Announcement
„The New Schubert Edition – From the Sources to the Edition“
The Schubert Research Center at the Austrian Academy of Sciences is committed to establishing personal contact with committed young scholars. It invites applicants to a summer school, which will take place in Vienna from September 24 to 26, 2025.
The call is aimed at advanced students of music and musicology who are interested in a modern edition of music scores based on historical sources. Since 1965, musicologists from all over the world have been working on the New Schubert Edition, a complete edition of Franz Schubert’s works, including drafts, fragments, and various versions of a composition.
Summer School participants will become familiar with Schubert’s original manuscripts and other 19th-century sources on Schubert’s music. Using practical examples, we will demonstrate how a scholarly edition is created and give students the opportunity to create their own musical score. The workshop aims to convey methods of modern editorial philology and invites discussion about their significance for contemporary, historically informed performance practice.
Staff members of the New Schubert Edition at the University of Tübingen and the Austrian Centre for Digital Humanities of the Austrian Academy of Sciences will be available as lecturers. The course will be awarded 3 ECTS credits.
Applications, including a brief, detailed CV and a letter of motivation, should be sent to schubert_at_oeaw.ac.at by May 19, 2025, at the latest. The committee will cover travel and accommodation expenses; the working language is German.
This volume contains Franz Schubert’s Part Songs with orchestra or an instrumental ensemble, as well as the orchestral song “Brüder, schrecklich brennt die Träne” D. 535 (Brothers, the tears burn terribly) for soprano and small orchestra. The appendix contains a fragmentary draft of “Gesang der Geister über den Wassern” (Song of the Spirits over the Waters), D. 714, and an incomplete composition (D Anh. I, 25). The instrumentation of the individual songs varies considerably: in addition to the solo or choral voices, low strings, four horns, or a wind ensemble are included (D. 714, 913, 954). The remaining compositions, all of which are occasional works, require larger, orchestral ensembles.
Extensive evaluations of an uncertain work, a “Christmas Carol” (D. deest) without text, have shown that it is not a composition by Schubert, although two other, previously unknown sources attribute this composition to Franz Schubert. The same applies to the “Three Choirs with Wind Instruments” (D Anh. I, 27), which Otto Erich Deutsch had already classified as inauthentic in his Schubert catalogue raisonné. Despite extensive research, no sources could be found for the lost cantata “Prometheus”, D. 451, and the chorus „Auf den Sieg der Deutschen“ (To the Victory of the Germans) with accompaniment of violins and cellos (D. deest). However, a document by Josef Wilhelm Witteczek was found on “Prometheus” in which the previously known parts of the work, which were only briefly mentioned by Aloys Fuchs, are listed individually, including text incipits. The preface to the edition contains background information and details on these four compositions.
While the lyricists of the earlier works, the cantatas “Wer ist groß?” (D. 110) and “Namensfeier” (D. 294), as well as the song “Brüder, böse brennt die Träne” (D. 535), remain unknown, research has provided clues to their contexts. Thus, the unknown author of the cantata “Wer ist groß?”, in which Napoleon Bonaparte is contrasted with the Austrian Emperor Franz I, who is portrayed in a positive light, could be linked to a satirical pamphlet about Napoleon, “Grundzüge einer Lebensbeschreibung des Herr von Krieg” (Outlines of a Biography of Mr. von Krieg) from the same year (1814). The texts of the other occasional compositions are by Johann Hoheisel (“Kantate zu Ehren von Joseph Spendou”, D. 472), Johann Ludwig Ferdinand von Deinhardstein (“Am Geburtstage des Kaisers”, D. 748), and Johann Anton Friedrich Reil (“Glaube, Hoffnung, Liebe”, D. 954). In “Gesangs der Geister über den Wassern” (D. 714) and “Nachtgesang im Walde” (D. 913), Schubert set to music the poems of the same name by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Johann Gabriel Seidl.
Schubert’s autograph score of “Gesang der Geister über den Wassern” (D. 714) exhibits several peculiarities, the careful study of which led, among other things, to the publication of the composition in two versions. The autograph preserved in the Wienbibliothek contains extensive cuts made in red pencil, in which Schubert was at least involved, as autograph changes made at the connecting points show. The musical text circulated in various editions to date mixes the unabridged and abridged versions in some places, resulting in some serious misinterpretations of Schubert’s intentions, such as incorrect harmonic shifts. The comments in the “Sources and Readings” section provide information about the corrected passages and the revision process.
Franz Schubert’s Mass in G major (D 167) was written in 1815 for the parish in Lichtenthal near Vienna. It was initially intended as a missa brevis with a string orchestra and organ, but was soon supplemented with two trumpets and timpani ad libitum for more festive occasions. This line-up is documented in a set of parts that Schubert himself wrote shortly after his score. Numerous other copies of parts from Schubert’s environment prove that the composer experimented with the form and scoring of the mass during and after the first performances and adapted them to the respective performance conditions.
The New Schubert Edition edits Schubert’s G major Mass for the first time in its adjusted first version for strings and in the second version with trumpets and timpani, which, in addition to the changed instrumentation, also includes numerous smaller changes in the musical text. The appendix to the volume also contains two variants of individual movements from Viennese copies of parts, which Schubert may also have tolerated.
Lund University Library (Sweden) has digitized the extensive Schubert songbooks by Anton Schindler, Pauline Kner and Albert Stadler (Taussig Collection H 38, H 39 and H 40). These important song copies are the only authentic source for many songs whose autographs have been lost. They are now accessible on the Internet.
The opera fragment “Der Spiegelritter” D 11 is the earliest surviving stage work by Franz Schubert. He chose the genre of the Singspiel, a typical “Viennese magic opera”, which was already popular and successful in Vienna before Mozart’s “Magic Flute” and during Schubert’s time. The choice of August von Kotzebue’s libretto of the same name can hardly be surprising given the author’s fame and reputation in his time.
From the extensive evaluations that were part of the editing work, the probable period in which the manuscript was created was autumn 1811 to autumn 1812. The start of work, with sketches or a first transcription, is probably earlier, at the beginning of 1811 or in 1810, which is what Josef von Spaun’s memories indicate. Correction runs throughout the manuscript may have continued until the summer of 1813; An influence of Salieri’s lessons since the summer of 1812 can be assumed, but there are no entries by the teacher in the autograph of D 11.
The present edition attempts to reproduce the last authentic version of the fragment recognizable from the source. This means that all unique corrections were considered valid and applied. The writing medium (ink or pencil) played no role in the decision on validity. On the other hand, an essential criterion was the erasure of the reading ante correcturam.
A special type of autograph pencil inscription can be found in the overture. They are made in a thinner line than the other pencil corrections and without clear erasure of the earlier reading. Musically, it is always a duplication of music already written in brass parts by strings. The preliminary state of the notation does not make it clear whether Schubert intended the versions in pencil to be alternative or additive, for example to color or reinforce the wind instruments, perhaps also as a summary of an openwork movement.
In addition to his symphonies, Franz Schubert wrote eight finished concert overtures between around 1811 and 1819 (two of them in two versions). With the exception of the “Overture in D” (D 4), which refers to the comedy “Der Teufel als Hydraulicus” (“The Devil as Engineer”) and the “Overture in D” (D 26), the original title of which was cut out of the manuscript, it is all about compositions that are neither associated with a drama nor a program. Therefore, at an astonishingly early date in musical history, they embody the type of the pure concert overture; they are also correspond to this terminologically by explicitly dispensing with any further addition in the title; the epithet “in the Italian style”, which is common for two works, was only given posthumously.
For the first time, the “Italian Overture in C” (D 591) appears in its two authentic versions, contrary to the performance tradition that has proven itself based on a mixture of sources. Likewise for the first time, the widely handed-down but corrupted musical course of the “Overture in D” (D 590) has been rectified.
In the shadow of his symphonies, Franz Schubert’s overtures have been largely underestimated in both reception and musical practice – including the “Overture in E minor” (D 648), with which Schubert penetrates radically new spheres of expression to a greater extent than in virtually any other of his works.
Franz Schubert’s Mass in G major (D 167) was written in 1815 for the parish in Lichtenthal near Vienna. It was initially intended as a missa brevis with a string orchestra and organ, but was soon supplemented with two trumpets and timpani ad libitum for more festive occasions. This line-up is documented in a set of parts that Schubert himself wrote shortly after his score. Numerous other copies of parts from Schubert’s environment prove that the composer experimented with the form and scoring of the mass during and after the first performances and adapted them to the respective performance conditions.
The New Schubert Edition edits Schubert’s G major Mass for the first time in its adjusted first version for strings and in the second version with trumpets and timpani, which, in addition to the changed instrumentation, also includes numerous smaller changes in the musical text. The appendix to the volume also contains two variants of individual movements from Viennese copies of parts, which Schubert may also have tolerated. In the foreword, Christine Martin locates the mass and its various forms in the context of Viennese church music of the early 19th century and comments on information about the historical performance practice of the mass that emerges from contemporary sources.
In addition to a mixed four-part choir, string orchestra and organ, the cast includes three solo voices (soprano, tenor and bass) and, in the second version, two trumpets and timpani ad libitum.
The piano features prominently in Schubert’s musical output throughout his career, not only as an instrument for solo piano pieces (for two and four hands), but also in Lieder and chamber music as an equal partner to the voice or other instruments. His preference for the instrument is reflected in contemporary reports by his friends and colleagues as well as in iconography, where he is frequently depicted at the piano.
In early nineteenth-century Vienna the piano underwent a rapid period of development, allowing composers to experiment with expanded ranges, sonorities and effects that differ substantially from modern concert grands.
“Schubert’s Piano” considers the composer’s engagement with this instrument in terms of social history, performance and performance practices, aesthetics, sonority and musical imagery, and his approaches to composition across several musical genres, stimulating new insights into the creative interplay among Schubert’s piano compositions.
For more information, visit
www.cambridge.org/9781316515365
Recently published Critical Report:
Mass in E Flat major (I/4)
The Mass in E flat major is the last of Schubert’s six settings of the Latin Ordinarium missae. According to the autograph date, the composer began writing it in June 1828. This volume offers an edition of the mass based on the autograph preserved in the Berlin State Library. In addition, it includes all of Schubert’s drafts for the mass that have been handed down and while giving important information about the genesis of the work provide insight into the compositional processes.
In the course of preparing the volume, further considerations were made on understanding Schubert’s accents, which in the editor’s opinion primarily represent a means of musical text reading in this mass. In order to be able to reproduce the differentiated use of accents in the edition, which is evident in the autograph notation, the New Schubert Edition has introduced an additional sign with which different durations of accents can be represented.
The opera fragment “Der Spiegelritter” D 11 is the earliest surviving stage work by Franz Schubert. He chose the genre of the Singspiel, a typical “Viennese magic opera”, which was already popular and successful in Vienna before Mozart’s “Magic Flute” and during Schubert’s time. The choice of August von Kotzebue’s libretto of the same name can hardly be surprising given the author’s fame and reputation in his time. The libretto is fully edited in the appendix of the volume based on Schubert’s probable text in order to be able to classify the parts he composed appropriately.
From the extensive evaluations that were part of the editing work, the probable period in which the manuscript was created was autumn 1811 to autumn 1812. The start of work, with sketches or a first transcription, is probably earlier, at the beginning of 1811 or in 1810, which is what Josef von Spaun’s memories indicate. Correction runs throughout the manuscript may have continued until the summer of 1813; An influence of Salieri’s lessons since the summer of 1812 can be assumed, but there are no entries by the teacher in the autograph of D 11. The beginning of work on the opera “Des Teufels Lustschloss” D 84 in October 1813 can be seen as a terminus ante quem, since the decision to turn to a new libretto may also be linked to the decision not to continue composing the one that had already been started.
The present edition attempts to reproduce the last authentic version of the fragment recognizable from the source. This means that all unique corrections were considered valid and applied. The writing medium (ink or pencil) played no role in the decision on validity. On the other hand, an essential criterion was the erasure of the reading ante correcturam.
A special type of autograph pencil inscription can be found in the overture. They are made in a thinner line than the other pencil corrections and without clear erasure of the earlier reading. Musically, it is always a duplication of music already written in brass parts by strings. The preliminary state of the notation does not make it clear whether Schubert intended the versions in pencil to be alternative or additive, for example to color or reinforce the wind instruments, perhaps also as a summary of an openwork movement. The obvious incompleteness of the entries as well as their lack of clarity due to the lack of deletion of the older reading were the reasons for including the notations described in the musical text, but clearly marking them with a small engraving and explaining them accordingly.
Recently published Critical Report:
Untitled opera fragments (II/16)
This volume, which summarizes and comments on those opera fragments that did not get beyond the initial planning or the early draft stage, reflects Schubert’s “hapless love of the theatre”. In the course of preparing this volume the editors were able to clarify a number of false attributions concerning authors and subjects, to identify some of their literary models and to find out more about the probably authentic titles. The volume comprises the surviving draft scores for the operas “Wanda” (D 791, previously “Rüdiger”) and “Sophie” (D 982, title so far unknown), which are based on Alexandre-Vincent Pineux Duval’s and Angelo Tarchi’s opéra comique “Une aventure de Saint-Foix” (Paris 1802), as well as the libretto “Der kurze Mantel” (“The Coat too short”) by Johann Gabriel Seidl, which was included in the edition due to its documentary value.
The Mass in E flat major is the last of Schubert’s six settings of the Latin Ordinarium missae. According to the autograph date, the composer began writing it in June 1828. This volume offers an edition of the mass based on the autograph preserved in the Berlin State Library. In addition, it includes all of Schubert’s drafts for the mass that have been handed down and while giving important information about the genesis of the work provide insight into the compositional processes.
In the course of preparing the volume, further considerations were made on understanding Schubert’s accents, which in the editor’s opinion primarily represent a means of musical text reading in this mass. In order to be able to reproduce the differentiated use of accents in the edition, which is evident in the autograph notation, the New Schubert Edition has introduced an additional sign with which different durations of accents can be represented.
This volume, which summarizes and comments on those opera fragments that did not get beyond the initial planning or the early draft stage, reflects Schubert’s “hapless love of the theatre”. The stages during which Schubert’s opera projects remained fragments differ extremely. Like some already more advanced though still fragmentary and far from being performed stage works, which appeared as single volumes of the New Schubert Edition, these fragments, which remained in their early stages, run through Schubert’s entire compositional career. In the course of preparing this volume the editors were able to clarify a number of false attributions concerning authors and subjects, to identify some of their literary models and to find out more about the probably authentic titles. The volume comprises the surviving draft scores for the operas “Wanda” (D 791, previously “Rüdiger”) and “Sophie” (D 982, title so far unknown), which are based on Alexandre-Vincent Pineux Duval’s and Angelo Tarchi’s opéra comique “Une aventure de Saint-Foix” (Paris 1802), as well as the libretto “Der kurze Mantel” (“The Coat too short”) by Johann Gabriel Seidl, which was included in the edition due to its documentary value.
15 and 16 July 2022, Musikwissenschaftliches Institut (Fr. 14–17.30, Sat. 9.30–13)
The Editorial Board of the New Schubert Edition are currently working primarily on Franz Schubert’s masses. The edition of the Mass in E-flat Major D 950 (1828) is about to be completed; the edition of the Mass in G Major D 167 (1815) has begun. The study day will focus on these frequently neglected works. Several members of staff from the New Schubert Edition (probably Rudolf Faber, Matthew Gardner, Christine Martin, and Vasiliki Papadopoulou) will report on the results of their philological and analytical work, before discussing their findings and the editorial process with the participants of the study day.
Please register no later than 30 June 2022 by email to: Dr Rudolf Faber rudolf.faber_at_uni-tuebingen.de
The Editorial Board of the New Schubert Edition have revised the editorial guidelines and have now presented them in a new, 7th version. In addition to formal adjustments and changes due to technical advances, it was necessary to incorporate experience from editing practice into a number of clarifications on the editorial approach. The new version of the guidelines is also available for download here:
On April 1st, 2021 a ‘Commission for Interdisciplinary Schubert Research’ was founded at the Austrian Academy of Sciences. The aim of this commission is to uncover social networks in the Viennese cultural life of the Vormärz, to highlight connecting and dividing factors across borders and disciplines and, more generally, to understand the world in which Schubert and his contemporaries lived and worked in a more differentiated and comprehensive way. The interdisciplinary platform aims to be the point of contact for international scientists, musicians and the interested public, to organize annual specialist conferences and to seek young scientists.
Another central concern of the commission is the formation of networks and communication with colleagues around the world. For this purpose, a newsletter is sent out at irregular intervals by email, which informs about new publications, calls for papers, events, job advertisements, scholarships, etc. Please provide us with relevant information. You can register for the newsletter here: schubert_at_oeaw.ac.at. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Andrea Lindmayr-Brandl (Chairwoman)
on behalf of all members of the commission
