In 1823, Schubert suffered bouts of severe illness and hospitalization. He nevertheless managed to compose many fine works, including the music for "Rosamunde." Schubert regained his health in 1824 and reworked some of the Rosamunde music into a new string quartet, his No. 13 in A minor. Schubert dedicated the quartet to Ignaz Schuppanzigh, a friend and mentor to Beethoven. Schuppanzigh played first violin for the work's premiere in Vienna on March 14, 1824.
This sonata-form movement begins with a wistful theme in the first violin accompanied by swirling arpeggios in the second violin and static harmonies in the viola and cello. The thematic material vacillates between minor and major and thus represents a dialectic of sorrow and joy. Schubert assimilated this modal freedom from Beethoven. Optimistic major keys struggle for assertion throughout the movement, but in the end, sadness reigns as the movement closes in A minor.
Schubert followed typical practice in the Rosamunde Quartet by writing the second movement in a slower tempo and in the relative major (C major) of the work's overall key (A minor). This movement's paraphrase of the Entr'acte No. 3 in B-flat major from the Rosamunde music gives the quartet as whole its nickname. Schubert transposed the material up a step to conform to the quartet's tonal plan.
Keeping true to the string quartet genre, Schubert composed the third movement as a minuet, a triple-meter dance of moderate tempo. The tonal plan breaks new ground, however. Ambiguous tonality in the opening passage presages a rapid fluctuation between major and minor throughout the rest of the movement. The trio section boldly asserts the A major key, only to be overruled by the inexorable power of A minor at the movement's close.
The Rosamunde Quartet could just as well be called the "Götter Griechenlands" Quartet. Both the third and fourth movements spin out their thematic material from motifs first heard in Schubert's own "Die Götter Griechenlands" ("The Greek Gods"), a Lied composition from 1819. Sprightly dotted rhythms and virtuosic passagework characterize this final movement. Though minor tonalities make their presence felt, Schubert finally cuts through the gloom once and for all with a rousing cadence in A major to complete the work.