There may be, in modern music history, no composition that was posthumously put to print in so bizarre a manner as the Piano Sonata No. 6 in E minor, D. 566 that Schubert put to paper during June, 1817. One movement appeared in 1848, another in 1888; the remaining pair of movements didn't appear until after the turn of the twentieth century, and even the publishing dates of these two were separated by over 20 years (1908 and 1929). As a result, the work has never become a real part of the repertoire and even today a score or a recording of the piece is more likely to have just a movement or two (probably just the first movement, the only one contained in the late nineteenth century collected Schubert works edition under the title of the Sonata) than to have the full piece.

It in fact turns out that only two of the Sonata's four movements are certain to belong with the piece anyway; the scherzo movement (in A flat major), published last of the four, is sometimes thought to have been wrongly included. The finale, a rondo published in 1848 (as D. 506) before the existence of the rest of the Sonata was even known, is also still unaccepted by many musicians, but its placement in the Sonata is, if not absolutely certain, at least musically satisfying.

The first movement and the second are the only ones universally acknowledged as parts of the same sonata. The second is an Allegretto in E major, the opening movement a Moderato. Neither of the two are anything that Schubert might have wanted to write home about. The opening thought of the Moderato has a wistfully rising gesture and then a four-bar series of falling sighs; the next phrase includes a fanfare-like dotted rhythm, and the whole of the second theme is block-like, with crashing, virtuosic octaves in the development. The Allegretto fares perhaps a bit better than does the opening movement, but when all is said and done, this little-known item of Schubert's catalog remains an infrequent visitor to concert programs.

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