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Franz Schubert

Allegretto in C minor, D. 915 (Schubert)

Allegretto in C minor, D. 915 is a short piano piece written on 26 April 1827 by Franz Schubert. It is approximately 5 minutes in

History#

The immediate occasion for the composition was the departure of Schubert’s friend Ferdinand Walcher for a post in Venice; Schubert copied the piece into Walcher’s album at the latter’s farewell party. Nevertheless, Blair Johnson points out that it is “tempting” to read into the piece the momentous event that had occurred in Schubert’s life only a month earlier: the death of Beethoven on March 26. Schubert had met his great predecessor only once, but Beethoven, in bed with his final illness, praised the Schubert lieder he had seen and raved about them to all his visitors, most likely thereby singlehandedly raising Schubert’s musical reputation in Vienna. Suzanne Yanko echoes these sentiments: “The influence of Beethoven was evident in this composition.”

Structure#

The piece has a simple A-B-A structure, in keys of C minor – A major – C minor. Johnson call it a “perfectly balanced ternary piece” and continues: “the meter arpeggiation of the main theme is the sort of thing that Beethoven might indeed have spun.” Johnson describes the middle section as “sounding something like a broken up chorale”; he finds that this “rich pianissimo” middle section seems to anticipate the music of Schumann and Brahms, both of whom thought highly of Schubert.

*A recording of a 1963 live performance of this piece by Sviatoslav Richter

Composer
Franz Schubert