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thread through the Quartet’s opening pages, and it
makes a dramatic return much later, at the climax of the
development.
As for the finale, it is a much gentler affair than the
whirlwind tarantella that concludes ‘Death and
the Maiden’. There is, perhaps, a hint of the gypsy style
in its theme, with its ‘Hungarian’ grace-notes. They
make a return, transferred from violin to cello, at the
movement’s climax, and again during the closing bars.
The main second idea, like the first, is given out
pianissimo—this time in the style of a distant march.
At the end, the music seems on the point of fading away,
before Schubert appends two peremptory chords to
bring proceedings to an emphatic close after all.
If Schubert’s A minor Quartet is a work pervaded by
an air of melancholy, its companion-piece, the String
Quartet in D Minor D810 (‘Death and the Maiden’),
is one that seems to give vent to despair. The songfragment
on which its slow movement is based, with
its subject of youthful mortality, is one that must have
given Schubert pause for thought; and the quartet as a
whole goes so far as to cast all four of its movements in
the minor—a surfeit of sombreness that will not be
found in any work by Haydn, Mozart or Beethoven. Not
even Tchaikovsky allowed himself to luxuriate in so
much unrelieved tragedy in his ‘Pathétique’ Symphony,
and we have to look instead to Chopin’s ‘Funeral March’
Sonata to find a parallel case. It is true that Schubert’s
variation movement closes with a heart-rending turn to
the major—as do the theme and first two variations
themselves—but the change is one that serves only to
heighten the music’s poignancy.
Indeed, it is the bleakness of the context in which
they appear that makes the two extended major-key
sections of the ‘Death and the Maiden’ Quartet so
moving. Those sections are the slow movement’s fourth
variation, and the trio of the scherzo, and Schubert takes
particular care to bind them together with the material
that surrounds them. The slow movement’s majormode
excursion is joined seamlessly to the ensuing
variation in the minor, which continues the music’s
‘rocking’ motion; while the trio’s accompaniment takes
over the pervasive rhythm of the scherzo. Given the
intensity of the scherzo itself, it is surprising to find that
the opening of its second half quotes from a Ländler
Schubert had written the previous year.
The quartet’s opening movement is characterized by
a continual alternation between tension and relaxation.
The triplet rhythm starkly set forth in its very first bars
runs through the entire piece as a unifying force; but the
main subject also features a calmer continuation—a
chorale-like passage that clearly looks forward to the
sombre theme of the slow movement to come. The main
contrasting theme is a sinuous idea given out by the
violins in mellifluous thirds and sixths, above a ‘rocking’
accompaniment from the two lower instruments. The
central development section combines the rhythmic
elements of both principal subjects, gradually building
up the tension until it spills over into the start of the
recapitulation, where the austere silences of the work’s
beginning are filled in with upward-striving triplets on
the three higher instruments. Towards the end, Schubert
appears to be drawing the piece to an emphatic close,
with a coda in a quicker tempo; but by a stroke of genius
he allows the music to return to its original speed, and
the piece sinks to a pianissimo close, as though all
energy were spent.
For his finale, Schubert provides a tarantella of
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