Quartet Movement in C minor D103 (1814)

Grave – allegro

There are two Schubert quartet fragments in C minor – the famous Quartettsatz (or Quartet Movement) D703 of 1820 and the little-knownD103 written six years earlier. Unlike D703, which is the complete first movement of an unfinished quartet, D103 is all that is left – the first 296 bars of the first movement – of an apparently once complete work. The autograph manuscript of the early Quartet in C minor was acquired at some point, presumably after the composer’s death through his brother Ferdinand, by the Viennese publisher Diabelli. But during or after its transfer from the Diabelli archive to the library of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde all but the first few pages got lost. Since the surviving pages extend as far as the end of the development section, however, and all that is missing from the first movement is the recapitulation and coda, it is possible to work out how it might have continued. Most performances include a reconstruction of the ending supplied by Alfred Orel for the first publication of the fragment by Universal Edition in 1938.

On the evidence of what we know of the first movement, Schubert’s first quartet in a minor key seems to have been the 17-year-old composer’s response to the challenge presented by Beethoven in C minor. After a short but serious-minded Grave introduction, the main Allegro pursues its urgent course even beyond the point where the key changes to E flat major for the second subject. While there is a change of mood here, the rhythmic momentum is sustained, thanks not least to busy arpeggio activity on the second violin. Emotional pressure is restored in the development, which is devoted entirely to first-subject material – suggesting that the movement would have ended not with the recall of the second subject in C major but ater that, as in Orel’s reconstruction, with a dramatic coda based on the first subject in C minor.­