Strauss, Johann.

being an unpublished passage cut from the full score after the first performance, beginning with Simplicius's words "...doch weiß ich nun er soll zur That sonst ist es ja nur Spielerei...links rechts links rechts links rechts Halt", notated in brown ink, on twenty-four staves per page, with deletions and revisions, including some music written on a section of manuscript paper  pasted over an earlier version (annotated and deleted in blue and orange crayon), with the characters "Simpel" [=Simplicius], "Lisbeth" and "Buben [Alle Kinder]", and with the autograph stage-direction at the foot of the first page ("Die Buben nähren sich dann Simpel marschirend") 



2 pages, folio (c.33 x 25.5cms), paginated 25 and 26, 24-stave paper, bearing the violet stamp "Nachlass Johann Strauss", no place or date, [1887] , dust-marking, slight wear and tear at margins

This passage originally formed part of Act One of Simplicius and was described in  a review of the premiere (17 December 1887) in the Vienna Fremden-Blatt.  However, the vocal score was issued by Cranz of Vienna only in 1889 and the present passage was not included.  Simplicius is here appointed as a soldier's boy in a battalion of child soldiers, led by Lisbeth, who instructs him on the basics of soldiering.  Simplicius was one of Strauss's major mature works, based on Grimmelshausen's novel  Der Abenteuerliche Simplicissimus (1668), set during the Thirty Years' War.  

We would like to acknowledge the kind assistance of Peter Kemp in our description of this manuscript.