Thresholds Between, Worlds Apart

Abstract

AbstractIn the Adagio from Schubert's String Quintet, music of otherworldly bearing frames and encloses an utterly contrasting music of churning turmoil. The analysis offered in this article addresses those passages that connect and mediate this contrast: the sighing codetta to the first section which makes an impossibly poignant fuss before coming to a close in E major; the trill which whisks the action from there into F minor; the stunning broken‐off harmonies which form the retransition back to the opening; the brief flare of F minor right before the movement's final cadence.These threshold passages are then compared to various spots within the rest of the Quintet, such as the way that the Trio section relates to the Scherzo, or the use of prominent semitonal manoeuvres at the opening of the first movement and the close of the finale. The essay concludes with some reflections on the ways Schubert's thresholds can be heard to invoke the plight of mortality or to suggest a loss of faith in a stable reality.