Arthur Sullivan and the Puzzle of the Lost Music
For nearly fifty years, the musical score lay hidden.
Composed by Franz Schubert – known for his symphonies, romantic settings of traditional Lieder, and for a well-known version of Ave Maria (listen to Luciano Pavarotti sing it here) – after more than four decades, the incidental music for the play Rosamunde, Princess of Cyprus seemed to be irrevocably lost.
Arthur Sullivan meets George Grove
In 1862, Sullivan, just 20 years old, was at the beginning of his professional career as a composer. To make progress, he needed the help of influential friends. Luckily, Sullivan was a charming man who made friends easily and sincerely. His first influential friend was Henry Chorley, long-time music critic for the magazine The Athenaeum. At Chorley’s house, Sullivan met George Grove, the secretary of the Crystal Palace.
Even though Grove was 20 years older than Sullivan, an immediate rapport was struck between the two men and an enduring friendship developed. At the time, only the works of the greatest composers were then being performed at the Crystal Palace, but Grove made an exception in the case of Sullivan. Sullivan’s incidental music for Shakespeare’s The Tempest was performed at the Crystal Palace in April 1862. The music was widely praised, and Sullivan later said he awoke the next morning to find himself famous.
Introducing Franz Schubert to English audiences
Both Sullivan and Grove were great admirers of the music of Franz Schubert, a prolific Austrian composer who had died at age 31 in 1828. Hoping to establish Schubert’s reputation as one of the greatest composers of the Classical and Romantic eras, in 1867 Grove and Sullivan decided to go to Vienna to look for Schubert’s lost music. In particular, they were looking for the incidental music for the play Rosamunde by Helmina von Chezy (apparently the play was really bad; the original script has been lost and it’s never been performed again).
The directors of the Crystal Palace gave their financial support to the effort, but Sullivan added to this by selling three songs so he would have some extra funds for himself. The two men left for Vienna in late September of 1867.
After a stop in Paris, the two men arrived in Vienna where they visited the music publisher Spina. They found some of the Rosamunde music in his shop, but it was incomplete. So Herr Spina gave them a letter of introduction to Dr. Edward Schneider, a lawyer and son of Schubert’s sister Theresa. At Dr. Schneider’s, they found manuscripts of the Symphony in C major, the Symphony in C minor, and an overture in D, in a cupboard. Thrilled, the two men pounced on the compositions. Sullivan went through the manuscripts, copying themes and making notes.
But they couldn’t find the rest of Rosamunde.
Grove was disappointed. Their last day in Vienna arrived, and on Thursday October 10, 1867, they visited Dr. Schneider again to say goodbye.
Grove decided to look one last time in the cupboard where he had located the earlier manuscripts. There, at the very back of the cupboard, at the bottom of the pile of music two feet high, he found what he had come for: the parts-books of the whole of the music of Rosamunde, which had lain in the cupboard for almost 50 years. In Grove’s words, the sheet music was “black with the undisturbed dust of nearly half-a-century.”
In haste and excitement, they began to copy the music – Rosamunde, now described as containing some of the most charming music Schubert ever composed, was complete again. Even with the help of music librarian Frederick Poull, it took them until two in the morning on Friday to finish.
Two musicians celebrate
At 2 am, Sullivan and Grove went out to celebrate their achievement in the deserted streets of Vienna. Giddy with delight, they did they only thing they could at that late hour: They played a game of leap-frog!
