Schubert: Quartettsatz in C minor, D. 703
Franz Schubert’s Quartettsatz (Quartet Movement) in C minor, D. 703 was the composer’s first foray into the string quartet genre since his E major Quartet four years earlier. Written in 1820, the movement represents a fragment of a projected quartet that extended 41 bars into a second movement before being left unfinished for unknown reasons. The completed first movement offers a foretaste of Schubert’s mature style, which would give birth to three complete, late quartets in the coming years. The present movement deals in promises of hope, short-lived, dangling carrots that fool us into turning a blind eye to the dark, C minor clouds of Fate. The music opens practically themeless, a mess of uneasy, quivering sixteenth notes without preamble, seeming to have begun in the middle of things — as if our fate has already been predetermined. The graspless quality of the beginning and the searching triplets that follow makes the quick pivot to A-flat major and the stability of its triadic, tuneful theme all the more comforting. The violin whistles its carefree tune atop chugging triplets long enough to forget the anxiety of the opening, until the jolting interruption of the rehabilitated sixteenth notes. Schubert continues to tease the possibility of a happy ending, especially when the major mode universe returns first after the development, seeming for a moment to have skirted the threat of C minor. Not so in the Quartettsatz; the violins and viola have just optimistically evaporated into C major when Schubert drops in the sinister opening material for the finishing blow.
© Graeme Steele Johnson for Chamber Music Northwest
Franz Schubert’s Quartettsatz (Quartet Movement) in C minor, D. 703 was the composer’s first foray into the string quartet genre since his E major Quartet four years earlier. Written in 1820, the movement represents a fragment of a projected quartet that extended 41 bars into a second movement before being left unfinished for unknown reasons. The completed first movement offers a foretaste of Schubert’s mature style, which would give birth to three complete, late quartets in the coming years. The present movement deals in promises of hope, short-lived, dangling carrots that fool us into turning a blind eye to the dark, C minor clouds of Fate. The music opens practically themeless, a mess of uneasy, quivering sixteenth notes without preamble, seeming to have begun in the middle of things — as if our fate has already been predetermined. The graspless quality of the beginning and the searching triplets that follow makes the quick pivot to A-flat major and the stability of its triadic, tuneful theme all the more comforting. The violin whistles its carefree tune atop chugging triplets long enough to forget the anxiety of the opening, until the jolting interruption of the rehabilitated sixteenth notes. Schubert continues to tease the possibility of a happy ending, especially when the major mode universe returns first after the development, seeming for a moment to have skirted the threat of C minor. Not so in the Quartettsatz; the violins and viola have just optimistically evaporated into C major when Schubert drops in the sinister opening material for the finishing blow.
© Graeme Steele Johnson for Chamber Music Northwest