Schubert's String Research Articles

Hidden Endings and Disappearing Measures in the First Movement of Schubert's String Quintet in C Major, D. 956

Hidden Endings and Disappearing Measures in the First Movement of Schubert's String Quintet in C Major, D. 956

Probing the Limits: Musical Structure and Musical Rhetoric in Schubert's String Quartet in G Major, D. 887

Probing the Limits: Musical Structure and Musical Rhetoric in Schubert's String Quartet in G Major, D. 887

Stasis and Continuity in Schubert's String Quintet: Responses to Nathan Martin, Steven Vande Moortele, Scott Burnham and John Koslovsky

Music AnalysisVolume 33, Issue 2 p. 194-213 ORIGINAL ARTICLE Stasis and Continuity in Schubert's String Quintet: Responses to Nathan Martin, Steven Vande Moortele, Scott Burnham and John Koslovsky Julian Horton, Julian HortonSearch for more papers by this author Julian Horton, Julian HortonSearch for more papers by this author First published: 04 July 2014 https://doi.org/10.1111/musa.12031Citations: 1Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume33, Issue2Special Issue: Schubert's String Quintet in C major, D. 956. Papers Read at the Conference ‘Schubert and Concepts of Late Style’, National University of Ireland, Maynooth 21-23 October 2011July 2014Pages 194-213 RelatedInformation

SusanWollenberg, Schubert's Fingerprints: Studies in the Instrumental Works (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011). xviii + 317 pp. £65.00. ISBN: 978‐1‐4094‐2122‐1 (hb).

Music AnalysisVolume 33, Issue 2 p. 257-261 CRITICAL FORUM Susan Wollenberg, Schubert's Fingerprints: Studies in the Instrumental Works (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011). xviii + 317 pp. £65.00. ISBN: 978-1-4094-2122-1 (hb). David Bretherton, David BrethertonSearch for more papers by this author David Bretherton, David BrethertonSearch for more papers by this author First published: 23 May 2014 https://doi.org/10.1111/musa.12030Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Volume33, Issue2Special Issue: Schubert's String Quintet in C major, D. 956. Papers Read at the Conference ‘Schubert and Concepts of Late Style’, National University of Ireland, Maynooth 21-23 October 2011July 2014Pages 257-261 RelatedInformation

Thresholds Between, Worlds Apart

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.

Timeless Reflections: Form, Cadence and Tonal Structure in the Scherzo and Finale of Schubert's String Quintet

AbstractSchubert's Quintet in C major has drawn the attention of a number of Schenkerian analysts. While most have examined aspects of form and tonal structure within specific movements (Beach 1993, 1994 and 1995; Smith 2006; and Suurpää 2000), others have attempted to analyse the entire Quintet along a single linear trajectory (Rast 1998). In general, however, Schenkerian analyses of this piece have emphasised the opening two movements, and they have quite understandably done so from a mainly teleological perspective. However, such a perspective stands in stark contrast to the more retrospective, introspective and lyrical qualities that the Quintet exhibits (Gingerich 2000).This article offers an analysis of the last two movements of Schubert's masterpiece, the Scherzo‐Trio and Finale (Allegretto). These deploy many of the same techniques as the first and the second movements: delayed tonal arrivals, chromatically altered sonorities, harmonic and motivic cross‐references and structured paths from tonic to dominant. While negotiating the ways in which form, cadence and voice leading articulate the overall tonal structure, the article aims to bring together the forward‐driving and retrospective impulses by investigating the ways in which Schubert revisits many of the same ‘timeless’ moments found in the previous movements while still allowing the work to close as a single dramatic gesture.

Formal Functions and Retrospective Reinterpretation in the First Movement of Schubert's String Quintet

AbstractThe first movement of Schubert's String Quintet, D. 956, is among the early nineteenth‐century repertoire's clearest examples of what Janet Schmalfeldt has called ‘form as the process of becoming’. In this article we show how the governing formal principle of the movement's exposition is the conflation of distinct and typically consecutive formal functions. The result is an extraordinary chain of form‐functional overlaps, requiring the analyst to engage in a process of constant retrospective reinterpretation that ends only with the unambiguous closing group. Our aim is not only to revisit some familiar analytical questions about Schubert's Quintet from a form‐functional perspective, but also to provide a test case showing the applicability of form‐functional thinking to early nineteenth‐century music. We begin by presenting a form‐functional overview and cadential plan of the exposition and then home in on three passages that pose particular analytical challenges: the introduction/main‐theme/transition complex (bars 1–59), the transition/subordinate‐theme complex (bars 60–100) and the closing‐group/subordinate theme complex (bars 100–138). The article concludes by proposing certain ways in which Schmalfeldt's idea of retrospective reinterpretation may be further refined.

Quotation and Framing: Re-contextualization and Intertextuality as Newness in George Crumb's Black Angels

George Crumb's Black Angels: Thirteen Images from the Dark Land for Electric String Quartet (1970) are individually original, but also representative for compositional practices for the twentieth century. As in his other compositions, Crumb has integrated musical quotations and various musical styles, including a web of references that extend into other media in such a way that they form an indispensable part of the basic construction of the work: these components form part of its newness. In Black Angels the composer—among other well-known pieces of music—quotes the medieval `Dies irae' sequence and the second movement of Schubert's string quartet in D minor (D. 810). The musical and intermedial references are framed with striking modernistic sounds exploring instrumental possibilities far beyond the traditional, thus creating a framework of extreme contrasts. The paper will contextualize, analyze and interpret Black Angels—which the composer explicitly linked to the Vietnam War—in a broad context of music, intermediality, religious symbolism, and cultural memory, pointing to the cultural meaning of this technique of recontextualization as a break with, as well as a continuation of, modernity.

RhetoricalClosure in theFirstMovement ofSchubert'sQuartet inCmajor, D. 46: A Dialogue withDeformation

ABSTRACTThis article addresses the issue of parametric non‐congruence as it affects the articulation of closure in the first movement of Schubert's String Quartet in C major, D. 46. This movement displays two formal irregularities which render it problematic in relation to sonata theory: first, the presentation of new thematic material in the exposition does not correspond with a modulation to the dominant key, and second, the recapitulation of the primary theme commences over an activebass progression. As such, D. 46/i provides an apt setting for an appraisal of how effective sonata theory is in the treatment and understanding of closure when the very elements which ought to express it are ostensibly incompatible. The distinction I draw between tonal (syntactic) and rhetorical (semantic) closure in this article (founded in the work of Kofi Agawu, among others) aims at demonstrating that the adherence to a hierarchical perspective of form in which tonality dominates is of little service when examining a work in which local cadential closure is persistently evaded. Ultimately, my analysis shall illustrate the through‐composed design of this movement and, in so doing, question the unrelenting reliance on cadence and contrapuntal closure as delineators of sonata space.

Dorfman, Schubert, and Death and the Maiden

In his article, "Dorfman, Schubert, and Death and the Maiden," David Schroeder suggests that the selection of the play's title Death and the Maiden (1991) by Ariel Dorfman is a careful one. Schroeder proposes that it is not only that the title of the piece comes directly from Franz Schubert's String Quartet in D minor, so named because it uses material from the song of the same name as the theme for the second movement. Schroeder argues that Dorfman's thoughtful choice is as much related to the strong parallels between Schubert's Maiden and Dorfman's character Paulina Salas, as to Dr. Miranda's similarities with Schubert's Death. Schroeder further explains that the connection with Schubert's work is also better understood in relation to Schubert's belief in the impossibility of returning to life "as it was before" after destructive episodes. Schroeder argues that Schubert was much more a political creature than has been widely recognized and that Dorfman seems to have sensed intuitively Schubert's political nature. In fact, at the end of the play, as Schroeder argues, it is Schubert's music from the quartet that has the final say.

The Path from Tonic to Dominant in the Second Movement of Schubert's String Quintet and in Chopin's Fourth Ballade

In Free Composition Schenker begins the discussion of the middleground level by describing different ways in which the tonic-dominant space of the Bassbrechung, the space between the first two background Stufen, can be filled in (Schenker 1979, 29-31 and Figure 14). This inner subdivision of the space between I and V greatly affects the tonal organization of music and Schenker suggests that it also influences the form. He demonstrates that this motion may encompass either all of the notes located between I and V or only one or two of them. Although Schenker speaks only about the first level of the middleground, similar space-filling patterns also occur at more local levels. This phenomenon, therefore, organizes the unfolding of both local and global musical spans. Example 1 shows three common patterns of such tonic-dominant motions. In each of the examples lal, bl1, and Icl there is only one note

"You Must Remember This": Memory and Structure in Schubert's String Quartet in G Major, D. 887

Journal Article “You Must Remember This”: Memory and Structure in Schubert's String Quartet in G Major, D. 887 Get access Walter Frisch Walter Frisch Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Musical Quarterly, Volume 84, Issue 4, Winter 2000, Pages 582–603, https://doi.org/10.1093/mq/84.4.582 Published: 01 December 2000

Schubert and the Sound of Memory

We are what we remember. Nothing is so uniquely one's own as one's memories-not only because they form the transcript of an individual history, but also because that transcript is so idiosyncratically preserved, so personally constructed and maintained. We are how we remember. The act of recollection is a fundamentally creative act as well as an existential act; it is at once self-expression and self-constitution. The more overtly self-expressive acts that we call art mirror this aspect of recollection in that they too devolve upon a content that is referred to and a way of referring to that content, and the two are not usually separable. It is thus no coincidence that we often treat artworks as if they exude consciousness. And the analogy gathers force with music, which relies so fundamentally on the repetition of its own past events as a means of gaining coherence. Music is an art form that seems to aspire to the condition of memory, which may be why some romantics wished for their various arts to aspire to the condition of music. For there is nothing so compelling in the worldview of romanticism as the pull of what is no longer, or not yet, there. Music gains immediacy and authenticity from the very fact of its irrevocable transience. Like our perception of time, music moves toward the future, inviting us to anticipate, while also streaming into the past, inviting us to recollect. That the later instrumental music of Franz Schubert stands as a distinctive realization of this recollective mode of musical consciousness is the motivating assumption of the articles in this volume by Walter Frisch, John Daverio, Charles Fisk, and John Gingerich. The music they discuss faces backward rather than forward, recreating a past rather than creating a future--or, putting it more provocatively, creating a past rather than recreating a future. Taking a cue from Carl Dahlhaus, Frisch hears in Schubert's String Quartet in G Major (D. 887) a thoroughgoing logic of reminiscence. The very opening of the first movement remembers some baroque musical gestures, and then the crucial bars that follow remember the opening. Passages in later movements remember signal events and moods from

Samuel Beckett and Music

The dust-jacket of Samuel Beckett and Music features a drawing by Beckett's friend Avigdor Arikha entitled "Samuel Beckett listening to music, 9 xii 1976." It shows an intent listener who is concentrating on his experience. One wonders to what he might be listening. Schubert, perhaps? Beckett was fiercely interested in music all his life; he grew up with music, became an amateur pianist, married an accomplished pianist, and evidently broadened his musical horizons all the time. He formed friendships with musicians: Marcel Mihalovici and his wife Monique Haas; Morton Feldman, Heinz Holliger. Many of his dramatic works make use of musical passages in a precise and detailed way: Schubert's string quartet "Death and the Maiden" in All That Fall; the same composer's Lied "Nacht und Träume" in the television play of the same name; Beethoven's "Ghost" Trio (op. 70, #1). In two of his radio plays, Words and Music and Cascando, Beckett makes use of [End Page 104] Music as a protagonist over Words, characters representing voice or speech. In Happy Days, Lehár's "Merry Widow" is utilized as a theme. All of Beckett's readers are keenly aware of the musicality of the texts. An observation of this kind amounts to no more than a convenient metaphor calling attention to the euphony or sonority, along with some sort of rhythmic profile, of an author's words. Beckett's words, their quietly pulsing loneliness, their striving for the solace of silence, are among the most poetic--i.e., "musical"--expressions of contemporary literature. But the question of words and music is more enigmatic. It involves the problematic attitude and relationship of a literary author who is well versed in music, whose work generates its own kind of music, and whose works are strong temptations for composers.

Samuel Beckett and Music

The dust-jacket of Samuel Beckett and Music features a drawing by Beckett's friend Avigdor Arikha entitled "Samuel Beckett listening to music, 9 xii 1976." It shows an intent listener who is concentrating on his experience. One wonders to what he might be listening. Schubert, perhaps? Beckett was fiercely interested in music all his life; he grew up with music, became an amateur pianist, married an accomplished pianist, and evidently broadened his musical horizons all the time. He formed friendships with musicians: Marcel Mihalovici and his wife Monique Haas; Morton Feldman, Heinz Holliger. Many of his dramatic works make use of musical passages in a precise and detailed way: Schubert's string quartet "Death and the Maiden" in All That Fall; the same composer's Lied "Nacht und Träume" in the television play of the same name; Beethoven's "Ghost" Trio (op. 70, #1). In two of his radio plays, Words and Music and Cascando, Beckett makes use of [End Page 104] Music as a protagonist over Words, characters representing voice or speech. In Happy Days, Lehár's "Merry Widow" is utilized as a theme. All of Beckett's readers are keenly aware of the musicality of the texts. An observation of this kind amounts to no more than a convenient metaphor calling attention to the euphony or sonority, along with some sort of rhythmic profile, of an author's words. Beckett's words, their quietly pulsing loneliness, their striving for the solace of silence, are among the most poetic--i.e., "musical"--expressions of contemporary literature. But the question of words and music is more enigmatic. It involves the problematic attitude and relationship of a literary author who is well versed in music, whose work generates its own kind of music, and whose works are strong temptations for composers.

The chronology of Schubert's string quartets

The chronology of Schubert's string quartets