No other great composer left as many works for piano duet as Franz Schubert. Making music with others, often in a social circle, was a solid component of the Schubertian circle of friends. With the Fantasie in f minor D 940 op. post. 103, however, Schubert completely left the sphere of social gatherings and created, in the first months of his last year of life, a work of almost symphonic form, whose elegiac atmosphere at the beginning sets the tone for the entire work. Schubert was apparently aware of the significance of the work and prepared it for printing: the autograph already contained in his hand the opus number of the first edition published in March 1829.
G. Henle Publishers stands for Urtext sheet music of the highest quality. The Urtext editions not only provide the undistorted and authoritative musical text but are also aesthetically pleasing, optimised for practical use and extremely durable. And then there is the strong, distinctive blue profile: (almost) all of the Urtext editions are bound in the characteristic blue cardboard.
Musicians trust Henle's blue Urtext editions because they:
- provide an undistorted, reliable and authoritative musical text
- offer superb, aesthetically appealing music engraving
- are optimised for practical use (page turns, fingerings)
- are of high quality and durable (cover, paper, binding)
- contain a short preface that introduces the work (particularly useful for AMEB exams) in German, English and French, as well as explanatory footnotes for particularly interesting passages in the score
- contain a description of the sources, an evaluation of the sources, readings and a documentation of the corrections made (= "Critical Report") in German and English, and often also in French
