6 - Third Movement

Summary

The expressive heart of the quartet, the third-movement Romanze is marked throughout by pronounced harmonic ambivalence and formal fluidity, picking up the tonal instability heard at the end of the preceding movement. Written in a G minor signature, the ostensible tonic is continually undercut by its subdominant C minor, and even the G major sonority at the end of the movement leaves the matter not entirely resolved. Once again, manuscripts show substantial revisions to parts of the movement: indeed, it appears that Hensel clarified certain moments of tonal articulation in order, almost paradoxically, to increase the sense of tonal ambiguity.