Franz Schubert

Born: January 31, 1797,  Vienna
Died: November 19, 1828, Vienna

String Quartet No. 13 in A Minor, D. 804, Op. 29, Rosamunde

• Composed: 1824
  
• Premiere: March 14, 1824 in Vienna by the Schuppanzigh Quartet
  
• Duration: approx. 34 minutes

When Helmina von Chézy’s play Rosamunde, with extensive incidental music by Franz Schubert, was hooted off the stage at its premiere in Vienna on December 20, 1823, the 27-year-old composer decided to turn his efforts away from the theater, where he had found only frustration, and devote more attention to his purely instrumental music. The major works of 1823—the operas Fierrabras and Der häusliche Krieg (“The Household War”), the song cycle Die schöne Müllerin (“The Beautiful Maid of the Mill”) and Rosamunde—gave way to the 1824 string quartets in D minor (Death and the Maiden) and A minor, the A minor cello sonata (Arpeggione), several sets of variations and German dances, and the Octet. 

At that time in Schubert’s life, composition seems to have been almost an escape from the difficulties of his personal situation. He was suffering from anemia and a nervous disorder as the result of syphilis and its treatment (mercury in the early 19th century!), and he was constantly broke, living largely on the generosity of his devoted friends, with only an occasional pittance from some performance or publication. In March 1824, he poured out his troubles in a letter to Leopold Kupelwieser, a close friend recently moved to Rome: “In a word, I feel myself to be the most unhappy and wretched creature in the world. Imagine a man whose health will never be right again, and whose sheer despair over this makes things constantly worse instead of better; imagine a man whose most brilliant hopes have perished, to whom the felicity of love and friendship have nothing to offer but pain; whom enthusiasm (at least of the stimulating kind) for all things beautiful threatens to forsake, and I ask you, is he not a miserable, unhappy being?” Schubert then quoted some forlorn lines from Goethe’s poem Gretchen am Spinnrade (“Gretchen at the Spinning Wheel”), which he had set in 1814: “‘My peace is gone, my heart is sore, I shall find it never, nevermore’ [are words which] I may well sing every day now, for each night on retiring to bed, I hope I may not wake again, and each morning but recalls yesterday’s grief.” Such anguish, however, did not seem to thwart Schubert’s creative muse, and the year 1824, when his physician was able to somewhat restore his health through regular mineral baths, a strict diet and confinement to his room, was one of the most productive periods of his life. Moritz von Schwind, the artist who captured so well the decorous atmosphere of the Biedermeier period and whose woodcuts for children were to inspire the third movement (“Frère Jacques”) of Mahler’s First Symphony 60 years later, reported on Schubert’s absorption with his creative activity at the time: “Schubert has now long been at work with the greatest zeal. If you go to see him during the day he says, ‘Hello, how are you?—Good!’ and simply goes on working, whereupon you depart.”

The A minor String Quartet dates from February and March 1824. It had been more than three years since Schubert had written in the genre, and that earlier example, the so-called Quartetsatz (“Quartet Movement”) in C minor (D. 703), was abandoned with only a single movement completed. Schubert’s 11 previous specimens of the form had all been written as Hausmusik for the family quartet (his two brothers on violin, his father playing cello and Franz as violist), so the A minor Quartet therefore stands as the gateway to the incomparable chamber music of his maturity. The piece was inspired by the enthusiastic and meticulously prepared performances of the violinist Ignaz Schuppanzigh, the greatest early interpreter of the quartets of Beethoven (who often referred to him as “Milord Falstaff” because of his well-fed condition). After returning to Vienna from seven years of performing in Russia, Schuppanzigh had established a highly regarded subscription series of chamber programs with his distinguished quartet (violinist Karl Holz, violist Franz Weiss and cellist Josef Linke) in the hall that the Philharmonic Society reserved in The Red Hedgehog, a popular local inn of the day that later became a favorite haunt of Brahms'. The A minor Quartet was premiered at the concert of March 14 with gratifying success; Schwind reported that Schuppanzigh played it “rather slowly, but with great purity and tenderness.” The work was issued as Op. 29, No. 1 by the firm of Sauer and Leidesdorf in September, the only one of Schubert’s quartets published during his lifetime. (The D minor Quartet, originally intended as the second number of the set, was not published until 1831 as Op. 161; the projected third piece was never written.)

Although Schubert spoke of the A minor Quartet as a preparatory exercise for a “grand symphony,” there is nothing tentative or unpolished in its structure, style or expression. Indeed, it ranks with the greatest instrumental works that Schubert ever wrote—it was described by musicologist Joseph Wechsberg as “the distilled essence of Schubert’s genius...the true expression of his musicianship.” The A minor Quartet is music of sweet sadness, of the precise, touching melancholy sometimes rising to tragedy of which Schubert and Mozart are masters. The pensive opening, the emotional platform upon which the entire work is built, recalls Schubert’s 1814 setting of Gretchen am Spinnrade. The complementary theme, graced with a demure trill upon its introduction by the second violin, provides an episode of brighter outlook, but it is the main theme and its troubled prospect that provide the principal material for the development section. The recapitulation returns the earlier themes in full, with a recall of the main subject serving as the sorrowful coda.

The lovely melody of the Andante was taken from the Entr’acte No. 3 in B-flat for the music to Rosamunde, Schubert’s stage flop of the preceding December. The Menuetto is one of Schubert’s most haunting creations, the bittersweet memory of a happy dance rather than the dance itself; Schubert borrowed its theme from his 1819 song to Schiller’s poem Die Götter Griechenlands (“The Greek Gods”), whose text expresses a yearning for days gone by: “Fair world, where art thou, Come again glorious age of Nature.” The central trio, in the warmer clime of A major, provides a brief respite before the repeat of the sullen Menuetto rounds out the movement. The finale, a hybrid of rondo and sonata forms, is predominantly cheerful in demeanor, a determined turning-away from the dark feelings of the preceding movements. 

—Dr. Richard E. Rodda