s mentioned previously, Schubert's sonata survives today as a living piece of music almost exclusively in the form of transcriptions due to the failure of the instrument for which it was written. Among stringed instruments, the cello incorporates the piece into its repertoire most successfully based on the similarities of size and range to the arpeggione. However, the piece poses difficulties for cellists because the arpeggione possessed a slightly greater range across the open strings and utilized a different tuning system. For double bassists, whose repertoire consists of a large number of pieces adapted from cello literature, the problems of a smaller range across the open strings coupled with a different tuning system are familiar. For the most part, the issues of how cellists have grappled with the problems of adapting the sonata for their instrument will be left aside except for where I believe adaptations for double bass have been influenced, making them in essence transcriptions of adaptations for cello. The primary goal of this article is to focus on the original score as written by Schubert with the arpeggione in mind and to offer some observations on how the piece might be successfully adapted for performance on the double bass.

When comparing the arpeggione to the modern double bass with the idea of transcribing Schubert's sonata, some encouraging similarities and troublesome differences immediately appear. The register of the double bass, even for the most ambitious soloist, falls well below what Schubert wrote for the arpeggione, rendering an at-pitch transcription unrealistic.

Double bass: An ambitious range extending three octaves above the top string (solo tuning one step higher)	Arpeggione: A range extending two octaves above the top string (the range used in Schubert's sonata)
Figure 2. Showing the difference in ranges of the double bass and arpeggione—sounding pitches.

While acknowledging the difference in registers, the most striking similarity between the double bass and the arpeggione, and the one that is at the heart of this reevaluation of Schubert's sonata, is the tuning of the two instruments. The modern double bass in orchestral tuning is identical to the lowest four strings of the arpeggione. The following section examines details of the sonata, showing how Schubert crafted it with the unique tuning of the arpeggione in mind and how the passages written for an instrument tuned primarily in fourths can be performed successfully on the double bass.

After determining whether or not a particular transcription can be rendered at pitch, an octave lower, or in a different key from the original altogether, the next most important factor, and one with a potentially greater impact on the result, is the choice between orchestral and solo tuning. In the case of the "Arpeggione" Sonata, the decision is of primary importance because choosing solo tuning means completely abandoning the relationship of the open strings to the structure of the composition and their similarity with the instrument for which the piece was intended in order to gain a few technical crutches, mostly in the form of harmonics in the upper register of the double bass.

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