Schubert's Poets and the Making of Lieder

A re-examination of the life and work of four poets and Schubert's settings of their verse.

Susan Youens (Author)

9780521778626, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 28 October 1999

404 pages, 12 b/w illus.
24.7 x 17.6 x 2.1 cm, 0.66 kg

'It is a measure of success of this important new study that the songs which are the object of such close scrutiny will never sound quite the same to the reader-listener. We shall hear them, both words and music, with greater understanding, growing admiration and continuing affection.' Paul Reid, The Schubertian

Lieder began with words, with the composer's discovery of a poet and a poetic work, but the scholarly study of lieder has tended to bypass those origins. Schubert's choice of poets has traditionally come under fire for the preponderance of mediocre talent, and yet many of these writers were highly esteemed in their day. In her highly acclaimed study, Susan Youens has chosen four such poets - Gabriele von Baumberg, Theodor Körner, Johann Mayrhofer and Ernst Schulze - in order to re-examine their lives, works, and Schubert's music to their verse. All four poets were vivid inhabitants of a vivid era, and their tribulations afford us added insight into the upheavals, the manners and mores, of their day.

Introduction
1. 'The Sappho of Vienna': Gabriele von Baumberg and the disasters of war
2. The lyre and the sword: Theodor Körner and the lied
3. Chromatic melancholy: John Mayrhofer and Schubert
4. En route to Winterreise: Ernst Schulze and the sisterly muses, or a study in Romantic psychopathy.

Subject Areas: Individual composers & musicians, specific bands & groups [AVH]