Anniversaries of great composers cast long shadows. This applies not only to the recording industry, when some ensembles labour for decades to perfectly capture recordings of the complete symphonies or cantatas for a Haydn or Bach anniversary, but also to music publishers. So, it’s no coincidence that for the Ravel Year 2025 we recently celebrated in this blog, we largely completed our catalogue of the French composer’s works, or that all Beethoven’s symphonies were available in the Henle Urtext in time for his 250th birthday in 2020. But that doesn’t happen overnight. And thus, the Schubert year 2028, only slowly appearing now on the horizon, has been on our minds for quite some time.
If you are familiar with the Henle catalogue, you 
may be thinking: “Schubert – everything is already available from Henle!” Which is of course not true. The Viennese master is indeed part of the Henle publishing house’s absolute core repertoire: his “Moments musicaux” with HN 4 are amongst the first titles that in his Urtext publishing house Günter Henle wanted to present, finally stripped of all later additions. Since then, countless piano and chamber music editions have followed, so that our Schubert catalogue currently totals over 70 titles! Nevertheless, there’s always something else to do: a few years ago, for example, we in the editorial department decided once again to re-scrutinise the piano sonatas, to finally tackle the great lieder cycles and, last but not least, to take a look at how other composers have actually honoured the composer – e.g., through arrangements of his works.
“Serenade”, Viennese First Edition 1838
Lied transcriptions by Franz Liszt have now been enriching our piano catalogue for several years, so the time was ripe for Schubert – from whose oeuvre Liszt, as an avowed Schubert fan, arranged 55 songs for piano! To our great delight, Evgeny Kissin agreed to advise us on the selection as well as also to provide the fingering, and we were able to engage the renowned Schubert scholar Andrea Lindmayr-Brandl as editor. In 2023 we started with “Aufenthalt” (Resting place, HN 599) and “Ständchen” (Serenade, HN 1022) from the “Schwanengesang”, followed in 2024 by “Das Wandern” (Wandering, HN 1051) and “Der Müller und der Bach” (The Miller and the Brook, HN 1052), two of the so-called “Müller-Lieder”. This year we are celebrating the half-way stage, for “Wohin?” (Where to?, HN 1054), hot-off-the-press, the fifth of altogether ten planned titles, will go on sale in a few weeks.
“Serenade”, London First Edition 1838
As editor of the series, I’m responsible merely for acquiring the sources for this project, the actual editing work is being done externally – but for several reasons this “merely” should be treated with a grain of salt in the case of Liszt. Just “get the autograph and first edition and off you go” is not an option! This is because there is no modern scholarly works’ catalogue for the piano music and Liszt’s extensive correspondence is yet to be fully catalogued. Only good Liszt research contacts can be of help – together with lots of patience when researching.
The lied arrangements in Liszt’s oeuvre are a particular challenge here, for the pieces, popular with performers and audiences alike, spread during Liszt’s lifetime with breathtaking speed throughout Europe in a wide variety of printed editions. Autographs of the short pieces, in most cases only a few pages long, may often no longer be extant, though of printed editions, there are all the more.
“Serenade”, Milan First Edition 1838
Popular works such as the “Serenade” appeared not only simultaneously in different countries, but also in such large issues that the publishers sometimes had to repeatedly re-engrave the same music text because the original engraving plates were worn out from excessive use. Transcribed for piano, Schubert’s lieder were able to overcome any language barrier and were thus distributed throughout Europe. In addition, the individual pieces were sometimes published separately, sometimes in volumes of several lied arrangements or in series of single editions under ever new titles – not exactly making research in library catalogues any easier.
For “Serenade” we therefore had to consider four different 1838 first editions published (see images on the left), respectively, in Vienna, London, Milan and Paris providing two work versions varying in length and structure: Whilst the Viennese Haslinger first edition repeats the accompanying figuration before the beginning of a new section in mm. 38 and 71 in each case, the Paris Richault edition has only one measure here in each case. In the Richault edition, two additional accompaniment measures are inserted after mm. 74 and 78, where the preceding measure is reheard in an augmented version. This version is also transmitted in the London and Milan first editions.
Paris First Edition, Richault 1838, mm. 62 ff.
Viennese First Edition, Haslinger 1838, mm. 62 ff.
Thanks to Liszt’s correspondence with Richault and the exceptionally preserved autograph engraver’s model for the Haslinger edition, we know that both versions go back to an engraver’s model sent by Liszt. Both are therefore authorised, offering in their flexible handling of the accompaniment structures a typical example of contemporary music-making practice: Liszt presumably also time and again varied his performance in these passages and therefore stipulated differing versions. (Perfectly in harmony with Schubert, incidentally, who also bequeathed varying versions of the accompanying piano writing for several lieder).
This was, however, only the start of the eventful “Serenade” publication history: Haslinger published a new edition in Vienna as early as 1840, this time in a collection of 28 lieder arrangements that also included, alongside the complete “Schwanengesang”, 12 numbers from the “Winterreise” plus other lieder. For this edition, Liszt (presumably at the publisher’s request) had added some alternatives which, as “Ossia più facile”, permitted performance by less virtuosic pianists. This third version of the “Serenade” was evidently a great success: Richault in Paris also adopted this version, and in Vienna it sold so well that Haslinger had to have several re-engravings made within a short time. During our research into various exemplars of this 1840 edition, we found in the holdings of the Hungarian National Library alone, four exemplars with the same title and price, which on closer inspection turned out to be newly engraved, each with a slightly different layout!
“Serenade“, Haslinger 1840; left: copy from H-Bn Mus. pr. 13.294/4; right: H-Bn ZR 1.413
left: H-Bn Z 28.063/2; right: H-Bn Mus. pr. 13.294/5
When Robert Lienau took over the Haslinger publishing house in 1875, he found the engraving plates of the “small Schubert transcriptions rather poor in print and engraving”. For the planned new edition, he even approached Liszt directly and asked the “highly esteemed lord and master” about any changes he might possibly wish to make. Liszt is not known to have replied, though the publication, which Lienau then explicitly referred to as the “new edition”, shows some significant deviations from the earlier printed music texts, whose authorisation is not to be ruled out.
After researching no less than 22 different printed “Serenade” exemplars, we made this last edition our main source – whilst meanwhile learning a lot about the dissemination of Schubert’s art song in the guise of Liszt’s piano transpositions. And you may perhaps no longer be surprised to find that in our Schubert-Liszt editions the source description and evaluation in the commentary is sometimes unexpectedly extensive….