Schubert’s life in some ways resembles Mozart’s. Both showed their musical gifts early, both became prolific composers, and both died far too young. Both wrote music that showed a genius for melody. And both were well acquainted with Antonio Salieri: Mozart as his friendly rival (the idea that they were enemies is fiction), and Schubert as his prize student.
This ballet was part of the score for a play that was a complete failure and has been lost, but the music was rediscovered (by Sir Arthur Sullivan, of Gilbert and Sullivan) and has been played ever since.
Update:
All the music from the this series can be found and enjoyed here.
One of my faves. Schubert adapted another movement of this incidental music as the slow movement of his String Quartet No. 13 in A minor (which is therefore known as the “Rosamunde Quartet”):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3t0TIhKoUbY (incidental msic – orchestra).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REM9nQOEg1Y (quartet).
If you like this music, I can’t recommend this recording by Claudio Abbado and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe highly enough: http://www.amazon.com/Schubert-Chamber-Orchestra-Conductor-Mezzo-Soprano/dp/B000001GEP
The track with the movement Mike played is the last one and the track with the music I linked to is number 7. Sample them all, though.Report
The ability to stream music sure has empowered Classical listeners. When I find something I like I often search out and find dozens of performances of it and then screen through those for best performance and recording quality.
When I was younger, my friends and I use to spend a sizeable portion of our income on music (which we then shared amongst ourselves — I still have all the Maxell tapes). Now we have twenty million performances for less than ten bucks a month. Amazing.Report