VI.

Chamber Music

His intimate chamber music brings listeners closest to Schubert. He wrote many of the chamber pieces when he was young, but it is in his later works that his greatness is especially felt. The Quintet for Piano and Strings (Trout) is a popular favorite, loved for its tunes and buoyant rhythms that capture the shimmering fish as it darts through the water. In 1824 Schubert wrote the Octet in F, a charming, easygoing work for two violins, viola, cello, bass, clarinet, horn, and bassoon. The wind instruments add to its colorful modulations.

The Quartet in A Minor and the Quartet in D Minor (Death and the Maiden), also written in 1824, are among Schubert’s most moving works. In them he allied his tunefulness with a greater depth of feeling than is evident in the earlier chamber pieces. Sad melodies alternate with bursts of rhythmic energy. Schubert’s song “Death and the Maiden” provided the melody for a series of variations in the second movement of the Quartet in D Minor; hence the quartet’s name. Schubert’s final quartet, in G Major (1826), has an even greater tension than the quartets of 1824 and an energy verging on violence. With the Quintet in C Major (1828), Schubert returned to the lyrical and dramatic qualities of his earlier quartets.