Observations placeholder
Schubert - The Trout Quintet
Identifier
020633
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
The Trout Quintet is the popular name for the Piano Quintet in A major, D. 667. The work was composed in 1819, when Schubert was 22 years old; it was not published, however, until 1829, a year after his death.
Schubert spent the summer of 1818, as a music teacher to the family of Count Johann Karl Esterházy at their château in Zseliz (now Želiezovce, Slovakia). His duties teaching piano and singing to the two daughters were relatively light, allowing him to compose happily. Both Marie and Karoline were his piano students, but he fell in love with Ksroline - a love that remained unfulfilled.
Wikipedia
Schubert's chamber music continues to be popular. In a poll, the results of which were announced in October 2008, the ABC in Australia found that Schubert's chamber works dominated the field, with the Trout Quintet coming first, followed by two of his other works.
His "appetite for experimentation" manifests itself repeatedly in Schubert's output in a wide variety of forms and genres, including opera, liturgical music, chamber and solo piano music, and symphonic works. Perhaps most familiarly, his adventurousness manifests itself as a notably original sense of modulation, as in the second movement of the String Quintet (D. 956) where he modulates from E major through F minor, to reach the tonic key of E major. It also appears in unusual choices of instrumentation, as in the Sonata in A minor for arpeggione and piano (D. 821), or the unconventional scoring of the Trout Quintet (D. 667).
His harmonic innovations include movements in which the first section ends in the key of the subdominant rather than the dominant (as in the last movement of the Trout Quintet).
A description of the experience
Franz Schubert - The Trout (complete)
Piano Quintet in A Major, D. 667, "The Trout," III. Scherzo (Presto)" by Caspar da Salo