The string quartet has traditionally been the medium via which the composer exposed their innermost feelings. The poverty-stricken and already terminally ill Franz Schubert wrote “Death and the Maiden” in 1824 at the same time as churning out jolly gemütlich music for Viennese society balls. The title of the piece comes from its second movement which was based on a song “Der Tod und das Mädchen” that Schubert had written seven years earlier. The bleak, foreboding theme of mortality permeates all four movements of the quartet. The last movement is a tarantella - a traditional dance to ward off madness and death.

The quartet was not publicly performed in Schubert’s lifetime. He died four years after completing it, at the age of 31. Enter the cemetery at sundown, pause for a morale boosting Hendrick's gin and tonic and proceed at your peril on a procession to the chapel in the heart of the cemetery.

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The Vanitas Quartet
The members of the Vanitas quartet met while studying for their Masters Degrees in performance at the Royal College of Music in London. Their name is inspired by the genre of still life artwork which contrasts objects of wealth with symbols of decay to depict the transience of life, the futility of pleasure and the certainty of death.