Chapter Nine - Schubert, the Tarantella, and the Quartettsatz, D. 703

Summary

Recalling insights from Charles Rosen into reminiscences and connectionsbetween works by composers of different generations, I offer here someremarks on an intriguing musical figure that appears at a revelatory pointin the first movement of Schubert’s unfinished Quartet in C Minor,universally known as the Quartettsatz.

The movement stands alone within Schubert’s output, not because itbelongs to an incomplete project, but due to purely internal, musicalfactors. Not many of his first movements are in 6/8, and fewer still presentso remarkable a deformation of sonata form (see table 9.1). The movementconforms to type only in that the repeated exposition ends in the dominant,and the material presented in the dominant is recapitulated in the tonic,achieving the minimum requirement for resolution. Even then, these sectionsare in the major mode, whereas conventionally they would be minor. Themovement has a development and a recapitulation, but the latter is notidentifiable by the tonic or the opening theme; instead it begins with thetheme that followed the first modulation (m. 27), then in A♭, now inB♭ (m. 195) and E♭ (m. 199). The opening idea, in emphatic Cminor, returns only at the very end.

The Quartettsatz exemplifies an expressive trend common in,though not peculiar to, Schubert: the promise of a major-mode conclusionextinguished by ending in the minor. In this it foreshadows the firstmovement of “Death and the Maiden”: both have three-keyexpositions and contrast a violent, minor-key opening to major-key lyricism;both revert to the minor with codas based on the opening bars. The firstmovement of “Death and the Maiden” is more orthodox in keystructure, however, and its recapitulation begins with the opening motif,with the coda a further development. In contrast, the closing bars of theQuartettsatz are a recapitulation of the opening. Itappears that in returning to the quartet medium in 1824, Schubert decided ona less daring venture than in 1820.

After hinting at ♭VI (A♭) as his exposition goal, Schubertarrives instead at G major, a progression reversing the I– ♭II(Neapolitan) progression much emphasized near the opening.