Tune of the Day: Entr'acte No. 3
In 1823 Schubert provided an overture and ten numbers for a play called Rosamunde, Fürstin von Zypern (“Rosamunde, Princess of Cyprus”) by Wilhelmine von Chézy. The play was a resounding flop, closing in two nights, but the music was well-received. Even so, Schubert did not take advantage of the evident high regard the audience had for it by extracting the music for concert purposes; that service was not performed until 1867, when George Grove and Arthur Sullivan made their famous discovery of a treasury of forgotten Schubert scores.
The Entr'acte No. 3 in B-flat major is one of the two best-known pieces in the score, the other being Ballet Music No. 2. Schubert reused the main theme of this entr'acte in the second movement of his String Quartet in A minor, D.804 and, in a modified form, in the Impromptu in B-flat, D.935, No. 3.