This is bare music. The passage is so short that it hardly mars the movement seriously, but unhappily other movements are nearly destroyed by the weakness at which this one hints. For example, the first movement of a sonata in A minor, opus 143, which contains themes that are truly inspired, breaks hopelessly adrift in the development section. The section is fatally long, too. And what does it offer to hold our interest? Only measure after measure of an unvaried dotted rhythm, for the most part in the right hand over chords which may be beautiful but are seemingly without any aim. Schubert either does not know what to do or he is utterly lost in dreaming. This is real tragedy in music, the ruin of most beautiful ideas by a fatal weakness. The opening theme promises even more than that of the earlier sonata in the same key. It is most mysterious, most suggestive, the very best of Schubert. And the second theme is of unearthly beauty. But in this weak movement both are lost, both thrown away. The whole sonata suffers in consequence. The andante is not especially noteworthy, but the scherzo is a masterpiece, not only of expression, but of workmanship; and so is the final rondo. Similarly, the sonata in B-flat major, written not long before he died, falls into a heap of ruins. The first theme of the first movement is matchless in beauty. Schubert is loth to leave it, we are loth to have it go. A strange melody in F-sharp minor does for a second theme, and this simply rambles on through sudden changes of harmony until it reaches the key of F major, only to give way to measure after measure of equally aimless wandering, with only figures to save the music from amorphousness. Note then a closing theme of perfect beauty! Play it with all tenderness, with all the delicate suggestion you can put into it, and still even this first section of the music is long and overbalanced. There is a wealth of poetry in it, even a great depth of feeling and a heart-moving sadness. It seems a sacrilege to decry it; yet there it stands, frustrate. The development section is what one would expect, weak in structure. Yet the second part of it is strangely moving, from the establishment of the key of D minor to the return of the first theme. The life of the music seems held in suspense. There is only a steady hushed tapping of triads, measure after measure, swaying from D minor to F major and ever back again, with reminiscences of the rambling measures in F major of the first section, floating here and there like mist in a dull rain. Strains of the first theme drift by, there are low muffled trills on D. Finally, the tapping ceases, as rain might cease; a quiet scale, like drops from the branches of some wet tree, falls to a low trill, and, after a silence, the first theme comes back into the music.