Quartettsatz in c

December 1820 was one of Schubert’s most prolific months, and the single movement for string quartet in C minor—the so-called Quartettsatz in C Minor, D. 703—represents a dramatic advance over his early quartets. He had completed eleven string quartets between 1810 and 1816. The Quartettsatz registers a new lyric intensity, which makes us miss the absent movements all the more but also partially explains why Schubert found it hard to follow up on. The first movement is complete as we have it, but only 41 bars of sketch for an Andante survive. We sense a general uncertainty on Schubert’s part in handling traditional four-movement forms inherited from Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. As with the famous “Unfinished” Symphony in B Minor (Nov. 1822), we might do better here to trust Schubert’s sense of drama and, rather than lamenting “what might have been”—i.e., subsequent movements of this C-minor quartet composed less by inspiration than by a compulsion to satisfy conventions—we might instead be grateful for the focused power of the one movement he gave us. There is a great deal to cherish in what we have.
One of the most striking aspects of this work is the absence of the tonic key, C minor. Even though sonata form takes its dynamic impulse from the departure and return of a tonic key, Schubert manipulates the home key so that its last-minute return sits somewhat like a deus ex machina, or resolution of tonal conflict by fiat. However, the other tonal pillar of the sonata, the dominant key (here, G major), is strongly etched. We may thereby anticipate the large-scale movement from G back to C even more fervently.
This movement also demonstrates the Schubertian tactic of the three-key exposition. The opening measures in C minor emerge from nothing, with the four strings entering one by one and quickly building to a tremendous rhetorical outburst. This eruption occurs on a chromatic Neapolitan-6th chord, and even if the name means nothing to you, the sound will likely stay in your head. The disruption resolves through a miniature cadenza for first violin to C minor but only for a moment. In the entire exposition, the tonic lasts for just 22 measures. The key for the first distinctive melodic theme is A-flat major, and the traditional second theme group does eventually arrive in G major—hence Schubert’s characteristic three key exposition: c, A-flat, and G.
The development section is brief and unexceptional. It is also tonally static overall: beginning with a move from G major to A-flat, we wind up roughly 50 measures later back on the dominant of G. The remarkable thing is where Schubert goes from there—not to G but to B-flat major! More remarkable still is the structural importance accorded to this flat-VII (or subtonic) key, for it initiates the recapitulation with the lyrical theme. In sum, Schubert countermands two nearly universal conventions of sonata form. First, he avoids recapitulating the opening material of the movement—where is the recap of the beginning ex nihilo, crescendo, and rhetorical flourish on the Neapolitan? Wait and see. Second, the recapitulation begins in the non-traditional key of the subtonic. Non-tonic reprises had been heard before, of course, but Schubert’s use of the flat-VII key is a true innovation. Only after the lyrical and second themes have been heard in full does the composer finally go back to the beginning. Just measures from the end we hear the agitato strings and Neapolitan outburst. Where that harmony originally functioned in getting the movement off to a dramatic start, it is now reinterpreted as a gesture of closure, and only the necessary V–I cadence follows.

(c) Jason Stell