5 - Second Movement

Summary

Perhaps the most fecund and brilliant movement, the C minor Allegretto is a formally remarkable scherzo with a lengthy trio that takes over the bulk of the movement, leading to a greatly curtailed reprise. Hensel’s manuscript shows that the initially clear ternary design of the movement was manipulated by both intercutting two-bar snippets of the scherzo material into the development of the trio and excising the reprise of the opening bars of the scherzo, thus surreptitiously initiating the reprise amidst the ongoing trio. This leads to the dissolution of the scherzo and a tonally unstable close that prepares the world of the following movement.