String Quartet in E flat major, D.87

Schubert first approached the string quartet at the age of thirteen and by the end of his seventeenth year - having written no fewer than five quartets in the preceding twelve months - he was an old hand at the art. The technique he had acquired by actually playing in a quartet, as viola to the violins of his brothers and the cello of his father. The inspiration he found above all in the scores of Haydn and Mozart: that much is clear from the Quartet in E flat, the last and best of the five works of 1813. At the same time, while the melodic character of the opening of the Allegro moderato clearly derives from Haydn, the spacious exposition of the movement, which presents three distinct themes, anticipates Schubert’s later, lyrically motivated expansion of the form. The development, on the other hand, is short.

Neither Mozart nor Haydn would have set all four movements in the same key, as Schubert does here. But, given the contrast between a Scherzo based on a jocular Haydn model and an Adagio inspired by the more solemn aspects of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, there is no danger of monotony in the middle movements. As for the closing Allegro, while it offers no more contrapuntal interest than the rest of the work, its melodic spontaneity, its cheerful instrumental exchanges and its impulsive ostinatos add yet another expressive dimension to the work in spite of its disinclination to depart very far from E flat major.