1. For the first time since instrumental music began, major composers appeared who showed no interest in chamber music.
2. Such composers as Berlioz, Chopin, Liszt, and Wagner will not figure in the lists of composers of important chamber works.
3. Franz Peter Schubert was born in Vienna in January, 1797. At age 11 he entered the Vienna court choir until his voice broke in 1813.
4. By 1811 he had begun composing. Literally hundreds of songs, many Masses, piano pieces, and works for the stage were written before he was twenty. He is one of the most prolific of all composers writing more than 600 songs, eight or more symphonies, two dozen piano sonatas, scores of smaller pieces for piano and for vocal groups, operattas and Masses, and finally about two dozen chamber-music works.
5. Actually untrained in counterpoint and not too thoroughly grounded in other aspects of theory his general musical education was incomplete and unsatisfactory. Only his native genius propelled him into the list of greats.
6. His most outstanding characteristic is his melodic gift which is almost without peer.

Franz Schubert

1. The six early quartets, written in his teens, are immature works in most respects. They do, however, show evidence of a style based on his innate feeling for drama and color.
2. As in his late and great chamber music of the 1824-28 period there are long, forceful passages rising to great climaxes of sound, orchestral effects of tremolo, sonorous unison, and widespread chordal writing.
3. His almost aimless harmonic wandering in these early quartets are prelude to his lifelong preoccupation with colorful harmonies. The first quartet, for example, begins with a long introduction in C minor, D minor, and G minor, although the quartet as a whole is in Bb.
4. His mastery of sonata-form is first exhibited in three quartets written between 1813 and 1817, in Eb Op.125, No.1 in D, without opus number and Opus 168 in Bb. The opening movement of the Eb is beautifully balanced and proportioned and are reminiscent of early Beethoven.
5. Schubert's great problem was to find a way to reconcile his essentially lyric themes with his feeling for dramatic utterance within a form that provided the possibility of extreme color contrasts. The solution takes the form of a sectional structure, with contrasting sections well marked by sustained notes, pauses, holds, contrasting melodies, unusual modulation or rhythmic changes.
6. His first great work is the Quintet in A major D667, for piano, violin, viola, cello and bass. Written in 1819 and named for the variations on his song Die Forelle (The Trout) which are presented as the fourth movement in a five movement work. The bass is an independent voice that provides a foundation for the piano as well as the other string instruments. The piano is used in a high range throughout the work, employing its lowest octaves only rarely. The result is a new tone color not found in any earlier chamber works. Lyricism pervades the entire work and his experimental and Romantic tonal palette may be seen in the harmonic plan for the second movement: three related sections, one lyric, one melancholy, and one restrained are heard in F, F# minor, and D respectively...the last section ends in G, however, and the three sections are then repeated exactly but a minor third higher in Ab, A minor, and F.
7. Of his quartets, 15 in all, the A minor D804, (the only string quartet of Schubert's published in his lifetime) and the grim D minor D810, known as Death and the Maiden (again a slow movement theme adapted from one of his songs - also there are fragments of his song Erlkonig), are contrasting in the extreme: the A minor is lyric and resigned, without the intensity that usually characterize his work. The D minor is melodious, brilliant, powerful and dramatic and is regarded as one of his greatest works.
8. The String Quintet in C major, published in 1850 as D956, and among his last efforts, is perhaps Schubert's closest approach to perfection in his entire body of work. It is written for two violins, viola and two cellos. Unique in its instrumentation, it has taken its place in the chamber-music repertoire as one of the finest compositions of any period. In its entire conception, beauty of melody, and variety of mood are without equal. Instrumental color effects unknown in the earlier literature are abundant throughout the work. The added cello amplifies the texture and makes possible a quality of lyricism that a string quartet seldom achieves. All possible groupings of instruments in twos and threes are employed. (See the listening notes for additional comments regarding the Scherzo of this work).

Felix Mendelssohn

1. Born in Hamburg in 1809 (d.1847) the son of wealthy, cultured parents, Felix enjoyed every advantage of education, environment, travel and associations with famous people.
2. When the family moved to Berlin in 1812 the family home was a center of musical life.
3. From his ninth year Felix was an accomplished pianist.
4. A compositional prodigy, his first compositions date from his pre-teen years. Fantastically, his compositional maturity had been largely reached by his sixteenth year. The music for A Midsummer Night's Dream, the octet and similar works were written within a year or two of 1825.
5. Viewed overall, Mendelssohn's compositions reveal him to be a classicist with some Romantic tendencies, particularly in the ability to convey ideas or paint 'scenes' musically (think Scherzo from the Midsummer Night's Dream). He wrote in traditional forms and his modifications did not obscure the traditional patterns.
6. He had a high regard for his musical heritage, studied and performed the works of Bach, Handel, and Mozart, and applied in his own works many of the principles that governed theirs.
7. He wrote in counterpoint including fugato without the air of the academic. He was influenced by such artists as Goethe, Beethoven and Shakespeare.
8. He wrote lyrical melodies and frequently used the diminished-seventh chord, but chromaticism played a relatively small role in his music. His orchestrations are superb and show his through understanding of the orchestral instruments and his ability to use their tone colors effectively.

MENDELSSOHN'S CHAMBER WORKS

1. He showed interest in chamber music from the beginning. His first attempts are three piano quartets, Opus' 1,2 and 3 written between 1822 and 1824 and they show his innate awareness of musical form and good taste.
2. His earliest masterpiece is the quartet in A minor op.13 (Ulrich wrongly refers to this quartet as A major) written in 1827, the year of Beethoven's death.
3. The most important of his chamber music are the Octet, the Piano Trios in D minor op.49 - 1839, and C minor op.66 - 1845, and the three string quartets of op.44 (D, E minor and Eb).
4. Of the quartets the Eb major is the finest. In it he reversed the order of the two middle movements, placing the scherzo second and following the slow movement with a brilliant finale.
5. The Octet is not a double quartet but an eight-voice composition. Its four-movement structure follows the Classical pattern except for tonality where the outer movements are in Eb, the Andante in C minor and the Scherzo in G minor.

Robert Schumann

1. A year younger than Mendelssohn, Schumann was born in Saxony in 1810 (d.1856). In his formative years he was interested in the Romantic writers, particularly Jean Paul Richter (1763-1825) whose sentimental, effusive, extravagant style left its lifelong mark on Schumann.
2. He began, against his parents wishes, a musical career about 1830. In 1840 he married his piano teacher's daughter, Clara Wieck, one of the finest pianists in Europe.
3. Never in good health he died in July of 56 in a state of complete mental collap

SCHUMANN'S CHAMBER MUSIC

1. In 1842 Schumann turned his attention to chamber music. Six of his ten chamber compositions were written in that year: three string quartets (A minor, F major, A major - Opus 41), a piano quintet Eb major, op.44, a piano quartet op.47 also in Eb, and the Phantasiestucke for Piano trio op.88.
2. Both sides of his personality, the dreamy and the passionate are present in these works. The Opus 44 quintet is one of his best chamber works. The first movement is a model of formal clarity and proportion. In the finale Schumann achieved, invented really, a kind of double-sonata form with principles of cyclic recurrence, briefly its outline is: