Schubert's Late Lieder
Beyond the Song-Cycles

A study of songs composed by Schubert in the final six years of his life.

Susan Youens (Author)

9780521028752, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 2 November 2006

456 pages, 37 b/w illus. 35 music examples
24.4 x 17.8 x 2.5 cm, 0.729 kg

'Youens is undoubtedly well attuned to Schubert's musical language and reading this book … will help scholars and listeners see and hear more in even the most deceptively simple of Schubert's songs … It hardly needs adding that the book is exceptionally well-researched, with extensive and detailed footnotes.' The Schubertian

Schubert's Late Lieder is a study of selected songs for voice and piano composed by Schubert between 1822 and his death on 19 November 1828. Circa late 1822, Schubert was diagnosed with syphilis, and many of the songs discussed in this book were written under the seal of impending death. It is possible to locate in these songs a 'late song style', full of elegiac references to Schubert's other death-haunted works and marked by distinctive variation techniques. The songs on poems by Schubert's Austrian contemporaries are less well known than they should be, and yet the backdrop to these works is often fascinating. In this book, Susan Youens introduces the poets Matthäus von Collin, Johann Ladislaus Pyrker, Carl Gottfried Ritter von Leitner, Johann Anton Friedrich Reil, Franz von Schlechta, and Johann Gabriel Seidl and discusses Schubert's songs to their poetry, revealing much about the poet and about Austrian history and culture.

List of illustrations
Preface and acknowledgments
1. Of dwarfs, perversion, and patriotism: Schubert and Matthäus von Collin
2. Ego, Ehrgeiz, and the lied: Schubert and 'the Homer of the Habsburgs,' Johann Ladislaus Pyrker
3. Of song, sorrow, and censorship: Schubert and Carl Gottfried Ritter von Leitner
4. Songs of life, death, and departure: Schubert's Viennese contemporaries
Select bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Romantic music [c 1830 to c 1900 AVGC5]