Composed in the last year of Schubert’s life, the Mass in E-flat major, D. 950, is a richly scored work that befits his late style. From the cyclical return of motives and adventurous tonal plan to its prominent trombone parts, the Mass displays shared characteristics with other late works, such as the ‘Great’ Symphony and Die Winterreise, which Schubert considered among his ‘aspir[ations] to the highest pinnacles of art’.Footnote ¹ Though he indicated the date ‘Juny 1828’ on the autograph score, he does not indicate a date of completion; rather, he shows the earliest point he could have started notating the first complete manuscript score. As unclear as the dating of the manuscript is the question of the occasion – if any – for which Schubert composed this Missa solemnis. While scholars have speculated that Schubert may have created the work for the Dreifaltigkeitskirche (Church of the Holy Trinity) in the Alservorstadt district of Vienna, which had just undergone restoration and was to consecrate a new bell (for which Schubert composed D. 954, “Glaube, Hoffnung und Liebe”), this remains conjecture. Premiered a year after Schubert’s death by his brother Ferdinand, the Mass – with a piano reduction by Johannes Brahms – was finally published in 1865 by the house Rieter-Biedermann. In addition to the 1887 critical edition by Eusebius Mandyczewski, in 1996 Walther Dürr prepared a facsimile reproduction of the autograph score and all extant drafts (the Gloria, Sanctus, Benedictus, Agnus Dei). The 2023 edition of the Mass in E-flat by Rudolf Faber in the Neue Schubert Ausgabe (NSA) proves welcome and timely, for it is full of modern updates that make it – like a well-remodelled house or kitchen – more functional and user-friendly.

Small changes that should not be overlooked include luxuriously spaced staves that facilitate unimpeded reading of the score, even in dense fugal sections. The most welcome change is in the soprano, alto and tenor voices, which in the 1877 Gesamtausgabe were notated in soprano, alto and tenor clefs, respectively, and which are now rendered in the 2023 NSA edition in treble clefs (with the lower octave indicated for the tenor voice). Additionally, the bass vocal part now receives its own line of text, which was omitted in the old Gesamtausgabe when the rhythmic text-setting of the bass and tenor parts was identical and the lowest voice could simply read the words of the line above.

Most significant in the new edition is a new type of accent mark: . The development of this symbol, which looks like an accent mark connected to a decrescendo, is a response to two interrelated issues: first, the similarity of appearance of accents and decrescendo marks in Schubert’s manuscripts makes them, as noted by Walther Dürr, ‘often not easy to distinguish’.Footnote ² Second, the new symbol arises from a re-evaluation of the kind of notation that has been deemed structural to the composition. To address these connected problems of orthography and notation, NSA editor Rudolf Faber observes that Schubert scholars have previously broken down the composer’s notation into ‘two layers: a substantial and an accidental’.Footnote ³ Dürr described substantial notation as ‘the notes themselves’ and their ‘rhythmic, melodic and harmonic progression’, while on the other hand, he classified ‘accidental’ notation as the ‘instructions for their rendition’, that is, the instructions for the execution of those notes in performance.Footnote ⁴ While he remarked that substantial notation in Schubert’s manuscripts is largely legible, accidental notation – especially accents and decrescendos – is often less precise or consistent and requires more work from the editor.

With the introduction of the new accent symbol in this edition, Faber and the Neue Schubert Ausgabe have made the case that ‘the dynamic accent – although how it appears in the score is, as it were, an addition to the notes – should by no means be understood at the accidental level but is part of the substance of the composition … this accent is just as important as rhythmic, melodic and harmonic readings’ (xi). To further support this reading of the accent as structural rather than accidental and to show the considerations behind the application of this new ‘dynamic accent’, Faber offers a detailed Excursus. Unfortunately, the helpful Excursus (and further notes on existing drafts of the Mass) is only available in the hardcover copy; the softcover edition includes only excerpts from the Preface in the original German and in English translation. Without more insight into Faber’s careful work, the reader is left without important information that would make a convincing case for this new symbol. Thus, to give the reader a better understanding of Faber’s editorial decisions, I summarize the Excursus below.

In the pursuit of a proximate understanding of the precise forms of Schubert’s accents, Faber turns to Heinrich Christoph Koch’s Musikalisches Lexikon for a contemporaneous perspective on musical terminology. Under ‘Accent’, Koch names three types of accents: the grammatical, oratorical, and pathetic. While the grammatical is of the lowest order and relates to the tactus, oratorical and pathetic accents are, as Koch describes, of a higher level because they are contained in the ideal of the composer [in dem Ideale des Tonsetzers].Footnote ⁵ as Faber notes, oratorical and pathetic accents are not accidental notation, but rather, substantial. Going further, Koch qualifies that while the spirit of a composition [Geist des Tonstückes] can never be fully represented through signs (notation), the ‘lively representation of the melody of a composition [Tonstück] largely hinges on the correct representation of oratorical and pathetic accents’.Footnote ⁶ Thus, to achieve the ideal of the composer, [Tonsetzers], one should choose a sign that will not be easily mistaken for another.Footnote ⁷ To more concretely realize Koch’s idealization of the composer’s intention, Faber turns to examples in the Kyrie and the Credo, in which he weighs the use of the new dynamic accent. While this review does not cover all Faber’s examples in detail, I will recapitulate his editorial decisions in these movements.

In the Kyrie, Faber begins with the instrumental introduction from bars 1–11, which serves as the basis for the first vocal entrance from bars 11–18 and returns throughout the movement. Of relevance are two angle-shaped signs [Winkel] in bars 5–6 and bar 8, the former marked fp with a decrescendo and the latter fz followed by the new accent mark. The case Faber has made for the difference between the two angles rests on harmonic, melodic, and dynamic features. From bars 1–6, the bassline outlines a stepwise descent from tonic to subdominant (bars 3–5), highlighted by the skip in the first oboe (and first horn) – the leading melodic line – from G to B-flat in bars 5–6, which creates a dissonant ninth with the bass. Emphasizing this dissonance arising from melodic movement, the harmony in bar 5 contains an F-flat in the first trombone, which conflicts with the F-natural in the first oboe and horn a bar later (bar 6, beat 3). The harmonic ambivalence gives the chord in bar 5 a Neapolitan colour as the dissonant ninth is suspended from bar 5 into bar 6. Dynamically, the harmonic progression is shaped by the crescendo mark starting in bar 3, where the first chord change occurs. Upon reaching its dynamic peak on the downbeat of bar 5, the fp is followed by a decrescendo, which, Faber writes, does not mean ‘loud – immediately quiet again’, but more likely represents what Dürr specifies as a ‘forte accent with a subsequent decrescendo, whereby piano is reached at the end of the angle’ in bar 6.Footnote ⁸ Thus, in the case of bars 5–6 of the Kyrie, Faber reads the angle ‘as a function of harmony; the decrescendo extends to the point in point where the gathered suspensions are resolved’ (xii–xiii of hardcover copy).

Despite affinities between bar 8 and the preceding bars, Faber also notes differences that led to the use of the dynamic accent in bar 8. He observes that the skip from E-flat to G-flat in the first oboe (bars 7–8) mirrors the skip of a minor third from bars 4 to bar 5, and that the stepwise descent to the subdominant, C–B-flat–A-flat (bars 3–5), is counterbalanced by a stepwise ascent, A-flat–B-flat–C-flat (bars 6–8). Furthermore, the difference in harmony and dynamic in bar 8 distinguishes it from bar 5. Whereas the F-flat gave the chord in bar 5 a Neapolitan colour, the C-flat in the bass in bar 8 is part of a German augmented sixth, which is sustained across the entire measure en route to the dominant. Thus, while the fp and decrescendo in bars 5–6 ‘corresponds to the release of tension in the resolution’ of a suspension, Faber writes that the fz and accent in bar 8 do the opposite: they ‘preserve the intensity of a harmonic dissonance for the duration of the whole bar’ (xiii of the hardcover copy). So fz, then, indicates a stronger stress than fp, and the dynamic accent, which extends across bar 8, shows sustained emphasis rather than the more immediate effect denoted by a traditional accent.

Moving on to an example of an editorial decision informed by the text, Faber focuses on the line ‘Crucifixus etiam pro nobis sub Pontio Pilato’ in the Credo, which Schubert sets twice (bars 162–164, 166–170), the second time in an unusual manner. He repeats the first two words of the line, creating a kind of palindrome (‘Crucifixus etiam pro nobis sub Pontio Pilato, etiam crucifixus). Dynamically, the music reflects key words in the text: bar 166 begins ppp and ends fff at bar 170 with clearly marked dynamic waystations (f in the second half of bar 167 and ff in the second halves of bars 168 and 169) that foreground the words ‘Pontio Pilatus’ and ‘etiam crucifixus’. The angles in these bars, then, are accents emphasizing the dynamics, not decrescendos, for Faber astutely notes that in the autograph the angles match the length of the syllables of the words they emphasize. Indeed, if angles meant a decrease in volume, then in bar 170, where both the angle and ‘decresc.’ are present (such as in the first violin part), these symbols would have been redundant. Instead, the wedge denotes accents that correspond to the ascending triplets on the diminished chord throughout the first half of the bar; from there onward the descending arpeggiation is marked ‘decresc.’, facilitating the resolution of the harmonic tension in the next bar where the cadence and words ‘passus et sepultus est’ signify a new section.

To return to Koch, whose entry on the accent in his Musikalisches Lexikon provided the theoretical basis for this editorial intervention, he also cautions that new symbols should be distinct enough that they cannot be easily confused for another sign already in use. Because of its elongated form, the new dynamic accent might initially be mistaken for an altered decrescendo. But, after reading Faber’s detailed Excursus, it is clear that the sign does not signify a decrease in volume, but rather, a particular kind of sustained intensity. Thus, viewing the dynamic accent as a stretched-out accent mark may help facilitate the reader’s understanding of the symbol . It is unfortunate, then, that the excerpted prefaces in the softcover copy leave out his careful musical analysis behind this symbol’s application and its differentiation from the decrescendo mark.

Lastly, while the overall layout and typesetting of the score is pleasing to the eye, there are two small items of note: first, it seems that this editor has chosen to render dynamic markings in regular typeface rather than in bold and italics, as is usual. Ordinarily, this would not be a problem, but because the Mass text is also in regular typeface, it would help the reader – particularly in rehearsal or performance – if the dynamics stood out in relief in bold and italics. Second, when dynamic markings are bolded and italicized, they do not always appear consistently in this manner. For example, there are several instances when a dynamic occurs across the entire ensemble but appears in regular typeface in one or more part, but bolded and italicized in the other parts reflecting editorial decisions.

These irregularities, however, do not diminish the appeal of the new edition of the Mass in E-flat, which reflects careful editorial work. The high quality of the softcover score – the binding, printing, and paper – makes this edition convenient for travel, study, and rehearsal. To appreciate fully the editorial work and intervention in this edition, I highly recommend that the reader have at hand the hardbound copy with the unabridged preface for reference.