Schubert: Trio No. 2 in E flat major, D. 929

At some point I am going to do a series of posts on Schubert who I am exploring in some depth right now. On the New York Times list of the Ten Greatest Composers, he comes fourth, right after Bach, Beethoven and Mozart. He was the shortest lived of any of those, dying at only thirty-one, but still managing to write an enormous body of wonderful music. I'm just going to pick out one tiny example today, the Andante from his second and last piano trio. This was one of the last pieces he composed and certainly one of the last he had an opportunity to hear. It was given in a private performance in November 1827 with Ignaz Schuppanzigh on violin, the first violin in the quartet that premiered most of Beethoven's quartets.

One of Schubert's great gifts as a composer was the ability to write beautiful, haunting melodies. Of all the great composers he was the most gifted song writer (he wrote some six hundred!). I suspect that the melody of the Andante will seem familiar as it has been used in a host of movie soundtracks including Barry Lyndon by Stanley Kubrick. Here is that melody:

Click to enlarge

One characteristic structural device that Schubert uses, though he was certainly not the only one, is the restatement of the theme, originally in minor, in major. The drifting between major and minor is a typical feature of Schubert's harmony. Here is a performance of the Andante: