This Trout Quintet, with its 5 movements, was composed in 1819 when Schubert was on a summer holiday in Steyr, a small town in Upper Austria, with his friend, the singer Johann Vogl. Schubert was 22, and these three months seem to have been one of the most unclouded periods of his short life. He was intoxicated with the "inconceivably lovely" place, and not only with nature and the heady sweetness of pine trees and mountain air but also with the eight pretty girls who were the daughters and friends of a Dr. Schellmann, in whose house he was lodging.
Much music-making took place. A mine-owner, Herr Paumgartner, owned a large house in Steyr, in which he provided a warm welcome to visiting musicians. He suggested that Schubert should write a quintet using violin, viola, cello, double-bass, and piano, and that tune of Schubert's song The Trout, be included.
This 5th and last movement is marked Allegro giusto. The second half is an exact transposition of the first half arranged to arrive home in A major. There is, in fact, no development section; the discussion of the themes has been going on all the while. The holiday mood takes over.
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