hat would compel Schubert to write a sonata—and a substantial one at that—for such an instrument? For a man who spent his entire adult life in dire financial straits, this appears to be a very foolish decision indeed. It is evident, however, that although Schubert was interested in and motivated by commercial success, he was a notoriously bad businessman and an even worse self-promoter. In the midst of the Rossini craze in Vienna, composers during this period came to understand that financial prosperity was no longer tied exclusively to commissions from the aristocracy and the church, and that the rise of the bourgeoisie in Europe had created a new, lucrative opportunity in opera for the masses. Schubert, for his part, made several attempts to break into this scene, but was met with little success. Even though his music consistently received favorable reviews, the overwhelming consensus among critics and audiences alike was that Schubert's operas were ill paced and lacked the most basic elements of compelling drama. Alfonso und Estrella, an opera for which Schubert had particularly high hopes, failed to ignite any excitement among the Viennese at all. Even some of Schubert's closest friends admitted that it was not his best work and discouraged the pursuit:

… the weaknesses of the libretto are apparent. The stage movement is slow and clumsy, and the main action is constantly held up by the pageantry and the pastoralism. There are no minor characters of any importance, so that the action proceeds for the most part in a series of duets. The piece is full of fresh lyrical writing, especially in the love scenes of Act II. But even here it is too static. It seems to be more a succession of musical tableaux than a music drama.8

Schubert met this kind of criticism with open-mouthed astonishment. The opera's librettist, Franz von Schober, was a very close friend of Schubert's and a charismatic, influential member of the bourgeois cluster of artists, writers, and musicians with whom Schubert kept company in Vienna. Schober's charisma, however, did not translate into a talent for dramatic writing, and blame for the opera's failure lies mostly at his door. Loathe to accept the libretto's shortcomings at first, he admitted the following, long after Schubert's death: "… an opera libretto... such a miserable, still-born, bungling piece of work that even so great a genius as Schubert was not able to bring it to life..."9 It is clear that Schubert's devotion as a friend to Schober clouded his own assessment of the opera's virtues, for he continued to believe that Alfonso und Estrella was one of the best works he had written, if not the best.10

The case of Alfonso und Estrella illustrates Schubert's tendency—shared by many composers and artists—to not only express his devotion to his friends and colleagues through his compositions, but also to allow his friendly, sentimental nature to exercise a high degree of influence on the choices that might have made him more financially successful as a composer. With that in mind, and in the absence of more specific information, it seems logical that Schubert's decision to write a sonata for arpeggione and pianoforte must also have been guided by nothing more than a friendly gesture toward the instrument's maker and the enthusiast, Vincenz Schuster, who presumably requested the piece. No evidence suggests that the sonata was a legitimate commission or indicates that Schubert received any remuneration whatsoever from the requesting parties. "One might almost say that Schubert is a composer of Friendship as Bach had been a composer of the Church and Handel a composer of the State."11 Although certainly sweeping in its generalization, this statement by the authors Harman, Milner, and Mellers implies that in order to understand Schubert's modus operandi, one must position his friends and colleagues at the epicenter of his motivation.

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