Allegretto in C minor D 915 is a short piano piece written on 26 April 1827 by Franz Schubert (1797-1828).
The immediate occasion for the composition was the departure of Schubert’s friend Ferdinand Walcher for a post in Venice; Schubert copied the piece into Walcher’s album at the latter’s farewell party.
[1][2] Nevertheless, Blair Johnson points out that it is “tempting” to read into the piece the momentous event that had occurred in Schubert’s life only a month earlier: the death of Beethoven on March 26.
Johnson continues, “it may well be that Beethoven was in Schubert’s thoughts when he sat down to pen the Allegretto in C minor D 915.”[3] He goes on to suggest that even the key of C minor is significant, as this key was special to Beethoven.
Johnson call it a “perfectly balanced ternary piece” and continues: “the 6/8 meter arpeggiation of the main theme is the sort of thing that Beethoven might indeed have spun.”[4] David Truslove describes: “Momentum in the outer panels is twice interrupted by the arrival of two disquieting chords, while sighing gestures bring untroubled warmth to the movement’s chordal centerpiece in a glowing A flat major.”[6] Johnson describes the middle section as “sounding something like a broken up chorale”; he finds that this “rich pianissimo” middle section seems to anticipate the music of Schumann and Brahms, both of whom thought highly of Schubert.