Our music for this week is the string quintet in C Major by Franz Schubert.
Schubert completed this quintet two weeks before his death in 1828. Rather than write a string quartet, however, he added a cello part and produced a quintet that sounds almost symphonic in its proportions. Listen for the interactions between the two cello parts; Schubert sometimes treats them as a pair of soloists, with violin and viola playing the part of “orchestra accompaniment.”
In writing for this unique mixture of instruments (almost every chamber music composition of his time was for a string quartet, with only one cello), Schubert broke open a new realm of possibilities for composers to experiment with. Before too long, Mendelssohn (https://thisweeksmusic.com/2021/04/30/octet-2-mendelssohn/) and Enescu (https://thisweeksmusic.com/2021/05/08/octet-3-enescu/) had written string octets, and later American composers (like Samuel Barber and Amy Beach) would combine strings, winds, brass, and vocals into even more unconventional ensembles. In short, Schubert’s cello quintet-his last composition before he died-was the start of an era.