SCHUBERT – Grand Fugue in A minor (orig. E minor), D.952 (1828) – FOUR CELLOS

Other Identification:
Franz Schubert’s Fugue in E minor, D952 (Op. posth. 152) is a four-hand piano or organ piece composed in just a few hours, on June 3rd, 1828. Written in the last year of his life (he passed away five months later, in November), this technically rigorous work demonstrates a masterful, strict contrapuntal style rarely associated with the Romantic composer.

The origins of the Fugue in E minor, D952 were recounted by Schubert’s composer friend Franz Lachner:
“In the year 1828, on 3 June, Schubert and I were invited by the editor of the Modezeitung [Wiener Zeitschrift für Kunst, Literatur, Theater und Mode], Herr [Johann] Schikh, for a country outing to Baden, near Vienna. In the evening Schikh said to us: ‘Tomorrow morning we shall go to Heiligenkreuz, to hear the famous organ there. Perhaps you could both compose a small piece and perform it there?’ Schubert suggested the composition of a four-hands fugue, which was completed by both parties towards midnight. On the next day, at 6 in the morning, we travelled to Heiligenkreuz, where both fugues were performed in the presence of several monks”

Schubert, who was about to embark on the composition of his Mass in E flat major, D950, was much preoccupied with fugal writing during the final months of his life, and he subsequently used the same fugue-subject for an exercise in counterpoint which he prepared in the hope of receiving instruction from the renowned theoretician Simon Sechter. Although Schubert’s fugue is laid out for four hands, the presence during its closing stages of a long-sustained pedal-note in the bass indicates that he had the sound of the Heiligenkreuz organ in mind.

It is a guess as to how this contrapuntal expertise would have been incorporated in Schubert’s future works, had he lived longer.