[3] The work focuses on lyrical ideas and explores far-reaching major and minor modes, which was uncommon to this degree in his compositions.
The first movement is based around a motive of chromatic descending fourths within alternating major and minor modes.
[6] This may include the use of a motive in triplets to connect the first and second main groups of this sonata form; the second group opens, exactly as happens in the later-written String Quintet and similar to the technique in some works by Beethoven — not in the dominant key but with a quiet theme in the mediant, B-flat, with rhythm not quite the same as that of the lyrical theme that slowed matters down early on (bar fourteen, again), and adding to the texture with pizzicato accompaniment.
There is a triplet-dominated, agitated transition and the same theme is heard, now in D, with triplet accompaniments; the triplets, not the theme, continue to the end of the exposition, and descend gradually from D down to G major for the repeat, or for the second ending and the beginning of the development, where continuity means the continued rustling of quiet strings, building for a bit by exchanging with more energetic passages, then bringing in faster versions of the dotted rhythms of the main themes.
The climax of the development leads to a particularly quiet recapitulation, much varied at its opening from what we had heard originally.
Passing seventh chords in the bass provide a smooth linear progression connecting these major thirds, the result of which is a whole tone descent in the bass-voice, in this case the cello.
In measure 426 Schubert enharmonically reinterprets this dominant-seventh structure, resolving it as a German augmented 6th, thus proceeding bVI-V-I in mm.
[7] The dramatic slow movement contains much in the way of a march rhythm and sudden upward violin glissandos followed by drops to the lowest string, and again much use of tremolo.
The rhythms are reminiscent of a tarantella, as with that of the previous quartet — which the movement resembles in some capricious qualities.