Schubert's Instrumental Music and Poetics of Interpretation

René Rusch (Author)

9780253067395

Paperback / softback, published 30 September 2023

244 pages, 6 b&w tables, 84 printed music items
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.3 cm, 0.34 kg

"Rusch's book is a valuable addition to the analytical literature on Schubert. . . . Her analyses consistently embrace multiple subjectivities and subject positions and decline to "give . . . unqualified allegiance to unity as the supreme value for analysis" (Korsyn 2004, 338). Like Rusch, I find poetic correspondences between this open-ended analytical approach and the strange or uncanny qualities of Schubert's music, and I think her analyses reveal the potential for others to attempt a similar approach with the music of other elusive composers (Fauré comes to mind). Even if one is not persuaded by Rusch's "postmodernist reluctance to accept a single or objective reality and engage with master narratives," it is important to note that she never rejects other analyses that privilege unity (194). The reader is rather repeatedly "invited" to contemplate Schubert's music from multiple different angles—the word "invite" is somewhat of a leitmotif in the book—and it would seem churlish to decline such a graciously offered invitation. I should also add that Rusch's embrace of multiple perspectives and subjectivities does not come at the expense of analytical detail or rigor. Her analyses are copiously illustrated with meticulous annotated examples that range from extremely detailed Schenkerian voice-leading graphs to neo-Riemannian Tonnetze to score excerpts annotated with formal labels."—Andrew Pau, Theory and Practice

Music scholarship's views of Franz Schubert's instrumental works continue to evolve. How might aesthetic values, historiographies, revisions to the composer's biography, and disciplinary commitments affect how we interpret his music?
Schubert's Instrumental Music and Poetics of Interpretation explores the aesthetic positions and operations that underlie critical assessments of Schubert's instrumental works. In six chapters, each devoted to one or two of Schubert's pieces, René Rusch examines the conditions that have prompted scholarship to reevaluate the composer's music and legacy, considers how different conclusions about his music may be reflective of certain aesthetic values, investigates the role of narrative in both music analysis and constructions of history, and explores alternative forms of coherence through updated analyses of the composer's instrumental works. Rusch's observations and comparative analyses address four significant areas of scholarly focus in Schubert studies, including his approach to chromaticism, his unique musical forms, the relationship between his music and biography, and the influence of Beethoven.
Drawing from a range of philosophical, hermeneutic, historical, biographical, theoretical, and analytical sources, Schubert's Instrumental Music and Poetics of Interpretation offers readers a unique and innovative foray into the poetics of contemporary analyses of Schubert's instrumental music and develops new ways to engage with his repertoire.

Preface
1. Schubert's Musical Reception and Contemporary Schubert Criticism
2. Rethinking Conceptions of Unity
3. The Value of Diatonic Indeterminacy When Traveling through Tonal Space
4. Sonata Forms, Fantasias, and Formal Coherence
5. Biography, Music Analysis, and the Narrative Impulse
6. Beyond Homage and Critique: Rethinking Musical Influence
Closing Remarks
Works Cited
Index