Franz Schubert and His World
Page 18
Table 4. Kosegarten Fair Copies Arranged by Series IV
Note that the lower-left-hand corner of A-Wst 6429 verso is water damaged, precisely where the number “10” might otherwise be found; the recto leaf is clearly numbered “9.”
Johann Wolf and the Sources
The most striking feature about these inscriptions is that nearly all of them were written in the same hand (type 7–9 and sometimes type 10).10 Fortunately, the writer left an important clue to his identity in another Schubert manuscript, where we find his signature: “Johann Wolf.”11 Aside from a note in an index by Alexander Weinmann, there is virtually nothing in the secondary literature about this person,12 yet in the manuscript collection at the Wienbibliothek we find two items that help shed some light on his murky biography.13 One is a letter from “Johann Wolf” written on 13 May 1848 to Adolf Bäuerle, editor of the Allgemeine Theaterzeitung.14 Wolf writes to correct a detail in a notice he had written for the paper concerning publications soon to appear at the publisher H. F. Müller, including several of his own works.15 The letter also contains a request to withhold certain information in lieu of the settlement of a dispute with Anton Diabelli over rights to a text. Thus the writer of the letter was obviously involved in the publishing business and also a composer. This aligns convincingly with the references to plate numbers and publishing firms in the marginalia of the Schubert song manuscripts. Significantly, the signature on this document matches exactly that found in the Schubert manuscript.
The second item at the Wienbibliothek is an album put together in honor of the publisher and music patron Karl Haslinger (1816–1868).16 This sumptuously bound volume compiled in 1862 contains dedications from over 120 friends and acquaintances, many of whom were leading figures of the music scene in Vienna in the mid-nineteenth century. Each contributor—including the likes of Simon Sechter, Carl Goldmark, Joachim Raff, and Johann Strauss—wrote a simple greeting, a short musical work or an incipit, signed his name, and provided a photograph of himself. On folio 65 we find a contribution by Johann Wolf with two short musical compositions, a signature, and a photo. Again, the signature (see Figure 4) exactly matches that found in the Schubert manuscript. The accompanying compositions confirm Wolf’s activities as a composer, but also reveal something more significant. The first of these two pieces provides indirect evidence that Wolf may have had privileged access to Schubert manuscripts. The work is a short vocal trio for men’s voices, titled Punschlied and set to a text by Schiller. Schubert also wrote a short vocal trio for men’s voices to the very same text (D277), a work that, significantly, was not published until 1892, thirty years after Wolf’s contribution to the Haslinger album.17 The publisher of the first edition of the Schubert part-song, as well as many of Wolf’s compositions, was C. A. Spina. A Viennese publisher who took over the firm established by Anton Diabelli in 1852,18 Spina brought out numerous first editions of Schubert Lieder in the 1860s. Wolf’s connection to this publisher is probably no coincidence: in all likelihood Spina hired Wolf to organize and annotate the Schubert manuscripts in question.19
Figure 4. Johann Wolf (1862).
Table 5a. An Overview of Wolf’s Manuscript Categories (Original German)
Abt. I:
[Autograph] mit eigenhändiger Namensfertigung und Datum
Abt. II:
[Autograph] ohne Namensfertigung, jedoch mit Datum
[Abt. III]
[None]
Abt. IV:
Eine Copie (respect. Reinschrift) von Fr. Schubert’s Hand … aus der Sam[m]lung dessen Bruder Ferdinand herrührend
Abt. V:
Eine andere Bearbeitung
Abt. VI:
Copien von annäherungsweise Schubert’s Handschrift oder eines Verwandtens
Abt. VII:
Copie (von Ferdinand Schubert) … der Copien F. Schubert’scher Lieder
Abt. VIII:
Copien von verschiedenen Handschriften
Several types of information provided in the margins of the Schubert manuscripts support this conclusion. In writing out his marginal comments, Wolf relied substantially on a catalogue known as the “Repertorium.” This catalogue must have contained detailed information about Schubert manuscripts such as titles, authors, dates of composition, and location, all of which Wolf dutifully notates. Several extant documents devoted to Schubert are labeled “Repertorium,”20 yet none provide the depth of information evident in the Wolf inscriptions. Instead, it seems likely that our scribe relied on a catalogue compiled by Anton Diabelli that is now lost, a probable scenario given Diabelli’s activities as a publisher and his unequaled access to Schubert manuscripts after the composer’s death.21 This suggestion is supported by yet another telling characteristic of the Wolf marginalia. Although publishers’ names (Leidesdorf, A. O. Witzendorf, etc.) often appear as part of information on publication, Wolf usually provides only the plate number if Diabelli or Spina published the song in question—a perfectly understandable procedure if Wolf was conducting an internal survey for the publishing house.
Comparing plate numbers and publication dates made it possible to determine with virtual certainty that Wolf added the inscriptions in the 1860s. Still, it was necessary to untangle the rationale behind the various designations, and particularly the numberings added to these pages as Wolf went about cataloguing the Schubert manuscripts. This, in turn, required reconstructing the problem he set out to solve. Wolf had the unenviable task of sifting through dozens if not hundreds of songs in manuscript, some published, some not, some dated, some signed, and so on. To make sense of this chaos, he had to design a system that provided him with the most important information in the most efficient manner. After culling through marginal inscriptions by Wolf on dozens of Schubert manuscripts it was possible to isolate seven categories that Wolf used repeatedly in dividing up the documents at his disposal (Table 5). 22
Table 5b. Overview of Wolf’s Manuscript Categories (Translation)
Series I:
[Manuscript] with autograph signature and date
Series II:
[Manuscript] without autograph signature, but with date
[Series III]
[None]
Series IV:
A copy (or fair copy) in Franz Schubert’s hand … from the collection stemming from his brother Ferdinand
Series V:
Another version
Series VI:
Copies in a hand similar to Schubert or one related
Series VII:
Copies (by Ferdinand Schubert) … of the copies of Lieder by Franz Schubert
Series VIII:
Copies in various hands
The scheme shows a clear progression from those manuscripts easiest to identify to those not even attributable to Schubert’s hand. Series I and II are ranked highest for being dated and sometimes also signed by the composer. This suggests that Wolf attempted as far as possible to order the manuscripts according to date of composition.23 Series III receives no mention in any of the manuscripts I have examined.24 As explained below, Series IV would turn out to be an exceptional group. Series V refers to reworkings of a previously existing Lied or Lied text. This category would make sense for someone trying to identify discrete Schubert songs, deciding to group later settings of the same text in a separate class.25 Series VI–VIII all refer to “copies”: VI in a hand closely resembling Schubert’s; VII apparently set aside for copies by his older brother Ferdinand; VIII copies by any other copyists obviously not Franz Schubert or his brother. Thus Wolf’s classification scheme was laid out according to chronological and orthographical considerations that allowed him to construct a rough overview of Schubert’s Lied compositions and, more important, file them in a fashion that made for easy retrieval. Since the marginalia frequently referred to published songs and songs of similar title, Wolf’s mission no doubt included identifying works that had not yet been printed. When publication decisions were made or when a particular song manuscript was needed, a quick glance at
a catalogue would immediately provide its location. This would also explain the missing series numbers on the manuscripts themselves, since they would have been filed as physically separate groups. Once collated and archived the individual manuscripts could be found by going to the series, then searching ordinally for the number in the lower-left corner.
Series IV, the Kosegarten group, seems to have been compiled according to a rather different criterion, namely as “fair copies stemming from the collection (Sammlung) of Franz Schubert’s brother, Ferdinand.” The designation raises a puzzling question, for nearly all of the manuscripts Wolf surveyed had come from Ferdinand after the composer’s death. Many were published by Diabelli and Spina directly from Schubert’s “Nachlaß” (estate). The term “Sammlung,” then, refers to something rather more specific, a matter that emerges from the locution more clearly on second reading: not from Ferdinand Schubert’s collection, but rather from a collection in Ferdinand Schubert’s possession. This reading not only strongly supported other evidence that was coming into focus around the Kosegarten songs, but also suggested another dimension in interpreting Wolf’s numberings. If these manuscripts truly represented a self-contained collection, it would explain not only their isolated occurrence in Series IV but also the sequence Wolf assigned to them. Since all of these fair copy manuscripts lacked both date and signature, the reasonable assumption would be that Wolf numbered them as he found them gathered in the set.
It was all the more important, then, to determine if the Kosegarten fair copies had at one time physically belonged together. The opaque formulation “collection” in the descriptions of Series IV and establishing that all the fair copies consisted of the same paper type supported this conclusion, but not definitively. The problem in attempting such a reconstruction lay in the fact that the surviving manuscripts were literally scattered around the world among numerous institutions and private collectors. Ironically, it was in tracing how the manuscripts came to be so dispersed that I found evidence for their common origin. In May 1952, the auction house Faber in Munich put five items on the block from the “Cranz Sammlung” (lot nos. 1114–1118). These consisted solely of fair copies of Schubert’s settings of Kosegarten. Fifteen of the twenty settings—all but three leaves—were included in the sale (see Table 6).
The identity of the seller of these manuscripts corroborates the connections already made with Wolf and the publisher Spina, for it was the Cranz family that finally took over Spina after it had been acquired by Friedrich Schreiber.26 The fact that so many pages of an earlier “collection” had remained together so long in the hands of the caretakers of materials handled by Wolf is itself suggestive, but the sale revealed even more important information. Lots 1117, 1115, and 1118 consisted of bifolios. Today these double leaves are separate manuscripts, but the auction in 1952 shows much of the original pagination of the set. Most striking is the alignment of the Wolf numbers with the leaves in the foliation, proof that Wolf’s sequence 1/2 (on two sides of the same leaf) was indeed followed by 3/4 on the leaf that was originally literally joined to it (the same applies, of course, to 12/13–14/15 and 16/17–18). Just why the pagination was destroyed is not difficult to determine. The reservation price for Lot 1115, a bifolio consisting of D237, 236, 233, and 221, was DM 2,400; five years later, that figure for a single leaf (D237, 236) came in at DM 2,500.27 It seems the owners more than doubled their money by literally cutting the bifolio in half.
Table 6. Kosegarten Fair Copy Manuscripts and Lots Sold at Karl & Faber, 1952
The lot numbers in the first column come from the Karl & Faber catalogue Handschriften Bücher + Autographen, 19–21 Mai 1952 (Munich, 1952), 148–49.
Wolf, we must remember, catalogued manuscripts in a state far more representative of the manner in which Schubert produced them, thus his work points to continuities now lost. Bifolios were still intact, sequences could be more readily reconstructed. To be sure, by the 1860s not all manuscripts were still in their original foliation; damage had already been done. For instance, Ferdinand Schubert gave away and sold manuscripts after his brother’s death, and publishers undoubtedly separated songs out of their original order. But Wolf was closer chronologically to the act of creation and very concerned about making sense of these documents. Since none of these manuscripts bear a date nor an author attribution, Wolf would have had no motive to intervene in the original foliation. As the paper type and auction sale of the fair copies strongly suggest, his numberings reliably reflect a group of manuscripts as he found them.28
Poet, Poems, and Plot
Although physical evidence suggested that Schubert may well have left behind a specially prepared collection of Kosegarten Lieder in fair copy, the manuscripts alone could not tell me what the composer intended with the set. To attribute this gathering of songs to Schubert’s artistic intention I had to probe much further into the collection and ask if its constituent parts likewise pointed to a large-scale construction. It made sense to begin with the text to see what may have attracted Schubert to these poems, where he found them, and how he integrated them into his song settings.
Gotthard Ludwig Kosegarten (1758–1818)29 was born in Mecklenburg but spent most of his life in Swedish Pomerania, a region in northern Germany that had come under the control of Gustav II in the 1630s. Educated in theology and classical philology, Kosegarten started his professional life as a private tutor for the well-to-do of Rügen, an island off the Pomeranian coast in the Baltic Sea, and became a preacher and eventually a professor in Greifswald, the commercial and administrative center of the region. He mingled with the educated classes and even taught such influential artists of the period as Philipp Otto Runge and Caspar David Friedrich.30 Kosegarten’s activities as a poet covered a wide range of lyric genres; his style was characterized by dramatic landscapes, Romantic longing, and occasional allusions to political struggle—themes typical of his generation. The turmoil of the Napoleonic Wars inspired in him a curious mixture of German nationalism and reverence for the French conqueror. Whereas many young nationalists initially saw an ally in Kosegarten, his subservience as an administrative official to the Napoleonic state and especially his speech in honor of Napoleon’s birthday in 1809 put him out of favor with progressive circles.31
Although he enjoyed a modest reputation in his own day, Kosegarten’s qualities as a writer were even then called into question. Friedrich Schiller, in a letter to Goethe from August 1797, writes:
I once told you that I had given Kosegarten my opinion [of him] and that I was eager to hear his response. He has now written to me and was very thankful for my frankness. Nevertheless, I can see there is no helping him, for accompanying the same letter was a publication announcement of his poems that only a lunatic [Verrückter] could have written. Some people are beyond help and God took this particular specimen and forged an iron plate around his brow.32
Figure 5. Portrait of Kosegarten.
Schubert nevertheless felt drawn to his work. Part of the reason for this no doubt lies in the tone of the texts Schubert chose. Kosegarten’s style shares a clear thematic and stylistic affinity with the works of Ossian, Klopstock, and Matthisson, all poets Schubert set during the same period.33
A look at Kosegarten’s publications reveals that the twenty poems Schubert set in 1815 were not printed as a separate set or isolated story. In all likelihood, Schubert found these texts in L. T. Kosegarten’s Poesieen. Neueste Auflage, a three-volume work dated “Berlin, 1803” (no publisher is given).34 The edition (Figure 6) demonstrates that Schubert was very selective, since the three-volume work contains a total of 144 poems.35 The verses show no strong pattern of coherence in the books, although, as is the case with the twenty Schubert selected, most tend to share a lyrical vein, strophic structure, clear scansion and rhyme schemes, and are almost all topically related to the idea of love lost and found followed by tragic demise.36 The texts also sometimes relate to one another through references to common names or events. This loosely structured, unc
omplicated poetic source, though not profound in content, served Schubert with materials sufficiently pliable to craft together a larger structure.
Figure 6. Frontispiece to L. T. Kosegarten’s Poesieen: Neueste Auflage (Berlin, 1803), vol. 2.
A look at the arrangement of the poems in the printed collection compared to the Schubert settings demonstrates the point (see Table 7). In terms of continuity, the table shows numerous isolated settings as well as Schubert’s tendency to set consecutive poems (column 1), a tendency that also surfaces in the order in which they were written in rough draft (column 2). However, in the order suggested by Wolf’s fair copy numbering (column 3), the relationship to the original published source is reduced to a few paired texts. Far from the haphazard result one might expect from such a rearrangement, this departure from the Kosegarten publication demonstrates remarkable logic. In fact, the fair copy ordering strongly suggests an aesthetic intention operating independently of the poetic source. Through at times drastic intervention, it seems Schubert, perhaps working with his friends, re-formed the textual material into a sequence with clearly narrative tendencies.37