Rethinking Schubert

Abstract Rethinking Schubert brings together twenty-two essays by some of today’s leading Schubert scholars with the aim of re-evaluating the analysis and interpretation of Schubert’s music and life. It focuses on three core areas: Part I addresses matters of style; Part II explores the analysis of instrumental forms; and Part III considers questions of text setting in the lieder, stage and sacred works. Each of these fields has received fresh stimulus in recent years, through the development of new hermeneutic and theoretical approaches and the discovery of fresh source materials; it is this volume’s objective both to consolidate these developments and to break new ground. The book is framed by an Introduction, in which the editors give an overview of the volume, as representative of current musicological and analytical trends in Schubert studies; and a Postlude, in which Graham Johnson reflects on performance in Schubert’s reception history and Walther Dürr’s seminal role in ‘rethinking Schubert’. Altogether, Rethinking Schubert makes a major contribution to Oxford University Press’s ‘Rethinking Composers’ series, and to Schubert scholarship in general. It draws together the work of a broad constituency of scholars, encompassing senior and emerging practitioners, and representing scholarship from both Anglophone and Germanic contexts. Its purview ranges from historical, biographical and aesthetic considerations to detailed analytical studies. Rethinking Schubert consequently promises to serve as a benchmark scholarly contribution and to reach a wide readership.