# Do you like Schubert's last string quartet D887?



## beetzart (Dec 30, 2009)

It certainly is a monumental piece of music and I find the first movement very uplifting and driven. The mood constantly changes and has a beating heart to it but where does it compare to Beethoven's quartets? I wouldn't say it was anywhere as near as good as the last quartets so probably on par with the 'Harp' and the 'Seriouso'.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Yes it’ll be interesting to say what people have to say about this quartet, especially the repeats in the first movement. 

I just wanted to say that I think it’s a great mistake to bunch Beethoven and Schubert together, and to try and weigh one against the other. Despite the fact that they shared a common city and their lives overlapped, their ideas about aesthetics were so very very different. And this becomes clear in long form music like this quartet or some of the piano sonatas. Schubert is in some ways more our contemporary I’d say, he seems to be exploring ways of structuring sounds which are non-narrative, less goal oriented.


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

I have no doubt the majority of this board thinks it's brilliant, visionary, a clue as to the majesty he would have brought to the world had he lived just a mere five more years.


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## Kjetil Heggelund (Jan 4, 2016)

I like it very much! Did a "listening project" with it last year. That was only listening to that whole piece for a week with 9 different quartets. Not to compare versions, but just getting to know the piece better. I don't like it any less  However, my favorite music by Beethoven is the last quartets...


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## PlaySalieri (Jun 3, 2012)

Well now I have been on here saying I dont get Beethoven late quartets - my own shortcoming no doubt.

But I do get this monumental work! From the first listening I was just staggered by the majestic sound and scope of it and I never tire of this great work.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

I love it. A magical work and, no doubt, just as profound in its own very very very different way to the late quartets of Beethoven.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Schubert's late works are often pervaded by a new quality in music, a sense of personal anxiety. This is nowhere more conspicuous than in the G Major quartet. An undertone of apprehension, if not outright terror, accompanies even material that might otherwise convey serenity, as in the tremolos beneath the opening theme of the first movement. The work is full of disconcerting harmonic shifts, restless rhythms, obsessive figurations, interruptions and discontinuities. We're given access to a man's private feelings to a degree that no earlier music, not even Beethoven's, permits, and the technical mastery with which Schubert presents his unmasked self succeeds not in buffering or balancing the work's subjectivity (as it does in, for example, Mozart) but in making it all the more intense and disturbing.

If you haven't experienced this piece for a while, here's a superb performance: 




Loath as I am to rank things, I find this inspired and shockingly original work to occupy a position at the top of the string quartet repertoire above all but the last quartets of Beethoven. Whenever I hear it I'm convinced that the early death of Schubert was the saddest loss to music.


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

I take back my sarcasm, it's certainly is a good quartet. I don't think I can stretch to thinking it as pivotal to western music, but it is a fine quartet.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

That first movement takes an awful long time with the repeats, over 20 minutes sometimes. 20 minutes of ramble? Schubert's like a Morton Feldman avant la lettre.

I don’t know about a sense of personal anxiety, it may be that some performances imbue it with that, but I don’t think it’s essential. 

Who here has studied Schubert and his ideas? What was he trying to say in his music?


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

I don't like Schubert's Quartet #15 because it cuts too close to the bone in conveying a man who has entirely lost hope. This piece, along with Schubert's other late quartets (12-14) and the String Quintet in C, are like Beethoven's unprecedented at the time. I think that Woodduck's comments above are spot on.

I can handle the others, I find their sense of darkness and edginess to be more dispersed. Same goes with the Unfinished Symphony. The slow movements of the two piano trios and Notturno also have a similar sublime quality to their counterparts in the quartets, albeit tending towards serenity rather than angst. 

In terms of Schubert's ideas, primary sources are scarce, he is amongst the most elusive of composers. Part of a letter which survives from 1824 says it all:

"In a word, I feel myself the most unhappy and wretched creature in the world. Imagine a man whose health will never be right again, and who in sheer despair over this ever makes things worse and worse, instead of better; imagine a man, I say, whose most brilliant hopes have perished, to whom the happiness of love and friendship have nothing to offer but pain, at best, whose enthusiasm (at least of the stimulating kind) for all things beautiful threatens to disappear, and I ask you, is he not a miserable, unhappy being?"


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Sid James said:


> I don't like Schubert's Quartet #15 because it cuts too close to the bone in conveying a man who has entirely lost hope. This piece, along with Schubert's other late quartets (12-14) and the String Quintet in C, are like Beethoven's unprecedented at the time. I think that Woodduck's comments above are spot on.
> 
> I can handle the others, I find their sense of darkness and edginess to be more dispersed. Same goes with the Unfinished Symphony. The slow movements of the two piano trios and Notturno also have a similar sublime quality to their counterparts in the quartets, albeit tending towards serenity rather than angst.
> 
> ...


Thanks for posting those words of Schubert. I hadn't read them before in full. It seems that music can be more definite in its expressive content than many want to think. Stravinsky was wrong.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Woodduck said:


> Thanks for posting those words of Schubert. I hadn't read them before in full. It seems that music can be more definite in its expressive content than many want to think. Stravinsky was wrong.


You're welcome. I find something in these late pieces unique on so many levels. The Notturno D.897 for example gives me this sense of the fragility, the fleeting quality of life, here today gone tomorrow. It plumbs the same depths as Mahler, but in a subtle way. Its difficult to imagine a healthy man composing like this, and in Schubert's case we have a man cut down in the prime of his life.


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## Triplets (Sep 4, 2014)

Fanfare Magazine has a critic, Jerry Dubins, who on the basis of what appears to me to be highly speculative evidence, states that Schubert was a pedophile who was himself abused as a child, and that the tortured outbursts in his late works reflect some type of inner conflict of conflicting impulses


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## beetzart (Dec 30, 2009)

Sid James said:


> I don't like Schubert's Quartet #15 because it cuts too close to the bone in conveying a man who has entirely lost hope.


Wow, that is profound, great quote. I mean that sincerely. When I listen to it I become distraught and cry when he slips into a minor key then back to major. He must have been a wreck of a man in his final days. I don't know what else to say.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Obviously this is my subjective opinion, so just add IMO before each point below and it might sound less offensive .

Sorry, but I can't see even comparing this quartet to Beethoven's Op. 95. First of all, and echoing something Mandryka wrote about Schubert's instrumental music in general (in a thread on the piano sonatas), the lack of contrapuntal interest makes this music wear thin really fast for me. Nearly every passage in Beethoven's Op. 95 has more than one interesting line, making it incomparably richer for me. Had Schubert lived longer, one would hope he might have devoted a year or two to seriously studying counterpoint. But given the words Sid quoted above about his health, it is likely Schubert suspected there would be no time for this. So he went with what he had. I think the material in this quartet justifies about half the length of the work.

The string writing is not particularly good or interesting. Way too much tremolo, which sounds to me like a poor substitute for actual motion. That is already tiresome for me half way through the first movement. And the structure is quite conventional, especially compared to something like Beethoven's Op. 95. And, finally, I find the melodic writing in the Beethoven much better and more imaginative.

(Running for cover and waiting for the abuse I no doubt richly deserve.)


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## beetzart (Dec 30, 2009)

EdwardBast said:


> Obviously this is my subjective opinion, so just add IMO before each point below and it might sound less offensive .
> 
> Sorry, but I can't see even comparing this quartet to Beethoven's Op. 95. First of all, and echoing something Mandryka wrote about Schubert's instrumental music in general (in a thread on the piano sonatas), the lack of contrapuntal interest makes this music wear thin really fast for me. Nearly every passage in Beethoven's Op. 95 has more than one interesting line, making it incomparably richer for me. Had Schubert lived longer, one would hope he might have devoted a year or two to seriously studying counterpoint. But given the words Sid quoted above about his health, it is likely Schubert suspected there would be no time for this. So he went with what he had. I think the material in this quartet justifies about half the length of the work.
> 
> ...


Why do you think you will get abuse? You make some good points, but I just enjoy his music. I know Beethoven is on a different plane but Schubert achieved something quite remarkable in his short and dare I say wretched life.


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## Haydn70 (Jan 8, 2017)

EdwardBast said:


> Had Schubert lived longer, one would hope he might have devoted a year or two to seriously studying counterpoint.


In the last year of his life Schubert made appointments for lessons with the counterpoint master Simon Sechter and had one lesson with him before his death.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

EdwardBast said:


> Obviously this is my subjective opinion, so just add IMO before each point below and it might sound less offensive .
> 
> Sorry, but I can't see even comparing this quartet to Beethoven's Op. 95. First of all, and echoing something Mandryka wrote about Schubert's instrumental music in general (in a thread on the piano sonatas), the lack of contrapuntal interest makes this music wear thin really fast for me. Nearly every passage in Beethoven's Op. 95 has more than one interesting line, making it incomparably richer for me. Had Schubert lived longer, one would hope he might have devoted a year or two to seriously studying counterpoint. But given the words Sid quoted above about his health, it is likely Schubert suspected there would be no time for this. So he went with what he had. I think the material in this quartet justifies about half the length of the work.
> 
> ...


I find the first movement very challenging with the repeats, I don't know if there's a performance which can bring it off.

But what interested me most in your post was the idea that tremolo is no substitute for real motion. You see I have the idea that Schubert wasn't concerned with movement, his late long form instrumental music is deliberately static and repetitive. This is why I say that he's absolutely nothing like Beethoven, and why I see him as a sort of Feldman _avant la lettre_! A great example of this stasis is the first movement of the C major piano sonata D 840.

(maybe I'm being to charitable to him!)


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Mandryka said:


> I find the first movement very challenging with the repeats, I don't know if there's a performance which can bring it off.
> 
> But what interested me most in your post was the idea that tremolo is no substitute for real motion. *You see I have the idea that Schubert wasn't concerned with movement, his late long form instrumental music is deliberately static and repetitive. This is why I say that he's absolutely nothing like Beethoven, and why I see him as a sort of Feldman avant la lettre! *A great example of this stasis is the first movement of the C major piano sonata D 840.
> 
> (maybe I'm being to charitable to him!)


I think I know what you are getting at. But I hear his last works, especially the piano sonatas, not as static, but more as wandering - a journey rather than a Beethovenian drama or struggle, but sometimes one without a strong drive to a specific objective. Hence his three-key expositions and coloristic transformations? (maybe?). This can still be a very satisfying experience for me. Nevertheless, repeating whole sections of a journey can be tedious.

Of course, D. 840 is incomplete, and perhaps there is a reason for that.


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## Swosh (Feb 25, 2018)

It's utterly unique. Schubert would have surpassed Beethoven if he lived as long as Beethoven did. Yea I said it. Or perhaps his masterworks before his death had to do with his despair and failing health...


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

beetzart said:


> Wow, that is profound, great quote. I mean that sincerely. When I listen to it I become distraught and cry when he slips into a minor key then back to major. He must have been a wreck of a man in his final days. I don't know what else to say.


I don't have exactly the same reaction. I find its intensity similar to Smetana's second quartet, an extremely sad piece composed at the end of his life. I can't think of other chamber pieces of the 19th century which have this quality. Tchaikovsky's Piano Trio has made me cry, but it comes across to me as more melancholy than outright depressing.

In relation to the issue of structural integrity, Schubert's music is obviously not as tightly knitted as Beethoven's. I have read of this deficiency mentioned in relation to the "Great" C major symphony, but nonetheless consensus is that its a masterpiece.

In any case, for future generations of composers, Schubert's freewheeling approach held more positive than negative attributes. His talent was well suited to composing songs, yet it can be argued that this only strengthened the individual approach he made to music in other genres. For example, the Wanderer Fantasy influenced Liszt when he composed the Sonata in B minor. Liszt admired it so much that he orchestrated it. Richard Strauss said Liszt was the composer to most fully understand Beethoven's innovations. Perhaps the same can be said of him with regards to Schubert?


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

EdwardBast said:


> I think I know what you are getting at. But I hear his last works, especially the piano sonatas, not as static, but more as wandering - a journey rather than a Beethovenian drama or struggle, but sometimes one without a strong drive to a specific objective. Hence his three-key expositions and coloristic transformations? (maybe?). This can still be a very satisfying experience for me. Nevertheless, repeating whole sections of a journey can be tedious.
> 
> Of course, D. 840 is incomplete, and perhaps there is a reason for that.


What do we know about the function of a repeat in C 19 ensemble music? Lonquich in his essay in the booklet for the new CD uses the metaphor of « groping in darkness » for some of Schubert's music.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

I have also seen Schubert's late music described as "sleepwalking," which seems to me apt in an odd sense.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

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## jegreenwood (Dec 25, 2015)

I needed to hear the Quartetto Italiano recording in order to appreciate it. That performance I love.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

I like most of late Schubert, but the quartets, although I enjoy them in concert, I find myself not putting on at home. This one in particular I find way too jittery.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Swosh said:


> It's utterly unique. Schubert would have surpassed Beethoven if he lived as long as Beethoven did. Yea I said it. Or perhaps his masterworks before his death had to do with his despair and failing health...


Surpassed him at what? Composing string quartets? Piano sonatas? As ArsMusica points out, Schubert was about to begin lessons in counterpoint just before he died. Had they been fruitful, I suppose Schubert might one day have acquired the tools to compose in a style comparable to Beethoven's. But this is rank speculation. Most people who have studied harmony and counterpoint are likely aware that there is a vast gulf between the writing in Beethoven's late sonatas and quartets and those of Schubert.


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## Swosh (Feb 25, 2018)

Surpassed him as a pivotal composer. There is so much to analyze and discover in Schubert's last year... His last quartets were approaching Beethoven's originality.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

I remember when I first listened to that quartet as a teenager, I thought the first movement was one of the strangest things I'd ever heard - I kept waiting, in a state of considerable tension, for the piece to really start, and it never did, and at the end I was sort of amazed to realize that more than 20 minutes had gone by. I still think there's nothing else like it.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Swosh said:


> *Surpassed him as a pivotal composer.* There is so much to analyze and discover in Schubert's last year... His last quartets were approaching Beethoven's originality.


I have no idea what this means. Pivoting to what?


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