Zweig MS 34

Autograph full score. Written in ink on systems of five staves. In C minor. Tempo directions ‘Andante un poco - Recit. - lento - presto - lento - presto - moderato - andante - Presto - Lento - Presto - Lento - Presto’. The music and text begin as in the first printed edition of the opera, though with reduced orchestration, but end with an apparently newly-composed ‘Presto’ section of 48 bars (ff. 7r-8v), beginning ‘Che acerbo tormento che strazio, che morte la dolce compagna vedersi rapir!’. The name ‘Gluck’ added in pencil in the upper left margin of f. 1r.

The work is a concert version of the aria from Gluck’s Italian Alceste, with the solo part in the soprano clef, a reduced orchestration, and a revised ending. ‘Misero, e che farò’ in the form in which it is found in this manuscript appears to be unrelated to Gluck’s rewriting of the role of Admetus for soprano castrato for performances of the opera in Vienna in 1770. Its standing as a separate work stems from Liebeskind’s publication and from the description in Schmid (Christoph Willibald Ritter von Gluck, p. 441), of an autograph manuscript of it formerly in the possession of Aloys Fuchs which had the title ‘I Lamenti d’Amore. Cantata a Soprano solo’ in Gluck’s hand. It seems certain that the present manuscript, purchased by Zweig in the wake of the Liebeskind sale, was the one used by Liebeskind in preparing the work for publication, and by implication, Liebeskind (Ergänzungen, p. 16) links his manuscript with that described by Schmid (p. 441) as having belonged to Fuchs. Zweig’s own notes and the added pagination on Zweig MS 34 both also identify it as having belonged to Fuchs. There is no title on Zweig MS 34 as it now stands, but the possibility remains that Gluck’s title was on a separate wrapper now lost. The comparatively faded nature of the ink on f. 1r suggests that any separate title-page has been absent for a considerable time.