Franz Schubert — For Goethe (Sixteen Songs, 1816) — Notebook

Sixteen songs Schubert copied out for Goethe, who never replied. Then pages of your own.

The document

In April 1816 Franz Schubert, nineteen, copied out sixteen of his songs to poems by Goethe in his best hand, and his friend Josef von Spaun sent the book to Weimar with a letter asking the poet's leave to dedicate them to him. Goethe did not reply, and the book came back. It is kept today at the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, and this notebook reproduces it complete and in order, from Jägers Abendlied to the Erlkönig.

Inside the notebook

First, a short guide: the plan for eight books of songs; the sixteen songs, with their place in the manuscript; which Erlkönig this is, the only version with the piano's repeated chords in pairs rather than triplets; how to read his pages; the strip of paper pasted to page 17; and how, in 1821, the songs finally went into print, with bars Schubert added in red chalk so that the singer could catch his breath.

Then the manuscript: thirty-one pages of music, each left-hand page facing the one that follows it, every page at the same scale, about 80% of its size.

Then the pages are yours: 71 pages of staff paper, twelve staves to a page, ruled like Schubert's paper.

A4, spiral-bound, it lies flat. The manuscript is oblong, and so is the notebook: it opens the way it does.

Franz Schubert · sixteen songs to poems by Goethe · autograph · 1816 · Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Musikabteilung, Mus.ms.autogr. Schubert, F. 1