Schubert's Music for the Theatre

Abstract

To judge from the number of programmes devoted to the music of Schubert as well as numerous occasional performances of his works in other programmes on the BBC Third Network in recent months, Schubert must be one of the most popular composers at the moment. This apparent popularity is of course also evident from the extent to which his music is heard in public concerts—the ‘Great’ C Major Symphony in orchestral concerts, the quartets, the songs, the late piano sonatas and so on in recitals. Like Bach, Mozart and Beethoven, Schubert never seems to go out of fashion, but the vogue for his music certainly could not be much greater than at present. And yet, despite this popularity, and the accompanying unearthing of many of his lesser known works, one large section of his music, the music he wrote for the theatre, remains almost entirely unknown. The scores of this music for the stage are to be found in seven large volumes of the Breitkopf und Härtel Gesamtausgabe and in piles of unpublished sheets in various collections, most of them in the music libraries of Vienna.