This book/CD package guides readers and listeners on a journey through Franz Schubert's Winterreise song cycle, in which the composer set the poetry of Wilhelm Muller to music. The complete text of the 24 poems is presented in both German and English, with 116 b&w photographs of winter scenes on the facing pages. An introductory essay by Susan Youens (musicology, U. of Notre Dame) offers a critical examination of the song cycle. The music CD features a new recording of Winterreise, performed by baritone Paul Rowe and pianist Martha Fischer. Oversize: 10.25x10.25". Annotation (c)2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).
An exploration of the world’s most famous and challenging song cycle, Schubert's Winter Journey (Winterreise), by a leading interpreter of the work, who teases out the themes—literary, historical, psychological—that weave through the twenty-four songs that make up this legendary masterpiece. Completed in the last months of the young Schubert’s life, Winterreise has come to be considered the single greatest piece of music in the history of Lieder. Deceptively laconic—these twenty-four short poems set to music for voice and piano are performed uninterrupted in little more than an hour—it nonetheless has an emotional depth and power that no music of its kind has ever equaled. A young man, rejected by his beloved, leaves the house where he has been living and walks out into snow and darkness. As he wanders away from the village and into the empty countryside, he experiences a cascade of emotions—loss, grief, anger, and acute loneliness, shot through with only fleeting moments of hope—until the landscape he inhabits becomes one of alienation and despair. Originally intended to be sung to an intimate gathering, performances of Winterreise now pack the greatest concert halls around the world. Drawing equally on his vast experience performing this work (he has sung it more than one hundred times), on his musical knowledge, and on his training as a scholar, Bostridge teases out the enigmas and subtle meanings of each of the twenty-four lyrics to explore for us the world Schubert inhabited, his biography and psychological makeup, the historical and political pressures within which he became one of the world’s greatest composers, and the continuing resonances and affinities that our ears still detect today, making Schubert’s wanderer our mirror.
Youens addresses the different aspects of the Winterreise: its cultural milieu, the genesis of both the poetry and the music, Schubert's transformation of poetic cycle into music, the philosophical dimension of the work, and its musical structure.
An accessible multi-disciplinary exploration of Franz Schubert's haunting late song cycle Winterreise (1827) that combines context and different analytical approaches.
"Fisk's portrayal of Schubert is based on evidence from the composer's hand, both verbal (song texts and his written words) and musical (vocal and instrumental). Noting extraordinary aspects of tonality, structure, and gestural content, Fisk argues that through his music Schubert sought to alleviate his apparent sense of exile and his anticipation of early death. Fisk supports this view through close analysis of the cyclic connections within and between the works he explores, finding in them complex musical narratives that attempt to come to terms with mortality, alienation, hope, and desire."--BOOK JACKET.
This Companion to Schubert examines the career, music, and reception of one of the most popular yet misunderstood and elusive composers. Sixteen chapters by leading Schubert scholars make up three parts. The first seeks to situate the social, cultural, and musical climate in which Schubert lived and worked, the second surveys the scope of his musical achievement, and the third charts the course of his reception from the perceptions of his contemporaries to the assessments of posterity. Myths and legends about Schubert the man are explored critically and the full range of his musical accomplishment is examined.
A Career of Japan is the first study of one of the major photographers and personalities of nineteenth-century Japan. Baron Raimund von Stillfried was the most important foreign-born photographer of the Meiji era and one of the first globally active photographers of his generation. He played a key role in the international image of Japan and the adoption of photography within Japanese society itself. Yet, the lack of a thorough study of his activities, travels, and work has been a fundamental gap in both Japanese- and Western-language scholarship. Based on extensive new primary sources and unpublished documents from archives around the world, this book examines von Stillfried’s significance as a cultural mediator between Japan and Central Europe. It highlights the tensions and fierce competition that underpinned the globalising photographic industry at a site of cultural contact and exchange – treaty-port Yokohama. In the process, it raises key questions for Japanese visual culture, Habsburg studies, and cross-cultural histories of photography and globalisation. A Career of Japan is the winner of the 2nd Professor Josef Kreiner Hosei University Award for International Studies (Kreiner Award). “Luke Gartlan’s book is a compelling and enjoyable read, and contributes major new perspectives to the growing field of Meiji photography. It will certainly be the authoritative work on Raimund von Stillfried, but it is also impressive for its contributions to other important areas of Meiji cultural studies, including representations of the emperor, photography of Hokkaido, and world’s fairs.” Bert Winther-Tamaki (University of California, Irvine)
Schubert's late music has proved pivotal for the development of diverse fields of musical scholarship, from biography and music history to the theory of harmony. This collection addresses current issues in Schubert studies including compositional technique, the topical issue of 'late' style, tonal strategy and form in the composer's instrumental music, and musical readings of the 'postmodern' Schubert. Offering fresh approaches to Schubert's instrumental and vocal works and their reception, this book argues that the music that the composer produced from 1822–8 is central to a paradigm shift in the history of music during the nineteenth century. The contributors provide a timely reassessment of Schubert's legacy, assembling a portrait of the composer that is very different from the sentimental Schubert permeating nineteenth-century culture and the postmodern Schubert of more recent literature.
