Schubert, Heinz

Preface

Heinz Schubert

Hymnic Concerto (1939)
for orchestra and organ with solo soprano and tenor

(b. Dessau, 8 April 1908 — d. Oderbruch, February 1945)

I Introitus. Breit und kraftvoll gehalten (p. 3)
II Toccata (mit Inventionen). Mäßig bewegt, ohne zu eilen (p. 13) –
Leicht bewegt (p. 22) – Sehr breit (p. 31)
III Passacaglia (Sanctus). Sehr ruhig (p. 35)
IV Finale (Te Deum). Kräftig bewegt (p. 39) – Ruhig fließend (p. 60) – Sehr ruhig (p. 64) – im Anfangs-Zeitmaß (p. 67) – Kräftig bewegt (p. 69) – Sehr breit (p. 75) – im Zeitmaß des Introitus (sehr breit und stark gehalten bis zum Schluss (p. 78)

Preface
When Heinz Schubert died in World War II, barely thirty-seven years old, he was considered, both as a composer and conductor, one of the most eminent musicians in the circle around Heinrich Kaminski (1886-1946). His death meant a severe loss for German contemporary music. Yet Heinz Schubert was quickly forgotten after the war – by a society that turned its back, as if in flight, on everything that had gone on before, a society in which the prevailing motto was to burn the bridges to the past and to invent the world anew. A symbol for such amnesia is an inner-German solution whose despicable nature still awaits revelation to a larger public: When Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart (MGG, the standard German encyclopedia of music) was published at the end of the 1950s, the editors (who themselves had collaborated with the Nazi régime and now tried to find scapegoats in an attempt to whitewash their own past) decided not to include Heinz Schubert – a composer who had resisted the temptations and pressures of the Third Reich and shown remarkable civil courage. With his name omitted, the memory of his accomplishments, especially after the deaths of his supporters and admirers, was over the years almost completely extinguished. It is symptomatic that, when the work published here was to be performed during a concert tour of Germany in October 2004, the publisher no longer had parts available, since the publisher’s archive had been burnt in the Battle of Berlin in 1945. In the meantime newly-engraved parts have become available for Vom Unendlichen; however, the score of another important work, Das ewige Reich after Wilhelm Raabe (to choose but one example), seems to have vanished utterly. No doubt, Heinz Schubert from Dessau must be seen, from today’s perspective, as one of the most tragic figures in German music history.

Heinz Schubert studied initially with Franz von Hoeßlin (1885-1946) and Arthur Seidl (1863-1928) in his native Dessau, then in Munich with Hugo Röhr (1866-1937) and, especially, with Heinrich Kaminski, to whom he owed his “grounding” in ethos, style, and craftsmanship, and with whom he remained bound in gratitude to the end of his days. From 1926 to 1929 he was a student in the master classes of Siegmund von Hausegger (1872-1948) and Joseph Haas (1879-1960) at the Munich Academy of Music. From 1929 he worked as a conductor in Dortmund and Hildesheim, then at the Flensburg Opera (1933-35). From 1938 until the complete mobilization toward the end of World War II, he was music director and superintendent at the Civic Theater in Rostock. Wilhelm Furtwängler (1886-1954) effectively supported Schubert’s works and frequently performed them in Berlin, even though the composer had long fallen out of favor with the régime. In the final months of the war he was drafted into the Volkssturm; the exact place and time of his death can no longer be ascertained.

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