Rosamunde

Franz Schubert composed the incidental music for Rosamunde, Fürstin von Zypern in the astonishing space of a few days in 1823, for a play by Helmina von Chézy that folded after just two performances. The play is forgotten; the music is not. Its overture, entr'actes, and ballet music rank among Schubert's most beloved orchestral achievements, and the haunting B minor Entr'acte's melody was so precious to the composer that he brought it back in his String Quartet No. 13 and one of his late Impromptus — a rare case of theatrical music outliving its stage entirely to become core concert repertoire.

This score reproduces the text as published in Franz Schubert's Werke, the pioneering complete critical edition of Schubert's music issued by Breitkopf & Härtel in Leipzig. This particular volume — Serie XV: Dramatische Musik, Band 4, No. 8 (pp. 343–480), plate F.S. 187 — appeared in 1893 and was prepared by Johann Nepomuk Fuchs (1842–1899), the Austrian conductor and composer who served as editor for this portion of the edition. Compiled by leading scholars of the day working from Schubert's manuscripts and early sources, the Breitkopf & Härtel Gesamtausgabe was the first serious attempt to establish a definitive, comprehensive text of Schubert's output, and it remains a touchstone for performers and researchers more than a century later.

• Full orchestral score, engraved and reset for clarity
• Page size: 8.5 x 11 inches
• Reproduced from a historic public domain edition
• Published by Purple 4R Publishing

Because this historic edition now belongs to the public domain, we're glad to be able to bring it back into print — making Schubert's radiant, unjustly overshadowed theatrical score readily available again to conductors, orchestral musicians, students, and scholars alike.