Franz Schubert (1797–1828)
String Quartet No. 15 in G major • Five German Dances
Franz Schubert was born in 1797, the son of a Vienna
schoolmaster, and had his education as a chorister of the
Imperial Chapel at the Stadtkonvikt. Both at school and
at home he had an active musical life as a player and as
a composer, and when his voice broke and he was
offered the means to continue his academic education,
he decided, instead, to train as a teacher, thus being able
to devote more time to music. By the age of eighteen he
had joined his father in the schoolroom, while
continuing to compose and to study with the old Court
Kapellmeister Antonio Salieri. In 1816 he moved away
from home, lodging with his new friend, Franz von
Schober, thus released for the moment from the
drudgery of teaching. The following years found him
generally in the company of friends, with an occasional
return to the schoolroom, when necessity dictated,
showing there no great talent or interest in his task.
Schubert’s brief career continued in Vienna and
while there were occasional commissions and some of
his works were published, there was never the
opportunity for the kind of distinguished patronage that
Beethoven had had and still enjoyed, nor the possibility
of an official position in the musical establishment of the
city. It was February 1828 before Schubert was able to
take the risk of a concert devoted to his work, an event
that proved both successful and profitable, but by the
autumn his health had weakened, the consequence of a
venereal infection contracted six years earlier. He died
on 19th November.
As a composer Schubert was both precocious and
prolific. Over the years he wrote some five hundred
songs and a quantity of piano and chamber music,
including fifteen string quartets, with larger scale works
for the theatre and for orchestra, although he never had
a professional orchestra regularly available to him, as
Haydn had had by the nature of his employment as a
princely Kapellmeister, or as Beethoven had through the
good offices of his rich patrons. He was able to hear his
orchestral compositions in performances by an ensemble
that had developed over the years from the Schubert
family string quartet, while chamber music on occasions
received professional attention, notably from
Schuppanzigh and his colleagues. Schubert himself was
both pianist and string-player and as a boy had played
the viola in the family quartet, where his father played
the cello and his older brothers the violin. The language
of the classical string quartet had long been familiar to
him.
The present release includes the last of Schubert’s
quartets and five Deutsche. The Quartet in G major,
Op. 161, was written during the last ten days of June in
1826 and published posthumously in 1851. 1826 had
brought Schubert some success, arrangements with
publishers and a favourable review of his Piano Sonata
in A minor, Op. 42, in the Leipzig Allgemeine
musikalische Zeitung on 1st March. The death of Salieri
in 1825 and that of the court organist Vori‰ek had made
changes in the Court Chapel possible. Schubert had
shown no interest in the position of court organist, but
on 7th April he submitted an application for the more
ambitious position of Vice-Hofkapellmeister. In his
application he set down his qualifications for the post,
supporting his petition with a recommendation from his
teacher Salieri, given him in 1819. In the event he was
short-listed, but early in the following year the place
went to Josef Weigl, for the moment to receive no salary
additional to that he already received as conductor of the
Court Theatre.
As 1826 went on Schubert experienced changes in
mood. His health remained uncertain, and there had
been some disruption in his social circle. The
composition of a new opera had been discussed and his
friend Bauernfeld, on a touring holiday in the provinces,
was able to provide him with a libretto, Der Graf von
Gleichen, which Schubert resolved to set, although the
bigamous relationships of the principal character soon
led to the work’s rejection by the censors. The singer
Michael Vogl, newly married in June, at the age of 58,
urged application to the Kärntnertor Theatre as an opera
coach, but this came to nothing. Meanwhile Schubert’s
friend Schober was suffering from his enforced move, in
an uneasy ménage with his mother, to Währing and his
obligation now to earn a living. By July Schubert was
answering Bauernfeld’s invitations for him to join him
and their friend Ferdinand von Mayerhofer with
complaints that he had no money to go anywhere, that
Schwind was at rock-bottom over his affair with Netti
Hönig, Schober had turned businessman, and Vogl had
married.
In spite of all this, Schubert could still work. After
the completion of his new string quartet, he wrote three
famous Shakespeare settings, and the summer brought
further piano duets, for which there was a continuing
market. The first movement of the Quartet in G major,
a substantial work, opens with some ambiguity, its
initial G major quickly shifting to G minor. A violin
melody is echoed by the cello, with tremolo
accompaniment. The gentle second subject, in a
characteristic rhythm and approached through the key of
F sharp major, is in clear contrast. These elements are
explored in the central development, after which the
recapitulation starts by reversing the original majorminor
harmonies of the opening, to G minor
immediately followed by G major, proceeding to a
number of changes in the detail and figuration of what
follows. The movement ends with a reiteration of G
major. The E minor slow movement opens with a
poignant cello melody. There is a more turbulent middle
section with dotted rhythms, rushing scales and dramatic
tremolo, after which the principal melody returns in B
minor and in canon between cello and second violin,
followed by a new G major melody, heard from the first
violin and cello. This continues in a new key, divided
and then in canon between the two instruments. The
main theme returns, to end in E major. The B minor
Scherzo, with its own subtle modulations, frames a G
major Trio in which the Ländler melody is first given to
the cello. The last movement, impelled forward by its
tarantella rhythm, is a rondo, its main theme again
veering between G major and G minor, while other keys
are explored in its contrasting episodes.
The five Deutsche, D. 90, are dated 19th November
1813, together with a similar number of Minuets. Now
sixteen, his voice having broken, Schubert was in this
year offered a scholarship to continue his academic
studies, rejecting it in favour of training as a teacher, a
course on which he embarked the following year. It was
the year of his father’s second marriage and a year that
brought a number of new string quartets. The German
Dances were intended for the small ensemble that was
developing around the Schubert family quartet, a group
soon to need larger premises for its meetings. The first
dance, in C major, has two trios, in A minor and C major
respectively, the second of which includes a solo for the
viola, Schubert’s instrument in the family ensemble. The
second dance, in G major, with trios in that key and in E
minor, is followed by a dance in D major with a
characteristic trio in the same key. The fourth of the set,
in F major, has no trio, and is followed by a C major
dance, with trios in the same key, both of them providing
the viola with an active accompanying part. The Coda
finally resolves matters over a sustained open-string
bottom C from the cello, before the first violin vanishes
into the heights.
Keith Anderson