On Sat, 13 Aug 2005 07:47:31 -0700 Arthur Ness wrote:
>No one would quarrel with the fact that the guitar enjoyed considerable >popularity in Vienna in Beethoven's time. Schubert used the instrument a few >times, including in a birthday cantata for his father. I know of no >documentary evidence that Schubert played guitar. If he did so, >someone would >have made note of that fact. Some one did. The name is Umlauff. But even though the Umlauff story may be apocryphal, there is no question of the existence of several Schubert manuscripts of original guitar music. Check your Deutsch. >The many Schubert Lieder with guitar accompaniment were usually >arrangements by Diabelli, Mertz, Pfeifer, et al. One can imagine >that the publishers would rush guitar versions into print to beat >the competition for lucrative salon sales. Diaballi is right, Mertz is wrong. What Mertz did was arrange for guitar 6 transcriptions of Schubert lieder made for the piano by Franz Liszt. Strictly instrumental, and not directly from Schubert. What Diabelli did is fully listed in my recent publication of the Thematic catalog of the Guitar Works of Anton Diabelli by Jukka Savioki. >I think Brian Jefferey has published some of these >arrangements. Edited by the >late Bob Spencer. Many of you probably know the edition. I happen to know the edition very well, because it was prepared in my house at 341 Commonwealth Ave., in Boston during the year and half that Brian Jeffery lived there. Spencer had nothing to do with this. The editor was Thomas Heck and the material has nothing to do with the period arrangements published in Vienna. All the accompaniments are the product of Thomas Heck's invention. As a matter of fact, when he went back to England, Brian left behind all the original paste up boards for all the editions he prepared in my house. I still have them, and for the life of me, I don't know why I haven't dumped them years ago. Oh yes, I know why. It has this magnificent transparency of a pastoral scene in which Schubert is shown playing the guitar. Brian used it on the cover of his book. To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
