of his music from the last two years of his life is melancholy and full of thoughts of death. This sonata, however, is relatively tranquil in mood throughout, although with some darker passages.
Schubert’s publisher Tobias Haslinger gave the first movement, which is in sonata form, the title ‘Fantasie’, and the nickname has stuck to the whole sonata. Haslinger seems to have wished to present the four movements as separate pieces, but there is no doubt that Schubert intended them to form a unified sonata.
Schubert dedicated the sonata to his friend Josef Ritter von Spaun, an Austrian nobleman who was Schubert’s generous patron and the host of several of the Schubertiade gatherings at which the composer played his music to friends and admirers.
Here is pianist Alfred Brendel to play this sad but wonderful music for you:
