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Name: Bruce Cropper
E-mail: mediate@ihug.co.nz
Date: Sunday, July 29, 2001 at 07:41:04
Text: There appear to be at lest two other beings who appreciate the utterly sublime beauty of Scubert's C major String Quintet.
My first awareness of the work came many years ago when I saw a biographic film of Artur Rubinstein. AR said the quintet was his all time favourite piece of music. As he was a pianist, I sat up and took some notice. Soon after I acquired a copy of the Weller Quartet's performance on vinyl and fell in love with the piece. The love affair has lasted around 30 years and will never die while I live (and who knows after that?). The piece has remained my own favourite.
I also agree that the Unfinished is the other work which plumbs the depths and ascends the height of human emotion.
Great as Beethoven is (and I enjoy so much of his music) only a few pieces approach (for me) the depth of the quintet: Cavatina (op 130); slow movement of opus 135; and slow movement of Archduke Piano Trio.
Name: Hoshang Dastoor
E-mail: hdastoor@vsnl.com
Date: Thursday, March 29, 2001 at 13:24:40
Text: Schubert String Quintet is one of the noblest and most elevated examples of pure and direct communication with the Divine through the medium of instrumental music.
One of the great tragedies of music was Schubert's most untimely passing at the age of 31. And yet an intimate experince of the Quintet tends to draw us inexorably to the conclusion that, having created this masterpiece, he realised the greatest heights, and we wonder whether he could ever have surpassed himself had he lived a normal life span. Through the tragedy, then, we rejoice because here is a soul who has travelled very far indeed on his chosen spiritual path.
One of the distinguishing features of Schubert's greatest music is the tremendous power of its expression. This is seen in his String Quartet No. 15 in G Major and also in the "Great" C Major Symphony. But it is in the Quintet that this power is at its most all-embracing and versatile. Here, Schubert takes you into regions of intense concentration, where there is a still centre that nothing can ever disturb or agitate.
The first such oasis is the second subject of the first movement, where you are carried in a gently meandering stream. There is a deep pulse here, subtle and ever-present, and a sense of quietly determined movement. And you wonder, as always with the quintessential late Schubert, how beautiful his tunes are and how difficult it is at the same time to grasp their true inner meaning.
One is soon immersed in that incomparable miracle of inspiration, the second movement, where you are suspended in an intense, dimensionless region, at once bottomlessly profound and unsurpassably lofty, and are utterly quieted in that trance-like meditation. This music cannot be described in ordinary terms - it suffuses the human organism wholly, and cleanses the spirit with infinite wisdom and gentlenes and love.
Having said that, we find ourselves plunged into that stormy middle section - only to find to our vastest surprise that the agitation is but another side, a complementary aspect, as it were, to the initial, quietly meditative impulse of this movement. This section is introspective throughout the gamut of its hard struggles; its laboured breathing is worship, and we are climbing up a jagged mountain, returning to peace only after falling many times.
And what a return it is! How is Schubert going to make it, we ask ourselves. And yet, the reprise of the opening is a pure miracle - the sense of moving from darkness to light. And even when out of that dim and troublous tunnel, we cannot forget our agitation easily. Schubert lets us come out of it gradually, on our own terms, as if he knows that any more abrupt transition would be shattering to our psyches.
Nearing the end of the second movement is that celebrated timeless point where there is an attempt to re-enter that grim tunnel (we wonder why, in the first place), and we hover at the brink in a state of almost unbearable suspense, before we are finally led towards wonderflly calm resolution as the all-pervading tranquility of the final bars descends upon us.
We sonder whether Schubert will ever be able to recapture this state of being, especially after the tumultous and strident opening of the third movement. However, the trio does have a surprise in store - it is deeply mysterious and still, and we are led into yet another brief journey of the spirit.
The greatest musical works are those that incorporate many diverse levels of intellectual and spiritual experience, and balance all of these so as to envelope and enrich our whole being. Such creations are indeed rare and the C Major Quintet is a supreme example.
Name: Charles Han
E-mail: 27110@advanced.org
Date: Wednesday, September 1, 1999 at 23:50:23
Text: Here is a fine excerpt on this piece, taken from CD liner notes by Martin Chusid:
"There is only one instrumental work by Schubert other than [this] Quintet which has consistently received comparable appreciation: the 'Unfinished' Symphony. In both compositions an opening Allegro movement combines melodies of astonishing beauty with moments of great power. In each, a sublime slow movement follows, in which an almost ethereal serenity gives way to passionate outbursts. These outbursts, in turn, serve to emphasize the prevailing, almost magical, tone in the remainder of the movement.
"For the lover of chamber music, Schubert's String Quintet emerges as one of the purest, one of the most ideal expressions of mankind's rich and varied emotional world. Musician and amateur alike seem to agree that art has never been more successfully wedded with musical technique than in this completely satisfying composition."
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