One can hardly find sadder or more beautiful music than these measures, or than the lovely first theme; and yet the movement is strangely without form and void. The andante which follows it is overdrawn. The repetitions of the sections in A major might have been omitted to better effect; but there is no looseness of structure. The music is unspeakably sad, with the sadness of the songs of the _Winterreise_. The scherzo is flawless, the final rondo long but well sustained. Yet, by reason of the aimlessness of long measures in the first movement, the sonata as a whole is like a condemned building. And in this sonata, too, there is an intensity of mood that, except for the last movement, should succeed in welding the whole group together. Even the last movement is not entirely independent. What is most lamentable in all this is that Schubert poured much of his most inspired music into the sonatas. Little of his music presents more intrinsically beautiful material. In no other of his pianoforte pieces did he show such a wide and varied control of the technical possibilities of the instrument. Yet all would seem to be of little or no avail. Many of the most precious of his poetic fancies lie buried in these imperfect works. Though Schubert was not a virtuoso, he displayed instinct for and ingenuity in devising pianoforte effects. In the huge ‘Wanderer Fantasy,’ opus 15, he seems to have set himself the task of awakening the greatest possible resonance of the instrument. The big chords and arpeggios in the first movement are not, however, overpoweringly effective. The variations in the second are more successful. They certainly look impressive on the printed page, and the sound of the climax is gigantic. But the stupendous is not natural to Schubert on the whole. He is more of a poet than a virtuoso. The first movement and the scherzo of the sonata in D major, opus 53, are big in effect. The spacing and rhythm in the _piu lento_ section of the first movement has been pointed out by Heuberger as significant. The vigorous first subject of the scherzo can make the piano ring. But in general Schubert shows at his best as regards pianoforte writing in more delicate measures, and in brilliant rather than massive and sonorous effects. The last movement of the sonata in A major, opus 120, is a good example of a piquant style of which he was master. Here the long scales terminating in chords high up on the keyboard are quite dazzling.