It was in the late summer of 1828, 3 months before his death on November 19, 1828, that the doctors told Franz Schubert that his illness was beyond a cure. It is hard to pinpoint the dates he began and completed the E-flat trio, because he often worked on simultaneous projects. But Schubert had radically changed elements of the piece from his working drafts to his final manuscript, including drastic structural changes in his slow movement, and a recasting to B-minor of the haunting repeated note 2nd theme in the opening movement.
Much like the shocking ending of the cello quintet, we can’t help seeing these changes as indications that Schubert had started the trio before he was given his fateful diagnosis, but once told that he would not survive, the knowledge changed the course of his composition.
His use of repeated notes are dirge-like, and after a stormy outburst of struggling against his fate, the lament returns with a marching descent, drawing one down deep into the ground. It’s return in the last movement seems as an illustration of how inescapable this despair was, no matter how much Schubert tried to distract from it.
Here is the Piano trio #2 by Franz Schubert:
