String Quartets II

Schubert String Quartets II (Parts)

The present volume contains four of Schubert’s string quartets from the years 1810 to 1813.  One of them, the Quartet in B-flat major D 68  (June – August 1813), survives as a fragment in two movements which, in all likelihood, originally formed the outside movements of a four-movement work.

These are the earliest string quartets by the adolescent Schubert.  They were written at a time when he was attending the ‘Stadtkonvikt’ or municipal boarding school in Vienna and was studying composition with Antonio Salieri.  We know of two other quartets written roughly at the same time as the earliest of these (D 18 ) but which disappeared by the turn of the century.  Two other works from this series of early quartets, D 46 and D 96, can be found in the companion volume, String Quartets I (BA 5625).