articles / Pop Culture
How Two Englishmen Found a Bunch of Schubert
When Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony finally came to light in 1865 (37 years after Schubert’s death), the news excited two Englishmen, musicologist George Grove and composer Arthur Sullivan (not yet half of Gilbert and Sullivan). Two years later they went to Vienna in search of the music Schubert had written for the play “Rosamunde.”
They visited the home of Dr. Schneider, a friend of the Schubert family. He gave them permission to look through a dusty cupboard. And what did they find? In Grove’s words: “a bundle of music books two feet high, carefully tied round, and black with the undisturbed dust of half a century.” They had found the complete score for “Rosamunde.”
But wait! There’s more. Our enterprising Englishmen also found Schubert’s First, Second, Third, Fourth and Sixth Symphonies.
