Franz Peter Schubert (31 January 1797 – 19 November 1828) was an Austrian composer of the late Classical and early Romantic eras. Despite his short lifetime, Schubert left behind a vast oeuvre, including 600 secular vocal works (mainly Lieder), seven complete symphonies, sacred music, operas, incidental music and a large body of piano and chamber music. The Piano Quintet in A major, D. 667 (Trout Quintet), the Symphony No. 8, D. 759 (Unfinished Symphony), the three last piano sonatas, D. 958-960, and his song cycles Die schöne Müllerin and Winterreise are some of his most important works.

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String Quartet in A minor, D.804 "Rosamunde" (Spring 1824)
Dedication: Ignaz Schuppanzigh (1776–1830), member of the imperial court orchestra

1. Allegro ma non troppo (0:00)
2. Andante (14:42)
3. Menuetto. Allegretto — Trio (22:06)
4. Allegro moderato (29:56)

HUGO WOLF QUARTETT
Sebastian Gürtler, violin I
Régis Bringolf, violin II
Subin Lee, viola
Florian Berner, cello

On March 31, 1824 Schubert wrote to his friend, Leopold Kupelwieser:

“Of songs I have not written many new ones, but I have tried my hand at several instrumental works, for I wrote two Quartets for violins, viola and violoncello and an Octet, and I want to write another quartet, in fact I intend to pave my way towards grand symphony in that manner…”

The three quartets to which Schubert referred were the A minor, D. 804 (Rosamunde), performed here, the D minor, D. 810 (Death & the Maiden), and the yet-to-be-composed G major, D. 887, written down in just 10 days in June, 1826. The A minor Quartet was, alone of all three published, in September, 1824 as Op. 29, no. 1, dedicated to Schuppanzigh, its first performance having taken place just two weeks prior (March 14) as part of a program that also included Beethoven’s popular Septet, Op. 20. As Moritz von Schwind wrote concerning this première:

“Schubert’s Quartet was performed, rather slowly in his opinion, but clearly and affectionately. Overall it is very smooth, but so in such a way that the tune stays in one’s head, as with songs, full of feeling and expression.”

The opening movement of the A minor Quartet is imbued with the same brooding intensity that defines the Quartettsatz – albeit at a slower tempo, and no doubt for very different reasons. The first theme consists of the simplest possible means; a sad tune beginning with a descending A minor arpeggio over a “spinning wheel’ accompaniment, of the kind that Schubert wrote in his early Goethe song Gretchen am Spinnrade. All this
occurs above a disturbing tremolando bass. The despairing reference by Schubert to his own popular early song is probably no coincidence, for it was at exactly this time that he discovered that his health, undermined since 1823 by his contraction of syphilis, would probably never be fully restored. In the same March 31 letter to Kupelwieser, quoting Goethe’s text for Gretchen he wrote:

“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 who in sheer despair makes things worse and worse, instead of better, imagine a man, I say, whose most brilliant hopes have perished, to whom the felicity of love and friendship have nothing to offer but pain, at best, 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? ‘My peace is gone, my heart is sore, I shall find it never and nevermore,’ I may well sing every day now, for each night, on retiring to bed, I hope I may not wake again, and each day but recalls yesterday’s grief.”

In addition to his broken health, Schubert’s biographer, John Reed refers to the composer’s disenchantment with Viennese taste and its embrace of triviality in the wake of Metternich’s absolutist re-ordering of Europe and the emergent “Biedermeier” culture. Reed characterizes the A minor Quartet as “a Romantic excursion to the land of lost content”.
Peter Watchorn