Local resident's finding makes music history

BY NEEL ARORA

chh@heraldsun.com; 918-1035

CHAPEL HILL -- When Paul Green read about a missing sonata that he stumbled upon in an encyclopedia, he embarked on a quest that would lead him to the discovery of a significant verse in the history of music.

Green, an 85-year-old retired engineer and also a music enthusiast, is being credited for uncovering the incomplete fourth sonata of famed Romantic 19th century German composer Robert Schumann. The piece was undetected in a collection at the Stanford University music library.

"I love music and this kind of detective work really turns me on," said Green, a Chapel Hill resident. "It was a great adventure."

The incomplete fourth Sonata in F-minor was donated to Stanford in 1998 by the Hewlett Foundation in honor of former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who was then the provost at the university.

But until Green took an interest in this incomplete work, there was no recorded performance of the piece, which has eluded the limelight.

Jerry McBride, head librarian of the music library and recorded sound at Stanford, said the reason it took so long for this piece to be fully excavated from their library was because there had been no Schumann expert at Stanford or anyone who had taken an interest in this particular work.

"It takes someone to come along to do the research," McBride said. "In this case, the first scholar that came around was Paul Green."

"We acquire things for the library that we know are significant," he said. Because the field of music is so expansive, it is typical for such works to become lost in time until an expert in a particular genre or composer takes an interest.

The initial, fruitless search went from the Library of Congress and archive houses in southern Germany to private collectors and Sotheby's auction house.

Green finally located the document with the help of Timothy Carter, a professor of music at UNC Chapel Hill.

"Paul also told me about his Schumann quest, and as a result, I thought I'd just spend some time with Google. A few keywords later, I came across a rather obscure online document reporting the presence of the Schumann manuscript at Stanford," Carter said. "It's an interesting example of modern times. There is now far more information out there thanks to the Internet."

Before Stanford had acquired the manuscript, it had been in the hands of various private collectors.

"When manuscripts are in private ownership, they can be very hard to see," Carter said. "These manuscripts become 'ghosts': We know they exist, but not where they are."

Another reason for it to have remained in obscurity was the "tremendous dislocation of music manuscripts during World War II," McBride said.

The unfinished sonata's debut was unorthodox, if modern.

"The first performance was played on the computer," Green said. He initially transcribed the piece on Sibelius, a music composition and notation software, before handing it over to his nephew, Frederick Moyer, an international concert pianist and recording artist.

Moyer performed the composition and displayed it on the Internet using a customized software application that allowed listeners to view the manuscript note by note while he played the music.

"When he put the surreal musicianship into the piece it blossomed," Green said.

The piece was composed toward the end of Schumann's life and it is among four other sonatas that are a portrayal of an epic love story in which he was involved.

"All of these sonatas were written when he was emotionally torn," Green said. "Sonata forms bring out the deepest feelings in the artist."

He was kept apart from Clara, his lover and one of the early 19th century's great concert pianists, by her father, Freidrich Wieck, who was Schumann's teacher. Wieck refused to allow them to marry. They eventually sued and won the right to wed.

"This was the last thing that he wrote before they got married," Green said. And "he never went back to writing the sonata."

Music critics across the country herald the Schumann finding and Moyer's rendition of Schumann's vision.

Classical music critic Jon Von Rhein wrote in the Chicago Tribune: "He [Moyer] and Green are to be congratulated for their fine detective work and skilled realization -- a model of how modern scholarship and digital technology can serve each other's interests."

About the music itself, Alex Ross wrote in the New Yorker: "The ending is painful, because you want to hear what happens next. For whatever reason, Schumann stopped."

---

THE SCHUMANN FILE

-n Robert Schumann, June 8, 1810-July 29, 1856.

- Born in Saxony, Germany, in the town of Zwickau.

- Romantic composer and music critic.

- Studied law in Liepzig and Heidelburg.

- Studied music under Freidrich Wieck and studied music theory under Heinrich Dorn the composer, in Leipzig.

- Was a mentor for and close friend to Johannes Brahms, who performed many of Schumann's compositions.

- Notable works include Papillons (1831) and Carnaval (1834).

- After attempting to commit suicide, he committed himself to a sanitorium for the insane in Endenich, where he died two years later.

TO READ MORE

For a more complete look at Paul Green's discovery of 19th century composer Robert Schumann's unfinished sonata, go to http://www.frederickmoyer.com/essays/?p=35