Allegro ma non troppo
Andante
Menuetto – Allegretto – Trio
Allegro moderato

Schubert finished his Octet on 1 March 1824 and the A minor Quartet was completed just a few days later. By the end of the same month he had not only written a handful of songs but also the ‘Death and the Maiden’ Quartet. In the space of little more than a month, he had composed three chamber music masterpieces, each of them highly distinctive. The A minor Quartet was given its first performance at the Musikverein in Vienna, played by the Schuppanzigh Quartet which went on the following year to give the premieres of Beethoven’s Op.127, Op.130 and Op.132 quartets. Most of Schubert’s chamber music (including ‘Death and the Maiden’) was only published after his death, but the A minor Quartet – optimistically billed as the first in a set of three – was published by Sauer & Leidesdorf in September 1824, with a dedication from Schubert ‘to his friend Schuppanzigh’.

For much of the time, the mood of this quartet is one of almost numbing melancholy. The first movement opens with a bleak accompaniment figure, the cello introducing a tremulous rhythm, over which the first violin enters with a drooping melody of infinite sadness. This sets the tone for much of what follows. The slow movement is a reworking of one of the entr’actes from Schubert’s Rosamunde music, giving the quartet its nickname. The wraith-like Minuet also draws on an earlier source, the song Der Götter Griechenlands D677, composed in 1819 and setting the words: ‘Schöne Welt, wo bist du?’ – ‘Beautiful world, where are you?’ The mood of quiet restraint is even maintained in the finale but here the clouds seem to lift, at least for a moment, and the music ends with a strong cadence in A major.

Nigel Simeone