Schubert's Lyricism Reconsidered

This book re-examines the notion of Schubert's instrumental lyricism and explores its aesthetic and technical links with the discursive strategies of idealist lyric poetry. While Schubert's lyricism is most often associated with cantabile style, it is also implicit in the composer's paratactic approach to form and in his tendency to emphasize the materiality of musical gestures through unprepared chromaticism or sudden changes of texture. Such unorthodox instrumental designs are further considered with reference to two idealist views of musical form, A. B. Marx's Formenlehre and Schenker's brief discussion of form in Free Composition. Schubert's departures from sonata norms are, at the same time, manifestations of structural patterns typical of the Liedsatz and forms derived from combinations of Liedstze, such as the theme and variation. His incorporation of these patterns within the context of the sonata evokes the lyric as both an Arcadian ideal and as a means of critical engagement with convention. This study reaffirms the centrality of the poetic imagination for Schubert through an interdisciplinary approach that combines the literary and the musical.