ABSTRACT
The starting-point for the first part of this enquiry could be Leonard Ratner's proposition that thematic statements clarify and give profile to their respective keys'. The tonal profile of Schubert's second themes in the sonata form first movements of his late piano and chamber works is overwhelmingly of the unsettled' type, developed to a fine art. In the intervening sections of the song, Schubert responds to the elaboration of the wanderer's state that unfolds in the poem. The symptoms of their condition' to be examined here are manifested primarily in their tonal profile: they concern especially the status of a theme's notional key, and the significance of the keys to which it may be drawn away from that starting-point. By comparison with their second themes, the opening themes of Schubert's sonata form movements can be said generally to be more firmly rooted in their appointed tonic key.
