Essays on Schubert

by Maurice JE Brown

In 1966, Maurice Brown published a book entitled Essays on Schubert. The publisher was Macmillan. As implied by the title, this is a collection of some 14 essays across over 300 pages. The essays are in 3 groups; The Music, The Composer and Manuscripts and Editions. They are consistently interesting essays, all but 2 of which were published here for the first time. Several are rather technical, and they cover a wide range of Schubertian subjects, from Schubert's Drafts, the C major symphony and Lazarus, through Schubert Portraits and the Schubert abend at Spaun's, to dance music manuscripts and the Trauerwaltzer.

Included in the Maurice Brown collection at the SIRC is a folder containing many documents concerning this book. They provide an interesting glimpse of the goings on behind the scenes after the author has done the hard work of writing the book, and getting it accepted.

The documents are collected together in a folder, obviously as organised by MJEB himself. There are very many letters from Macmillans, starting from the point at which the book had been sent out to expert readers for acceptance. Given MJEBs habit of carefully filing things away, I suspect that elsewhere in the collection of letters may be other documents which predate this point, though I doubt if there was any 'shopping around' to other publishers, as Macmillans had already published 2 other MJEB books.

The majority of letters from Macmillan are to do with the general issues concerned with publication - checking galley proofs; supplying and selecting illustrations (MJEB supplied a picture of the frescoes by Moritz von Schwind in the Vienna Opera house); dust jacket design and so on. They were not keen on MJEBs title, and suggested "Schubert's Portraits and other Essays", but MJEB was insistent. After the book was accepted one of the readers (an editor of a music magazine, but I forgot to write down his name!) wrote to MJEB in fairly glowing terms, but pointing out an error...

Included in the paperwork is the contract between MJEB and Macmillans - the nitty gritty is that the royalty was 10% in the UK, and 10% of what Macmillans received from the rest of the world. This would increase to 15% after 5000 copies were sold. Unfortunately, that was wishful thinking, since there are also accounts for the first few years of sale of the book, and we can see how many were actually sold. The book was initially priced at 50/- (i.e. £2.50 in decimal currency), during 1968 this was increased to 70/- (i.e. £3.50). Sales in the first year were just over 1000, and a little over 500 in 1967. From then, sales in the UK practically ceased (about 50 over the next 5 years), but they held up better abroad, with another 500 or so. Thus in total, over the first 7 years, there were not many more than 2000 copies sold.

There are several letters about a mistake that MJEB had made in the book, which had been spotted by a reader. MJEB had referred to an alteration Schubert made to the score of the C Major symphony, inserting 2 bars into the opening horn theme. He based this statement on notes he had made several years before when he had last had sight of the manuscript in Vienna. However, he was mistaken - there had been no such revision, a point which was obvious to him when he received a photostat of the first page. He was clearly horrified, and insisted that an erratum slip be produced. Macmillans needed convincing that it was necessary, but bowed to MJEB, who paid for the production of the slip himself (£10 17/7d - about £10.86 in decimal currency). The slip read as follows:

A further examination of the autograph of Schubert's C Major symphony shows the interpretation of the opening bars of the first movement, as set out on page 32 of this book, to be entirely at fault. The whole page, together with its musical examples, should therefore be set aside and ignored.

Also included in the folder of information about the book are advertising flyers and many press cuttings of reviews of the book, almost all of which were glowing in their praise.