Trout Quintet

Trout Quintet, five-movement quintet for piano and stringed instruments by Austrian composer Franz Schubert that is characterized by distinctive instrumentation and form.

In the summer of 1819 Schubert visited the Austrian town of Steyr, about halfway between Vienna and Salzburg, with his friend Johann Michael Vogl, a baritone of the Vienna court opera and a tireless promoter of the young composer’s works. Vogl’s friends often gathered at private homes for informal recitals, at which Schubert’s songs and piano works enjoyed great popularity. One of the circle was Sylvester Paumgartner, a wealthy music lover who allowed Schubert free use of his music room and staged midday concerts in his salon. He commissioned from Schubert a new work, for which he specified the same unusual instrumentation that Johann Nepomuk Hummel had used a few years earlier in his opus 87 quintet: piano, violin, viola, cello, and double bass. (Most piano quintets are written for piano and string quartet—two violins, viola, and cello.)

Schubert quickly composed an evocative work that takes the conventional Classical period four-movement format (that is, the structure of the sonata) and interpolates a set of variations before the finale to create the unusual five-movement structure. The first movement features a rippling triplet figure that begins in the piano part and moves on to the other instruments. After the tranquil “Andante,” the “Scherzo” movement evokes brisk folk dances. The fourth-movement theme and variations are based upon one of Schubert’s own songs, “Die Forelle” (German: “The Trout”)—a favourite of Paumgartner’s. The theme is first plainly stated; then in the subsequent variations each of the five instruments has a turn with the melody. In the “Allegro” finale the rippling triplets from the opening reappear. The overall mood of the composition is light and bright, but the weighting of the instrumental texture toward the bass range helps give the piece nuance and depth. It has endured as a favourite in the chamber music repertoire.