Piano Quintet in A major, Op.114 (D.667) (“The Trout”)

Although the piano part is one of the principal adornments of the “Trout” Quintet, the stimulus for the work came not from a pianist but from a cellist. It was commissioned in 1819 by Sylvester Paumgartner, a leading light in the musical life of Steyr in Upper Austria where Schubert liked to spend the summer.

It was presumably to please the cellist that Schubert chose to include a double bass in the ensemble. Certainly, while giving the work its very distinctive colour, the presence of the lower instrument allows the cello to take a more active interest in the melodic material than it could if it were tied to its normal bass-line duties. The viola might have felt a little put out by the arrangement but, with the weight of the piano frequently reduced to a single line in octaves, no one instrument dominates what is essentially a convivial conversation between friends.

It was presumably also to please Paumgartner that the fourth movement is presented as a set of variations on Die Forelle (“The Trout”), which is said to have been the cellist’s favourite Schubert song. If in that case it seems strange that it is not the cello but the violin which introduces the melody, the fact is that Schubert reserves for the cello not only the inspired fifth variation but also the last echo of the song and its rippling accompaniment at the end of the movement. Or is there another, more distant echo of “The Trout” in the second subject of the otherwise march-like Finale?

The more charming a work by Schubert, the more likely it is to be condescended to by academic opinion. The Arpeggione Sonata is one example. Another is the “Trout” Quintet, which has a delightful but not very enterprising set of variations, which has as many as five movements and which has a quartet of strings including a double bass. It must for these reasons be a divertimento rather than a serious quintet. Indeed, it was written for a group of friends - in Steyr in 1819 - having been commissioned by the cellist among them, Sylvester Paumgartner, and it is (in its origins) sociable rather than concert music. But it has also become (in concerts) one of Schubert’s most popular chamber works, and not only because of its delightful variations.

The instrumentation of the Quintet in A major was evidently modelled on a Grand Quintet by Hummel - perhaps because it happened to suit the group of friends in Steyr or perhaps because Schubert liked it. Certainly, he took advantage of the cello’s position as a voice in the middle of the texture rather than as the bass foundation and he did not spurn the sound of the bass either, in spite of its reputedly “cavernous” quality. The great achievement in the scoring of the work is the balancing of piano and strings, not so much by blending them as by contrasting them. But there are passages, such as the exchange of a phrase for the first subject in the development of the first movement, which seems to have been invented specially to focus attention on the double bass part.

The Andante, though structurally unremarkable, is one of Schubert’s most interesting movements from the harmonic point of view. With a first subject in F major, a second subject in F sharp minor modulating to D major, and a magical ppp closing theme in G major, he sets himself an acute problem of reconciliation. He solves it by the characteristically direct method of beginning the recapitulation a minor third higher than the exposition, reintroducing the first subject in A flat major and the second in A minor, which latter then modulates to the tonic F major. The ppp closing theme is recalled in that key at the end of the movement.

The Scherzo, which contrasts muscular outer sections with a lyrical trio, is fully characteristic and as good as any Schubert had written up to that time. As for the variations on his song, Die Forelle, it is interesting that he introduces the theme (in D major) on strings alone, omitting the piano figuration of the accompaniment in the original song. But it is that figuration which suggests the viola part in the first variation and, after the dramatic fourth variation in D minor and the fifth in B flat major, it appears in the piano part of the Allegretto coda in exactly the same form as in the song.

The last movement, though constructed like the Andante in two matching halves with key adjustments necessary to end in the tonic, is rare (for Schubert) in its monothematic construction. There are other melodic ideas from time to time but only the main theme and its derivatives have any significant place in it.