Zweig MS 78

Autograph. Partly score, partly vocal line only. Written in ink, on single staves and on systems of two and three staves. With corrections in ink and pencil, some apparently in the hand of Antonio Salieri, with whom Schubert studied. In two versions; one of them, less fully realised, but setting a longer version of the text, is in two variant forms. As follows: ff. 1r-2v. Setting of shorter version of text, with accompaniment fully written out, on systems of three staves. Headed ‘Aria.’; tempo direction ‘Allegro con moto’ (f. 1r). The parts identified as ‘Voce:’ and ‘Clav:’ against the first system. Uses a shorter version of the text of the middle section. ff. 3r and v. A setting of the complete text, vocal line only on a single stave. Headed ‘Aria’; tempo direction ‘Andante con expressione’ (f. 3r). ff. 3v-4v. Variant of the preceding setting, beginning similarly, but the musical text widely divergent thereafter. The first section has vocal line only on a single stave, but with occasional indications of accompaniment (f. 3v); the final bar of this section has an accompaniment written in on a second stave, and this leads in to the remainder of the aria (f. 4r and v), mostly similarly written out on two staves. Between the first and middle sections are three deleted bars of a further variant setting of the middle section. Tempo direction (f. 3v) ‘Andante’, above which are two words, perhaps ‘Andante con’, heavily scratched from the page. The way in which the two nested bifolia of the manuscript are at present folded places the more completely realised version, listed in Otto Erich Deutsch (ed.), Neue Schubert Ausgabe and Werner Aderhold, Franz Schubert. Thematisches Verzeichnis seiner Werke in chronologischer Folge (Kassel, 1978), as the second, first; a large ink smudge at top left of f. 3 suggests that when the folios were written on they were almost certainly folded in the reverse direction, so that f. 3 would have been the first leaf of the gathering. A small hole has been torn in the upper left centre of all leaves, affecting the text; the holes have been neatly repaired and blank staves ruled across both sides of the repair to match the original staves.

There are seven Metastasio settings in Italian by Schubert from 1812-1813 (D 17, 33, 34, 35, 42, 76 and 78). All have been linked to his period of study with Salieri and the manuscripts of at least some have corrections by the teacher. The status of the corrections in Zweig MS 78 is unclear: most if not all of the corrections in ink appear to be by Schubert, but some of the pencil additions, particularly on f. 3v, may well be in Salieri’s hand. The hole in the manuscript and its repair are already mentioned in the description in the first of the Heck catalogues. The provenance papers include an extract from V.A. Heck, cat. 54, annotated by Zweig: ‘März 1940 Wengraf London unvergleichlich billiger’ (Add. MS 73172, f. 76).