Franz Schubert and His World (The Bard Music Festival Book 37)

During his short lifetime, Franz Schubert (1797–1828) contributed to a wide variety of musical genres, from intimate songs and dances to ambitious chamber pieces, symphonies, and operas. The essays and translated documents in __Franz Schubert and His World__ examine his compositions and ties to the Viennese cultural context, revealing surprising and overlooked aspects of his music. Contributors explore Schubert's youthful participation in the Nonsense Society, his circle of friends, and changing views about the composer during his life and in the century after his death. New insights are offered about the connections between Schubert’s music and the popular theater of the day, his strategies for circumventing censorship, the musical and narrative relationships linking his song settings of poems by Gotthard Ludwig Kosegarten, and musical tributes he composed to commemorate the death of Beethoven just twenty months before his own. The book also includes translations of excerpts from a literary journal produced by Schubert’s classmates and of Franz Liszt’s essay on the opera __Alfonso und Estrella__. In addition to the editors, the contributors are Leon Botstein, Lisa Feurzeig, John Gingerich, Kristina Muxfeldt, and Rita Steblin. The life, times, and music of Franz Schubert During his short lifetime, Franz Schubert (1797–1828) contributed to a wide variety of musical genres, from intimate songs and dances to ambitious chamber pieces, symphonies, and operas. The essays and translated documents in Franz Schubert and His World examine his compositions and ties to the Viennese cultural context, revealing surprising and overlooked aspects of his music. Contributors explore Schubert's youthful participation in the Nonsense Society, his circle of friends, and changing views about the composer during his life and in the century after his death. New insights are offered about the connections between Schubert's music and the popular theater of the day, his strategies for circumventing censorship, the musical and narrative relationships linking his song settings of poems by Gotthard Ludwig Kosegarten, and musical tributes he composed to commemorate the death of Beethoven just twenty months before his own. The book also includes translations of excerpts from a literary journal produced by Schubert's classmates and of Franz Liszt's essay on the opera Alfonso und Estrella . In addition to the editors, the contributors are Leon Botstein, Lisa Feurzeig, John Gingerich, Kristina Muxfeldt, and Rita Steblin. Contents Preface Acknowledgments Permissions and Credits Schubert: The Nonsense Society Revisited Excerpts from Beyträge zur Bildung für Jünglinge, 1817–1818 “Those of us who found our life in art”: The Second-Generation Romanticism of the Schubert-Schober Circle, 1820–1825 Schubert’s Kosegarten Settings of 1815: A Forgotten Liederspiel The Queen of Golconda, the Ashman, and the Shepherd on a Rock: Schubert and the Vienna Volkstheater Liszt on Schubert’s Alfonso und Estrella Schubert’s Freedom of Song, if Not Speech Schubert’s Tombeau de Beethoven: Decrypting the Piano Trio in E-Flat Major, Op. 100 Schubert in History Index Notes on Contributors