Details
SCHUBERT, Franz (1797-1828). WORKING AUTOGRAPH MANUSCRIPT SIGNED AND DATED of ABENDBILDER, Deutsch no. 650, inscribed Abendbilder, Febr.1819, Franz Schubert, black ink with corrections and erasures in approximately 15 places, 6 pages of 16 staves per page, 136 bars, oblong quarto, 244 x 312mm., stitched, (slight foxing, vertical crease, frayed edges), Vienna, February 1819.
This is the only known surviving manuscript of Abendbilder.
The song is a setting of a text by Johann Petrus Silbert and was published posthumously by A. Diabelli & Co., Vienna, in 1831 (no. 3706), as no. 3 of Nachlass, book 9.
The Silbert poem takes the form of a reverie at dusk and the mood of the text is taken up by the music: [the] musical imagery evoked by the birdsong, the evening bell, the moonlight on the church roof (Maurice Brown Schubert, A Critical Biography, London, 1958, p.92).
Following his return to Vienna in November of the previous year with the Esterhazy family, by February 1819 Schubert was living with Mayrhofer in the Wipplingerstrasse during one of the happiest periods of his life. At this time Schubert's reputation was growing. On 8 January the Prometheus cantata was performed in the rooms of Ignaz Sonnleithner and on 14 March an overture, possibly that in E minor written for a projected opera with a libretto by Mayrhofer, also composed in February, was performed at Müller's Hall by the Dilettanten-Gesellschaft. In the same month, Schubert set a further text by Silbert, Himmelfunken, and also Schlegel's Der Wanderer.
This is the only known surviving manuscript of Abendbilder.
The song is a setting of a text by Johann Petrus Silbert and was published posthumously by A. Diabelli & Co., Vienna, in 1831 (no. 3706), as no. 3 of Nachlass, book 9.
The Silbert poem takes the form of a reverie at dusk and the mood of the text is taken up by the music: [the] musical imagery evoked by the birdsong, the evening bell, the moonlight on the church roof (Maurice Brown Schubert, A Critical Biography, London, 1958, p.92).
Following his return to Vienna in November of the previous year with the Esterhazy family, by February 1819 Schubert was living with Mayrhofer in the Wipplingerstrasse during one of the happiest periods of his life. At this time Schubert's reputation was growing. On 8 January the Prometheus cantata was performed in the rooms of Ignaz Sonnleithner and on 14 March an overture, possibly that in E minor written for a projected opera with a libretto by Mayrhofer, also composed in February, was performed at Müller's Hall by the Dilettanten-Gesellschaft. In the same month, Schubert set a further text by Silbert, Himmelfunken, and also Schlegel's Der Wanderer.
Literature
Otto E.Deutsch, Schubert Thematic Catalogue of All His Works, London, 1951, no. 650, p.290
Otto E. Deutsch, Franz Schubert Thematisches Verzeichnis seiner Werke in chronologischer Folge, Bärenreiter, 1978, no. 650, p.381
Otto E. Deutsch, Franz Schubert Thematisches Verzeichnis seiner Werke in chronologischer Folge, Bärenreiter, 1978, no. 650, p.381