Debts and credits

Musical Times, Autumn 1999 by McKay, Elizabeth Norman

ELIZABETH NORMAN MCKAY finds unexpected links between two major works for piano duet

THERE CAN BE no doubt that Schubert was familiar with the music of Hummel, which was frequently heard in concert programmes in Vienna in the early decades of the nineteenth century. In the context of this article, it is particularly evident that he was familiar with Hummel's piano music. Comparison of sections of Schubert's Fantasia in C ('Wanderer' Fantasy) D760 for solo piano with Hummel's fourth and fifth piano sonatas (op.38 and op.81), for example, and similar comparison of Schubert's piano-duet Fantasia in F minor D940 with Hummel's piano-duet `Grand Sonata' in A flat major (op.92) make this connection clear. Indeed, in this `Grand Sonata' we find the source of Schubert's inspiration for a major section of the duet Fantasia.

Hummel (1778-1837) was born in Pressburg (Bratislava) and studied in Vienna with Mozart, Salieri, Albrechtsberger, and Haydn. He was Kapellmeister at the court of Prince Nikolaus Esterhazy in Eisenstadt from 1804 until 1811, after which he returned to Vienna and remained there, except for concert tours of several weeks, duration in 1815 and 1816, until the autumn of 1816, when he was appointed Kapellmeister in Stuttgart and, two years later, in Weimar. After 1816, he occasionally visited and gave concerts in Vienna, where he was well liked and highly regarded. He was elected an Honorary Member of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in 1826. In the concerts of the Gesellschaft, Hummel's music was often performed. His Septet op.74 (c.1816) and the piano concertos in A minor op.85 (c.1816) and in B minor op.89 (1819) were popular; but many other works of his were also played, including his Piano Trio in E op.83 (1819), which was certainly heard during the 1824 and 1827 concert seasons. However, similarities in the opening bars of the themes of the slow movements of Schubert's Piano Trio in B flat D898 (1827) and Hummel's Piano Trio in G op.65 (c.1814-15) suggest that Schubert was also familiar with this earlier piano trio of Hummel's (exx.l and 2).

Details of Schubert's first, and possibly only, meeting with Hummel shortly before Beethoven's death in March 1827 are well known. The occasion was described in the diary of Ferdinand Hiller, a young pupil of Hummel, who referred specifically to Hummel's choice of Schubert's song `Der blinde Knabe' D833, which he had just heard performed by Vogl and Schubert, as the subject of his own piano improvisations which followed. Anselm Huttenbrenner's claim that Schubert greatly admired the music of Hummell is supported by Schubert's declared choice of Hummel as dedicatee of his last three piano sonatas, D958-60. (Hummel's death before the sonatas were published in 1839 prevented this dedication. The then publisher, A. Diabelli Sz Co., dedicated them instead to Robert Schumann.)

Hummel numbered among his many piano pupils Karl Emanuel von Liebenberg de Z[s]ittin (1796-1856), who was just two months older than Schubert. Liebenberg, whose Hungarian father settled in Vienna four years before his son's birth, was to become a wealthy industrialist and landowner, greatly admired for his philanthropic works, particularly among Vienna's children's hospitals and nurseries.2 Ferdinand Hiller wrote an entry in his diary for 26 March 1827 describing how he and Hummel first heard of Beethoven's death. They were at the time guests at the house of `Herrn von Liebenberg (der fruher Schuler von Hummel gewesen)' [the former pupil of Hummel], where there was a 'heitere Gesellschaft' [a merry party] .3 Liebenberg seems to have had an attractive personality, and was popular with his teacher and with his many friends and acquaintances. He was also a gifted and accomplished pianist. His name appears in the 1823 'Addressen-Buch von Tonknstlern, Dilettanten, Hof- Kammer- Theater- und Kirchen- Musikern, ... in Wien' in the specific category of a performing pianist-member of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde.4 Schubert's name appears in the `Address-Book' under the same heading, as pianist, but also in additional lists as violist and composer of songs.

Schubert had been elected a performing member of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde as pianist and viola player in 1821. It is likely that at this time he became acquainted with Liebenberg if, that is, they had not already met, perhaps in the salons of the Sonnleithner family. Probably soon after this, Liebenberg asked Schubert to compose for him a large-scale work for solo piano, one suited to his advanced pianistic skills and a former pupil of Hummel. Schubert responded in November 1822 with the Fantasia in C D760, a work which makes considerably greater technical demands on the performer than Schubert had previously made or, indeed, was to make in his later compositions for solo pianoforte.

There follows a brief history of the genesis of Schubert's Fantasia in C and its publication.

THE only surviving autograph manuscript of the work is the original version. Schubert entitled it `Fantaisie pour le Pianoforte composee et dediee a Monsieur Emm. Noble de Liebenberg de Zsittin par Francois Schubert m.p.' and dated it November 1822. No preliminary sketches of the Fantasia have survived.5 The speed at which the piece was taken up by the publisher Cappi & Diabelli, printed, and launched on the market on 24 February 1823 might suggest that Liebenberg, in addition to commissioning the work, provided financial backing for the publication. Early in 1823, and for several weeks thereafter, Schubert was very sick with first-stage syphilis. Yet at some time between December and February he completed revisions of the work. It is clear from the surviving manuscript that, after its revision by Schubert, one section of the slow, second movement had to be rewritten by a professional music copyist (or possibly by Diabelli himself).6 The score contained so many amendments and abbreviations that, without a new and clean copy, an engraver would have been hard-put to understand the composer's intentions in the floridly ornamental passage contained on this rewritten sheet.7