Five days before his untimely death in 1828, a musical friend arranged a small concert next to his deathbed. The last music he ever heard was Beethoven’s string quartet in C minor, a work completed two years before. It was written in the same year as Schubert’s own fifteenth string quartet. It would be his last.
Not the best known work, but like most of Schubert’s work, a work of romantic subtlety and beauty. A bit more lyrical than Schubert’s other work. I like that about it. I think a lot of Schubert’s compositions is, how to say it, rather bourgeois. It is not sensational, it more meant to be played in the small household, by Father and Mother with their two children (the capitals are intentional). His later work is a bit more adventurous, and I appreciate that.
A certain Karl Holz, who was at the concert at Schubert’s deathbed wrote later: The King of Harmony has sent the King of Song a friendly bidding to the crossing. Maybe the two composers were indeed greeting each other in their musical language, writing their string quartets in the same year.