D minor, D 810, known as Death and the Maiden, is a piece by Franz Schubert that has been called “one of the pillars of the chamber musicrepertoire”. It was composed in 1824, after the composer suffered from a serious illness and realized that he was dying. It is named for the theme of the second movement, which Schubert took from a song he wrote in 1817 of the same title. But, writes Walter Willson Cobbett, all four movements of the quartet are welded “into a unity under the pressure of a dominating idea – the dance of death.” 

Schubert wrote the D minor quartet in March 1824, within weeks of completing the A minor Rosamundequartet. He apparently planned to publish a three-set volume of quartets; but the Rosamunde was published within a year, while the D minor quartet was only published in 1831, three years after Schubert’s death, by Diabelli. It was first played in January 1826 at the Vienna home of Karl and Franz Hacker, amateur violinists, apparently with Schubert on the viola. 

The quartet takes its name from the lied “Der Tod und das Mädchen”, D 531, a setting of the poem of the same name by Matthias Claudius, that Schubert wrote in 1817. The theme of the song forms the basis of the second movement of the quartet. The theme is a death knell that accompanies the song about the terror and comfort of death. 

Bron: Wikipedia.org