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12-1-2012 Review of: Analyzing Schubert by Suzannah Clark, Vanishing Sensibilities: Schubert, Beethoven, Schumann by Kristina Muxfeldt, and Schubert’s Fingerprints: Studies in the Instrumental Works by Susan Wollenberg Geoffrey Block University of Puget Sound, [email protected]

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Citation Block, Geoffrey. 2012. "Analyzing Schubert/Vanishing Sensibilities: Schubert, Beethoven, Schumann/Schubert's Fingerprints: Studies in the Instrumental Works." Notes 69(2): 292-303.

This Review is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty Scholarship at Sound Ideas. It has been accepted for inclusion in All Faculty Scholarship by an authorized administrator of Sound Ideas. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 292 Notes, December 2012 the names of colleagues and acquaintances be among the most interesting and indi- throughout the world, thus further docu- vidual of the present age.) (vol. 1, p. 288) menting Busoni’s knowledge of the con- temporary music scene and the exchange Busoni’s wide-ranging musical tastes and of music and musical ideas. For example, interests are evident throughout the corre- Busoni asked that his new method of or- spondence as well. Many letters reveal ganic piano notation to be sent to sixty- broad knowledge of historical music, as seven people, including some of the best- well as an insatiable curiosity about contem- known composers and pianists of his era, poraneous pieces. Just a few highlights in- such as Egon Petri, Theodor Leschetizky, clude Busoni’s references to Orlando di Richard Strauss, Moriz Rosenthal, Vincent Lasso (letter no. 33), Tomaso Albinoni (let- d’Indy, Edward Elgar, Ignacy Jan Pade- ter no. 839) Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Le rewski, Artur Schnabel, Arthur Friedheim, devin du village, letter no. 241), and Carlo Arnold Schoenberg, Max Reger, Hugo Goldoni (letter no. 244). Riemann, Claude Debussy, and Camille Ferruccio Busoni im Briefwechsel mit seinem Saint-Saëns (vol. 1, pp. 387–89). The corre- Verlag Breitkopf & Härtel is a valuable re- spondence also shows that Busoni sought source for any scholar conducting research to aid the careers of fledgling composers on Busoni or on composers, compositions, such as Béla Bartók. Busoni brought editing, or publishing in the late nine- Bartók’s compositions to the attention teenth and early twentieth centuries. The of Breitkopf and Härtel in a letter dated set offers easy access to primary source ma- June 27, 1908: terial previously only available in archives. Reading through the volumes could be a daunting task for anyone not yet fluent in Der junge und hochbegabte Béla Bártók German (one letter is in French: letter no. hat mir heute 14 kurze Clavierstücke ei- 511, vol. 1, p. 369). Yet the correspondence gener Composition vorgespielt, welche contains a wealth of information and a por- ich zu den interessantesten u. persön- trait of musical life in the era, making it a lichsten der Gegenwart rechnen muss. “must have” reference tool for scholars of late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century (The young and highly gifted Béla music. Bártók played 14 of his own short piano Erinn Knyt pieces for me today, which I consider to University of Massachusetts Amherst

SCHUBERTIADE Analyzing Schubert. By Suzannah Clark. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. [x, 290 p. ISBN 9780521848671. $99.] Music ex- amples, bibliography, index. Vanishing Sensibilities: Schubert, Beethoven, Schumann. By Kristina Muxfeldt. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. [xxi, 241 p. ISBN 9780199782420. $39.95.] Music examples, illustrations, bibliography, index. Schubert’s Fingerprints: Studies in the Instrumental Works. By Susan Wollenberg. Farnham, U.K.: Ashgate, 2011. [xviii, 317 p. ISBN 9781409421221. $124.95.] Music examples, bibliography, indexes.

The three volumes under consideration We begin with Kristina Muxfeldt’s in this review collectively serve as a fitting Vanishing Sensibilities: Schubert, Beethoven testament to the intense, continued, and Schumann. Muxfeld brings two other com- evolving fascination Schubert exerts on posers to the table for half of her six chap- scholars and their potential readers. ters (the two Beethoven chapters together, Book Reviews 293 however, take up fewer total pages than any poems,” which “makes no effort to recover of the three Schubert chapters). Her sub- what might once have appealed in them” stantial chapter on Schumann’s song cycle (p. 86). She similarly finds herself at odds Frauenliebe und Leben reprints without with Ruth Solie’s pioneering feminist essay change an essay published in 19th Century on the cycle, “Whose life? The Gendered Music in 2001 followed by a fresh two-page Self in Schumann’s Frauenliebe Songs,” orig- postscript. A chapter on Schubert’s two set- inally published in Music and Text: Critical tings by the self-acknowledged homosexual Inquiries, edited by Steven Paul Scher (Cam- poet August von Platen, which first ap- bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), peared in the Journal of the American Musi - nine years before the first printing of cological Society in 1996, is also reprinted Muxfeldt’s chapter. According to Muxfeldt, here, with minor additions, a general ac- Solie “paints an exaggeratedly insular do- knowledgement at the outset that Schu- mestic scene that sets aside the growing bert’s “temperament and intellectual lean- importance of the professional singer” ings have come into sharper focus for us” (p. 99). In short, Muxfeldt suggests that a (p. 160) over the years, and a parenthetical modern feminist perspective manufactures note at the end of the essay noting “with an anachronistic or even nonexistent his- pleasure” that her concluding mention of tory and argues that “present standards can the “controversy over same-sex desire that appear to be so entrenched that we cannot continues to be debated even today” (then see how they reflect the aberrations of our 1996), is “sounding a little quaint today” own time even more deeply than those of (p. 196), the second decade of the twenty- the past” (p. 101 n. 36). first century. In the Beethoven chapters Muxfeldt dis- In addition to including Beethoven and cusses other relevant historiographic sensi- Schumann in her reception history, the bilities, in particular “the many different va- more idiosyncratic Muxfeldt stands apart rieties and forms of memory we can discern from the others in her decision to eschew and Beethoven’s imaginative techniques the usual musical suspects featured in the for distinguishing them” (p. xix). In one other two studies and instead focuses on chapter, three works with prominent the- two virtually forgotten operas, Alfonso und matic reminiscences, the Fifth and Ninth Estrella (1822) and Der Graf von Gleichen Symphonies and the Piano Sonata in A (The Count from Gleichen) (1827) and the Major, op. 101, are well chosen to exem- two known Platen songs composed in 1822, plify what some might consider a Schu- “Die Liebe hat gelogen” (“Love Has Lied”) bertian side to Beethoven’s work. A second and “Du liebst mich nicht” (“You Do Not chapter on Beethoven, at eleven pages by Love Me”). Despite their anomalous status, far the briefest in the book, excerpted from the two operas and the two songs nonethe- a much larger essay published in the collec- less offer a rich opportunity to examine tion The Literature of German Romanticism, provocative literary and social issues. Per- edited by Dennis F. Mahoney (Rochester, haps the most telling illustration of Mux - NY: Camden House, 2004), shows how “the feldt’s ambitious attempt to address current surprising language of an episode in the issues while retaining our discipline’s fun- Goethe-Zelter correspondence, and on its damental historiographical sensibilities, garbled transmission by Adolph Bernhard however, can be found in her examination Marx, traces a story of changing Beethoven of Schumann’s song cycle, Frauenliebe und reception, from Zelter’s reluctant fascina- Leben, generally regarded by recent schol- tion with him to Marx’s blinding champi- ars regardless of gender as anti-feminist. onship” (p. 149). Muxfeldt perceptively Muxfeldt diverges from this prevailing demonstrates how this exchange reveals view. For example, in responding to as much about Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Gerhard Kaiser’s representative “sharp and especially his personal favorite novel tongue-lashing” of the poems written by the Elective Affinities, as it does about Beetho - cycle’s poet Adelbert von Chamisso (Kaiser, ven’s controversial place in the pantheon Geschichte der deutschen Lyrik von Goethe bis in 1812, when Goethe first wrote to Carl Heine, 3 vols. [Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, Friedrich Zelter, “a time, still in the middle 1988)]), Muxfeldt finds fault in Kaiser’s of his career, when admiration for his “unapologetically modern reaction to the music was a minority taste” (p. 149). 294 Notes, December 2012

When considering works such as Schu- latter in an aria that is often cut). Probably, bert’s opera Alfonso und Estrella, unheard in had they not done so, there would have Schubert’s lifetime and, with the exception been no opera. of Franz Liszt’s considerably truncated pro- Muxfeldt is not alone in finding allegory duction of the work in 1854, mostly ig- in Schubert’s libretti. David Schroeder for nored thereafter; or the opera Der Graf von one finds Alfonso und Estrella to be a con- Gleichen, abandoned in 1827 and left unfin- spiratorial allegory about Viennese politics ished at the time of Schubert’s death in with an ineffectual king (King Mauregato) 1828, it is no easy task to grasp how these standing for the ineffectual Kaiser Franz, works were received in their own time and the principal villain Adolfo for Metternich, to reconstruct a reception history. It is chal- and the character King Froila capturing lenging enough to decipher how audiences “the spirit of Joseph II” (Our Schubert: His received such well-documented operas as Enduring Legacy [Lanham, MD: Scarecrow, Le Nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Die 2009], 104). Muxfeldt similarly finds alle- Zauberflöte, much less unperformed, unfin- gory, but concludes that Schroeder’s ished, and never reviewed works. In consid- merely ineffectual Mauregato rather than ering Alfonso und Estrella, Muxfeldt valiantly Adolfo should be considered the villain be- attempts to construct how it might have cause his “three-syllable name just happens been perceived by audiences and Viennese to begin with M!” (p. 23) To her credit, censors in relation to Mozart’s operas, but Muxfeldt expresses her awareness that in in the absence of precise documentation the absence of documented contemporary she must rely on conjecture. Despite such reception “we can gauge only indirectly daunting obstacles, she boldly and imagina- what effect the opera might have made in tively, if not always persuasively, attempts to the 1820s” (p. 19), and she does not try to recreate how these little-known operas re- offer a definitive explanation of what the flect their own time. opera means and why it might subversive. In the process of her analysis Muxfeldt Interestingly, neither Muxfeldt nor leaves unexplained several assertions about Schroeder can fathom why several of Mozart as well as Schubert. For example, in Schubert’s contemporaries expressed their her prologue she writes that “if we knew admiration for the Alfonso libretto. For nothing more of Figaro today than its li- Schroeder, however, the very incompre- bretto, we never would have guessed how hensibility of the plot provides the essential much more subversive was this production clue to its symbolic meaning, and he even than the play of Beaumarchais, banned in goes as far as to suggest that Schubert Mozart’s Vienna, from which it was deliberately wrote mediocre music to adapted” (p. xviii). She may know more parallel the mediocrities of his characters. than she is saying, but if she means that it is In contrast, Muxfeldt, who does not cite Mozart’s music that made the work subver- Schroeder, refrains from accusing Schubert sive to contemporary audiences (and such of composing intentionally mediocre mu- a case could be made), she does not inform sic, but nonetheless considers it plausible her readers what makes it so. And when she that some of the striking aspects of the plunges into a hypothetical contemporary work “could have come about not just from response to Schubert’s Alfonso und Estrella, inexperience but because Schubert and the discussion seems to focus on the li- Schober were using the opera to vent their bretto rather than the music. The implica- rage at Metternich’s policies” (p. 22). tion of her statement about the relative To substantiate this latter claim Muxfeldt subversiveness between the Beaumarchais offers a range of examples of plot points libretto and Mozart’s music also presup- that might be understood in the light of poses that audiences were capable of grasp- current events and practices in Vienna. For ing what the censors could not, an unprov- example, the fact that Alfonso was forbid- able and dubious assumption. In any event, den by law to leave his valley parallels laws the fact remains that when crafting the li- in the 1820s that prohibited Austrian stu- bretto, Lorenzo da Ponte and Mozart re- dents from leaving their country. In con- moved Figaro’s incendiary political speech trast to Schroeder’s implication that no one and softened Marcellina’s protofeminist re- in his right mind would extol the virtues of marks from the play (placing some of the the Alfonso und Estrella libretto if it were not Book Reviews 295 a coded indictment against Metternich’s re- it was not until the late eighteenth century pressive regime (a code that conveniently that the premise of a bigamous marriage audiences but not censors would grasp), between a new wife, an underage Eastern Muxfeldt concedes that “no reading can be princess, and the first wife, a Countess who sustained consistently” (p. 28). Instead, she comes to love the young bride and encour- offers only the possibility that coded topical ages the unconventional union, came to be interpretations might explain what might viewed as problematic. otherwise seem incomprehensible to mod- As Muxfeldt tells the story, the issues run ern audiences: “Certainly, my aim here is deeper than a simple plot exposition al- not to decode once and for all what lows. For her the problem is not merely or Schubert’s opera meant so much as to un- even primarily the social challenges of derstand how it was designed to stimulate bigamy in a monogamous culture. What is political engagement in its own time. The at stake is nothing less than the vanishing ambition to summon current events—by al- sensibility of what constitutes a satisfactory lowing music’s own bearing and rhetoric ending. An excellent exhibition of the seis- to carve independent meanings from the li- mic aesthetic shift that occurred early in bretto’s words—would account for at least the nineteenth century can be observed in some of the opera’s anomalies” (p. 28). the revisions that Goethe made to the end- The ways in which dramatic works can be ing of Stella when he revised the play in interpreted by contemporary audiences en- 1806. Instead of a comedy in which an un- joys its own impressive and widely docu- orthodox and seemingly unsolvable love tri- mented history and many examples from angle evolves into a loving and respectable which to choose. It is widely accepted, for ménage à trois, Goethe created a more ac- example, that the English saw themselves ceptable and ironically felicitous tragic end- as the “chosen” people when hearing ing in which Stella (the Suleika prototype) Handel’s Israel in Egypt; Italians attending a poisons herself and the Count also takes his performance of Verdi’s Nabucco identified own life. The history of Don Giovanni simi- with the oppressed Hebrews; and American larly reveals that as early as its second per- viewers understood that when viewing in formance in Vienna in 1788 the relatively the 1950s Arthur Miller’s play ostensibly joyous epilogue for the surviving characters about the Salem witch trials, The Crucible; was most likely eliminated—a vivid fore- Lillian Hellman’s musical libretto about shadowing of an evolving aesthetic in the the eighteenth-century optimist, Candide; next century in which productions rou- and from an opposing perspective Elia tinely concluded the opera with the Don’s Kazan’s film On the Waterfront, it would be one-way trip to hell. By the time Schubert clear that the subtext was the McCarthy and his friend Eduard von Bauernfeld de- hearings. The problem with interpreting cided to collaborate on an opera based on hidden meanings in unheard works such as the story of the Count von Gleichen and Alfonso und Estrella is that we cannot be sure his two paramours, not only was a happy we have cracked the code. But as Muxfeldt ending under these circumstances unpalat- reveals, it is worth the attempt. able to Metternich’s censors (for that mat- Muxfeldt devotes what is arguably her ter it would not have passed muster with most original and elegantly argued chapter the Hays Hollywood Production Code ei- to Schubert’s unfinished final opera Der ther); perhaps more significantly it was also Graf von Gleichen, based on the legend of a anathema to a modern sensibility that fa- thirteenth-century crusader, formerly a vored tragedy over comedy. Schubert and prisoner of war in Cairo, who was given pa- Bauernfeld might have had an easier time pal dispensation to marry a second wife, getting permission to dramatize what Suleika, the fifteen year-old daughter of the Schubert’s friend Josef von Spaun referred Sultan, upon their return to Germany after, to as the “gloomy” and “melancholy” songs in the case of the Count, a seven year- of Winterreise. absence. At the outset of the chapter she Muxfeldt suspects that the reason calls “The Matrimonial Anomaly” Muxfeldt Schubert did not finish the final two num- notes that despite dozens, if not hundreds, bers from an otherwise nearly complete of renditions of this popular medieval leg- short score can be explained by his lack of end, including Goethe’s play Stella in 1776, sympathy with his era’s rejection of a happy 296 Notes, December 2012 ending for the unorthodox trio. Whether possible that the AmZ comments on Schu- we accept this speculative but sensible ex- bert belong to another reviewer, most planation, which is perhaps preferable to scholars would agree that Muxfeldt and Ernst Hilmar’s theory that Schubert simply Clark are referring to the same critic, the lost interest in the work, or that he became same Fink. discouraged about the prospect of a perfor- In addition to respectful and even largely mance or simply distracted by other more sympathetic reviews of Schubert’s Piano pressing matters, Muxfeldt offers a riveting Sonatas in A Minor, op. 42 and G Major, history of the Gleichen legend, including op. 78, Fink also discussed a number of discussion of several among Schubert and Schubert songs as early as 1824. Among Bauernfeld’s literary predecessors. She these songs were the two Schubert 1822 set- finds it “remarkable that Goethe felt com- tings by Platen, “Die Liebe hat gelogen” in pelled so radically to alter the trajectory of 1824 and “Du liebst mich nicht” in 1827, a story written decades earlier” (p. 80), and the songs that form the focus of Muxfeldt’s by the time we have finished her chapter so final chapter of Vanishing Sensibilities, do we. She does not consider it coinciden- “Schubert, Platen, and the Myth of tal that Goethe’s revised ending, which Narcissus” (the same title as her earlier es- transports his play from comedy to tragedy, say for JAMS). Muxfeldt is particularly occurs precisely where Schubert’s opera struck by the contrast between Fink’s pub- draft stops. The implication is that Schu- lished remarks on a group of Schubert bert’s opera is not an apology for bigamy songs that includes the Platen and a single but a broader plea for tolerance: “It only documented private remark by one of uses the legend as a vehicle to promote a Schubert’s friends, Franz von Bruchmann, sentimentally charged message of toler- who described Platen’s “Du liebst mich ance, respect for unusual personal circum- nicht” as “quite entrancing” (“ganz beza- stances, informed consent, domestic and ubert”). She then rhetorically asks, “Could social harmony” (p. 81), in short, values it have been precisely their personal prox- embraced by Schubert and rejected by imity to Schubert that gave his friends a Metternich’s Vienna. special insight, that allowed them to appre- Muxfeldt’s concentration on the operas ciate aspects of his work the critic(s) did Alfonso und Estrella and Der Graf von Gleichen not, and perhaps could not, fully compre- and two songs reduces the points of inter- hend?” (p. 165). Muxfeldt herself does section with the other two books under re- not comprehend the critic’s “underlying view here, but not entirely. The songs in charge” that Schubert’s “bold departures” question, both set to poems by the non- and “eccentricities” are “barely motivated” fictional Count von Platen, make an and “not justified by the poetic text” (p. oblique appearance in Suzannah Clark’s 165). This brings Muxfeldt to ask another Analyzing Schubert by way of a contemporary rhetorical question: “If Schubert’s musical critic who reviewed the collections that response to the poem appears to him exag- contained the Platen songs for the Allge- gerated, inappropriate, unmotivated, could meine musikalische Zeitung (AmZ). Clark does this be at least in part because the anony- not mention the Platen songs reviewed in mous critic does not share Schubert’s un- this publication, but she does discuss at derstanding of the text?” (p. 165). length other songs discussed by its reviewer Muxfeldt continues with the observation whom she, without explanation, designates that “the later reception history of the as Gottfried Wilhelm Fink, a critic who Platen songs reveals that the concerns would become the editor of the AmZ in raised by Schubert’s contemporaries have 1827. Fink was probably the most reflective only been magnified, not resolved” (p. among the relatively few professional critics 166). Undisturbed by rapid harmonic who reviewed works published in the com- shifts, a modern theorist such as Kofi poser’s lifetime. It should be noted that al- Agawu, who can retrospectively observe though Muxfeldt considers Fink as anony- the forward-looking aspects of Schubert’s mous (the reviews lack a byline), in a note “ ‘abnormal’ harmonic language,” and the she acknowledges that Otto Erich Deutsch noted Schubert lied scholar Susan Youens “raises the possibility” this critic might in share the view “that it [“Du liebst”] is in the fact be Fink (p. 162 n. 2). Although it is end an experimental, not entirely persua- Book Reviews 297 sive work” (p. 167). For Muxfeldt, both same-sex subtext (meanings that would be Fink in his time and Agawu and Youens in as inexplicable and irrelevant to Fink as any ours are “unpersuaded by the poetic or in- other plain prose meaning), it is also possi- terpretive impulse that motivated the em- ble that Schubert’s friend found the com- phatic musical effects in the first place” (p. poser’s rapid modulations in other text set- 168). According to Muxfeldt, Schubert’s tings equally entrancing. Unfortunately, we sensitive contemporary Bruchmann may do not know, and Mux feldt’s informed have found “Du liebst mich nicht” entranc- speculation remains just that. ing because he understood the text in a The six chapters of Muxfeldt’s study may way that Fink, Agawu, and Youens do not. lack a strong and systematic thematic co- From the context Muxfeldt seems to be herence, but they are nonetheless unified suggesting that Bruchmann may have per- in their ambitious attempt to understand ceived what could be referred to today as a how contemporary thinkers and audiences gay subtext, a subtext that would justify the understood the musical milieu they lived in intensity of Schubert’s harmonic response and the paradox that “what once seemed rejected by critics from Schubert’s time to radical can become normative with time” the present. and “what once seemed ordinary can ap- Before inferring an anti-gay subtext to pear distorted and extreme in another age” Fink’s objections or a more benign conclu- (p. xxi). She writes: “We cannot do justice sion that Fink was simply insensitive to an to a complex past—its successes, its failures, early nineteenth-century gay sensibility, it is and its unrealized hopes—if we are afraid necessary to emphasize the fact that Fink to lose ourselves in another world” (p. xxi). does not directly address Platen’s or any To her credit, Muxfeldt often succeeds in poet’s actual text, a neglect that, interest- unraveling the complexities and nuances of ingly, Fink shares with the influential the past and is unafraid to lose herself in twentieth-century theorist Heinrich the largely uncharted terrain of the nine- Schenker. Not surprisingly, Schenker’s teenth century, even when what we con- bizarre oversight is noted by Clark in her clude from this immersion remains coun- survey of theoretical approaches to song in terintuitive to our modern sensibilities. Analyzing Schubert. But getting back to * * * Schubert’s day, as Clark explains, for a In her forensic examination, Schubert’s contemporary critic like Fink, no text could Fingerprints: Studies in the Instrumental Works, possibly justify Schu bert’s eccentric ap- Susan Wollenberg treats eight characteris- proach to harmony (and Fink never even tic stylistic aspects of Schubert’s music, sev- saw Schubert’s original autograph in which eral of which are frequent topics in the “Du liebst mich night” appears in the then extensive literature on the composer. Next truly noticeable key of G-sharp minor): “In to a ubiquitous and irrepressible lyricism (a particular he modulates so oddly and often characteristic noted but not discussed sepa- so very suddenly towards the remotest re- rately), perhaps the most ubiquitous Schu- gions as no other composer on earth has bertian fingerprint discussed by Wollen- done” (Fink as quoted in Deutsch, Schubert: berg is the composer’s pervasive and varied A Documentary Biography [New York: Da treatment of the major and minor yin and Capo, 1977], p. 636; Clark, p. 58). In her ex- yang in virtually any given key, but espe- ploration of Fink’s reviews Clark discusses cially the tonic. Unfortunately, although two non-Platen songs in some detail, “Auf the subject of Wollenberg’s first chapter af- der Donau” (“On the Danube”) and “Selige ter the introduction is devoted to this fin- Welt” (“Blessed World”), before persua- gerprint and although she acknowledges its sively concluding that Fink is not bothered use as “far reaching” and “numberless” and by such matters as concluding a song in a offers many musical examples (occupying key other than its starting point and most 24 of the 29 pages that follow two introduc- importantly that “he is less concerned about tory pages), the chapter seems to lack a which keys Schubert goes to than he is about guiding argument other than that Schubert the manner in which Schubert reaches places this particular fingerprint every- them” (p. 67; emphasis in original). where, including numerous (if not num- Although it is possible that Bruchmann sin- berless) resemblances between songs and gled out a Platen setting because of its passages in the instrumental works. 298 Notes, December 2012

Another unmistakable and powerful fin- chapters perhaps rests less with the catchy gerprint, if one less employed, designated but elusive notion of fingerprints than a here as Schubert’s “Violent Nature,” is rich and detailed description of Schubert’s again demonstrated by copious music ex- musical physiognomy. Many of the works amples, in this case filling no less of twenty- discussed exhibit two or three characteris- three of the twenty-six pages that follow two tics, and the String Quartet in G Minor example-free pages of introductory text. (D. 173), the earliest instrumental work to Unfortunately, Wollenberg exhibits a facile clearly demonstrate a range of Schubert and unquestioned acceptance of those who fingerprints, the G-Major Quartet (D. 887), interpret Schubert’s occasional violent dis- and the String Quintet in C Major offer no turbances of a predominant lyrical mood as fewer than four of the eight fingerprints. unequivocal evidence of Schubert’s bipolar One unfortunate net effect of this finger- nature, while categorically denying the print surplus is to reduce the distinctive comparably plausible notion that the com- traces of an individual print. It might have poser may have felt desire for members of been preferable to discuss these multi- his own sex. Despite this unsupported at- fingerprinted works in a separate chapter tempt to link biography and art, this chap- of forensic case studies. ter demonstrates convincing links between In each chapter Wollenberg follows a the respective contrasting sections in the short introduction (between one and four slow movements of the C-Major Quintet pages) with relatively brief commentary and the Piano Sonata in A Major (D. 959), supported by an unusually large proportion two prime examples of what Hugh of musical examples. In fact, excluding the Macdonald famously described as “Schu - brief introductory remarks, musical exam- bert’s Volcanic Temper” (Musical Times 119 ples in the chapters devoted to a particular [1978]: 949–52), especially in calling atten- fingerprint (chaps. 2–9) occupy all or a tion to the “disturbing elements” foreshad- portion of 196 out of 237 pages (nearly owed in A sections that “are far from stable 90%). The result creates the feel of an ana- in character” (p. 175). Perhaps surpris- lytical handbook of meticulously and usu- ingly, or on second thought a predictable ally authoritatively described Schubertian demonstration of modern aesthetic values, passages or movements using four genres Wollenberg considers the bipolar Schubert composed between 1811 and 1827: more significant than the lyrical Schubert: Orchestral (5 works); Chamber (21 works), “if a choice had to be made among them Piano Solo (18 works), and Piano Duo (3 [i.e., the fingerprints], Schubert’s violent works). A table in the back of the book la- streak is the one that above all seems to be beled “Chronology of Schubert’s Instru - at the heart of his individual way of writing” mental Works” (p. 309) displays a conve- (p. 161). nient listing (arranged by genre) of all the Other fingerprints discussed by Wollen- works discussed. berg are less clearly defined and instead At the core of Wollenberg’s analysis is form part of a larger yet often nuanced dis- the conviction that Schubert’s larger forms, cussion of Schubert’s musical style orga- contrary to generations of received wisdom, nized according to a broad range of topics: exert a demonstrable formal coherence. A selected sections of sonata-allegro form locus classicus in this debate is the G-Major (“Poetic Transitions” and “Schubert’s Quartet, a work regularly critically margin- Second Themes”); a particular musical alized for its alleged discursiveness and for- form (“Schubert’s Variations”); a discussion mal diffuseness. Against this critical con- of “Threefold Constructions” that might be vention, Wollenberg writes in her analysis applied equally to any composer; the con- of the second movement in her chapter troversial topic of “Heavenly Length,” “Major-Minor” that, “far from being a ran- which includes a persuasive defense of the dom collection of keys for coloristic pur- finale of the Piano Trio in E-flat, a work of- poses only, the design is tightly knit by ten unfairly maligned for its too-heavenly these interlocking connections” (p. 43). In length; and a thoughtful chapter, “Schu - treating what she labels Schubert’s “Poetic bert and Mozart,” that is nonetheless as Transitions” (chap. 3) in the first move- much about Mozart’s fingerprints as it is ments of the G-Major Quartet, the C-Major about Schubert’s. The strength of these String Quintet, and the Quartettsatz, Book Reviews 299

Wollenberg argues persuasively that transi- cantly in every previous movement) contin- tions and second themes “form a richly- ues to resonate” (p. 220). As Wollenberg woven complex in which several tonalities cogently argues, the seemingly conven- are implicated” and that Schubert inge- tional “Trout” Quintet thus “consists of an niously manages to retain the memories of intricate network of thematic and tonal ref- these keys “over long stretches of the mu- erences, sustaining a long-range connected- sic, to the point of seeming almost on the ness belied by the immediate easy-going brink of coalescing” (p. 45). The following character (and indeed the sheer beauty) of chapter, “Second Themes,” reinforces the its surface” (p. 220). idea presented in “Poetic Transitions” and The major work under consideration in makes the case that Schubert’s “reversion “ ‘Heavenly Length,’ ” supported by ten to the tonic within the second area of a pages of musical examples, is the contro- sonata form exposition” (p. 111) can be re- versial finale to the Piano Trio in E-flat, a garded as an unmistakable Schubertian movement almost invariably assailed for be- fingerprint. ing too long and too repetitive. Before its In the chapter nominally concerned with publication Schubert deleted the repeat of the somewhat generic notion of “Threefold the exposition (230 measures) and in an Constructions,” Wollenberg effectively unprecedented decision removed two 50- demonstrates a larger harmonic meaning measure musical chunks from the develop- extended over several movements of what ment. Brian Smallman expresses the pre- seems at first glance to be unexplained vailing view that these cuts helped but ramblings to B minor and major in the could not quite salvage a lost cause: “As a Piano Sonata in G Major: “It might seem, result [of the cuts] the movement’s general then, that the B minor/B major episode at unwieldiness was considerably modified, the centre of Theme 1 in the exposition is though its basic problem—its structural an isolated glimpse of a different tonal diffuseness—still to some extent remained” ‘landscape.’ However, its resonances are in (Smallman, The Piano Trio: Its History, fact reserved for later in the work. B minor Technique, and Repertoire [Oxford: Claren - and major are threaded through the don, 1990], 80). Wollenberg, quoting Eva episodic form of the second movement Badura-Skoda but erroneously attributing (Andante), and they are the choice of keys her words to Smallman, notes that “a for the Menuetto and Trio comprising unique combination of thematic ideas is the third movement, typically for Schubert lost if the cuts are observed” (p. 245), an set in other than the tonic of the work” unfortunate fate for a movement “in which (p. 195). the composer most explicitly and (in its un- In her chapter on “Variations” Wollen - cut form) extensively developed the rela- berg redresses the analytical neglect of the tionship of movements within the cycle” popular “Trout” Quintet with no fewer (p. 248). Wollenberg’s refreshing response than eleven pages of musical examples contrasts sharply with that of Thomas (Clark devotes five pages to this work). Like Denny, who in an uncited essay regards other scholars, in particular Christoph even the abbreviated originally published Wolff, who discusses the role the song “Der version of the movement as excessively Tod und das Mädchen” (“Death and the repetitive, one of three Schubert finales Maiden”) plays in the D-Minor Quartet as a that “ultimately stand out as egregiously whole (an author she cites but does not prolix” (Denny, “Too Long? Too Loose? add to), and Patrick McCreless (not cited), And Too Light?—Critical Thoughts about who explores connections between the Schubert’s Mature Finales,” Studies in Music song “Sei mir gegrüßt” (“I Greet You”) and 23 [1989], 39). other movements of the Fantasie for Violin, Eva Badura-Skoda, in her essay on the Wollenberg tries to show how Schubert an- chronology of the two mature piano trios ticipates “Die Forelle” (“The Trout”), even (the essay with the quote misattributed to if only as a “distant vision” and that, follow- Smallman), acknowledges that “some lovers ing the fourth movement variations on the of his music certainly regret the other two song, its melody “continues to shape the cuts of approximately 50 bars each” (“The thematic material in the finale, and its key chronology of Schubert’s piano trios,” in of D major (which has featured signifi- Schubert Studies, edited by Badura-Skoda 300 Notes, December 2012 and Peter Branscombe [Cambridge: Cam - cessful, the lazy way out. It is possible that bridge University Press, 1982], 294), but re- these and several other connections might frains from disclosing whether she falls into not be coincidental. For starters, Wollen - this group. In any event, Badura-Skoda berg cites Clark’s 1997 Princeton disserta- clearly accepted the first edition as sacred tion and Analyzing Schubert in a bibliogra- writ when she edited the piano trios for phy that is remarkably current for a book Henle a few years earlier, simply noting the that, like Wollenberg’s, was also published absence of the original measures and not in 2011. Returning the recognition, Clark’s even including them in an appendix. bibliography includes two out of Wollen- Wollenberg is almost but not entirely iso- berg’s three previously published essays on lated in her appreciation of the heavenly poetic transition (the second and largest length of this movement. In fact, after mak- fingerprint in the present volume). The au- ing a strong statement on behalf of the thors also once co-taught a seminar on original finale and expressing his regret Schubert’s instrumental music at Oxford that for the first time in his life “Schubert and express gratitude to each other in their let extra-musical pressures betray his own acknowledgements. More striking than the best muse,” John Michael Gingerich, in his sharing of many works and an idea or two, insightful and thorough discussion of the however, is the degree to which the two Trio finale in his 1996 Yale dissertation, books differ in content and scope. “Schubert’s Beethoven Project: The In Clark’s introduction to what I regard Chamber Music, 1824–1828” (not cited by as an unequivocally successful attempt to Wollenberg), goes even further than put music theory on the couch, the author Wollenberg when he concludes that in its explains that her study “traces the impact originally published form the movement is that different theoretical apparatuses have indeed too long, but “in its original form, had on the perception of Schubert’s music in which it was first successfully performed, and on his place in history from his own it was just the right length” (p. 363). day until now” (p. 5). The story begins Although not always mesmerizing read- shortly after the composer’s death when his ing, Wollenberg’s authoritative and richly first famous mentor, the singer Johann detailed attempt to put several of Schu- Michael Vogl, wrote in an 1831 letter ad- bert’s most distinctive fingerprints under dressed to Albert Stadler, a friend from the analytical microscope results in a valu- Schubert’s youth, that Schubert’s music able contribution to our understanding of “comes into existence during a state of a composer whose formal complexity and clairvoyance or somnambulism” (quoted in coherence remain relatively unexplored. Clark, p. 13). As she continues her fascinat- ing survey of Schubert reception in the * * * nineteenth century, Clark concludes that In Analyzing Schubert Suzannah Clark de- Schubert’s first biographer Heinrich votes four or more pages to each of eight Kreissle von Hellborn in 1865 “made a works: the Piano Sonatas in B-flat and C modest effort to deflate Vogl’s image of Major (D. 840), the G-Major String Quartet Schubert,” whereas Sir George Grove, and Quartettsatz in C Minor, the “Trout” Schubert’s second major biographer, Quintet and String Quintet in C Major, and “made every effort to revive it” in the first the “Unfinished” and “Great” C-Major Sym- edition of A Dictionary of Music and phonies. Since the C-Major Piano Sonata is Musicians published in four volumes be- the only work not also discussed by Wollen- tween 1879 and 1889 (p. 26). berg, some overlap in content between In Clark’s view, Grove has a lot to answer Clark and Wollenberg might be expected, for on account of his trash talk about and indeed there is an occasional signifi- Schubert. In fact, she holds Grove “respon- cant shared idea, such as when each author sible for halting serious study of Schubert’s describes how Schubert encircles the note music among critics and theorists until well “G” as a pivot between C major and E-flat into the twentieth century” (p. 29), a view major in the brief transition between these that seems a little harsh in the light of keys in the first movement of the C-Major Grove’s genuine appreciation for much of Quintet and their mutual rejection of the Schubert’s music and the fact that he vigor- “conventional assumption” that subdomi- ously and sincerely championed the nant recapitulations are intrinsically unsuc- “Great” C-Major Symphony and other Book Reviews 301

Schubert works, and ensured that they songs demonstrate acceptable modulations, would be heard regularly in the Crystal some do not. What makes them acceptable Palace concerts. After marking Grove as is the presence of authentic (i.e., V to I) ca- perhaps the principal critical obstacle to dences. For Fink, “a well-placed authentic Schubert appreciation, Clark turns her at- cadence has the capacity to render any key tention to the writings of the lesser-known acceptable” (p. 76) whereas too often, in Henry Heathcote Statham, a critic who be- Fink’s view, “Schubert modulates ‘so oddly littled song writing as an insignificant genre and so very suddenly” (p. 74). (although he praised the quality of In the remainder of this chapter, subti- Schubert’s best songs) and dismissed tled “Harmonic Adventure in Schubert’s Schubert’s instrumental works entirely on Songs,” Clark dissects several major theo- account of their “blatant lyricism.” Clark in- retical approaches to this vast literature, terprets Statham’s attack as a personal reac- starting with a detailed discussion of David tion to Grove’s description of Schubert’s Lewin’s search for hermeneutic meaning in qualities as a man more than the music it- his analysis of a song from Winterreise, “Auf self, a reaction that “serves as a record of dem Flusse”(“Auf dem Flusse: Image and the problematic connotations effeminacy Background in a Schubert Song,” 19th had for Victorians, particularly for Century Music 6 [1982]: 47–59; reprinted Victorian men who wished to engage with with additions in what is perhaps Clark’s music while maintaining their manly dig- most significant predecessor, the essay col- nity” (p. 44). lection Schubert: Critical and Analytical Clark now turns to her central subject in Studies, edited by Walter Frisch [Lincoln: three substantial chapters and states her University of Nebraska Press, 1986], 126– mission clearly: “My purpose in the rest of 52). After rigorous examination of the the- this book will be to home in on those pas- oretical models for Schubert’s songs pro- sages in Schubert’s music that may serve as posed by Harald Krebs (1981), Thomas a means of questioning some of the most Denny (1989), and Michael Siciliano cherished tenets of music theory. In other (2005), Clark completes her exploration of words, instead of using music theory to ana- Schubert’s harmonic adventures in song lyze Schubert, I shall use Schubert to ana- with a case study of “Ganymed” that con- lyze music theory” (p. 54). In my view, centrates on two texts by Lawrence Kramer Clark achieves her stated mission brilliantly (an essay included in Frisch 1986, cited and in the process offers a study that is in- above, and the book Franz Schubert: dispensable for anyone, including non- Sexuality, Subjectivity, Song [Cambridge: theorists, who possess a serious interest in Cambridge University Press, 1998]). how Schubert’s music has been analyzed For Clark, “the implication of all these from his time to ours, and why and how studies is that the shape of Schubert’s har- long-held responses to Schubert are being monic structures is driven by the text and challenged by a new theoretic order. they are therefore unlikely to exhibit the Clark starts with Fink, the contemporary logic of ‘purely musical’ design” (p. 93). reviewer we met earlier on in connection Although Heinrich Schenker is frequently with Muxfeldt’s consideration of the com- invoked by the authors of these analyses poser’s two Platen songs. For Clark, Fink is (and reinterpreted by Clark), his work, especially important in his role as the earli- which will return with a vengeance later in est commentator on Schubert who specifi- the book when the subject moves on to cally addresses the composer’s harmonic Schubert’s instrumental works, is somewhat language. As Clark explains, “while others marginalized in a footnote in this song also point to the existence of Schubert’s chapter. This is largely since, remarkably, predilection for excessive modulation, Fink the highly regarded theorist “analyzed four is the only contemporary of Schubert who of Schubert’s songs in Free Composition and ventured into detailed analysis of the har- yet only once did he make any reference to mony” (pp. 58–59). Her close examination the text” (p. 86 n. 44). of Fink’s critical criteria leads Clark to con- In sharp contrast to the scholars under clude, as mentioned earlier, that Fink “is discussion, Clark’s central theoretical argu- less concerned about which keys Schubert ment about this genre concerns the ulti- goes to than he is about the manner in mate futility of trying to force an abstract which he reaches them” (p. 67). Some and all-embracing harmonic framework on 302 Notes, December 2012 a genre in which decisions are determined the most part interpreted Schubert’s larger by distinctive texts. On the other hand, on forms in the light of the dominant Beetho- more than one occasion Clark criticizes the venian paradigm, more recent writers have absence of theoretical paradigms to ac- developed new takes on older views without count for Schubert’s harmonic and formal revising the views themselves. Clark ex- approach in his instrumental music: plains, “When nineteenth-century critics could not make sense of Schubert’s har- Indeed, it is something of an irony that monic architecture, they concluded that his scholars have sought patterns in the intuition had misguided him into illogical songs, where the text is clearly a guiding digressions” (p. 155). Now theorists “cele- factor in harmonic choice, but have been brate, rather than condemn, Schubert’s har- slower to seek the formal logic of the in- monic practice” and conclude that the mu- strumental music and instead have sic formerly dismissed “is not really aimless turned to narratives to explain their idio- or wandering or enigmatic, but is carefully syncratic harmonic architecture. Of constructed to sound that way” (p. 155). course, I do not mean to imply that in- In her fourth and final chapter, strumental music is not narrative; I “Analyzing Music Theory: A Schubertian merely point out that the exploration of Critique,” Clark continues to show how narratives and new vocabularies has Schenkerian and other theories reveal come at the expense of new technical more about the theories than they do analyses or the development of new para- about Schubert. Acknowledging the inspi- digms for Schubert’s instrumental music. ration of Donald Francis Tovey’s classic (p. 228). demonstration in 1928 of how Schubert Unlike her predecessors, Clark proposes a employs each degree of the scale in rela- working theoretical framework (and a new tion to the tonic (excluding the tonic itself paradigm) that will meaningfully explain and the dominant), and adding to the mix what Schubert accomplished in his larger Schubert’s treatment of parallel major and instrumental forms. minor (the first of Wollenberg’s Schu - Clark fulfills this purpose with convic- bertian fingerprints), Clark focuses her at- tion, clarity, and style as she explores theo- tention in this final chapter to an explo- retical topics suggested by certain key ration of “Schubert’s conceptualization of instrumental works, “Harmony and tonal space with respect to how keys relate Hermeneutics” in the Piano Sonata in to a tonic center” (p. 207). The principal B-flat, “The Schubertian, or the Non- works under discussion include the “Trout” Beethovenian” in the String Quartet in G Quintet (subdominant), the Symphonies in Major, “Memory and the Lyric Impulse” in B Minor and the “Great” C-Major (mediant the String Quartet in G Major and String and submediant), the Quartettsatz and Quintet in C Major, and “Once More, Piano Sonata in C Major (supertonic and Schubert’s Biography” in the Symphony in subtonic), and the String Quartet in G B Minor (the “Unfinished”). As with the Major (parallel major and minor). songs, Clark incorporates the analytical Many previous authors, including processes and conclusions of significant Wollenberg, have not neglected Schubert’s theorists who have written on these works, third relations, but Clark offers new in- notably Charles Fisk on the Piano Sonata in sights on this crucial aspect of Schubert’s B-flat, Carl Dahlhaus on the String Quartet musical language. Part of the larger back- in G Major, and Susan McClary on the drop to this topic is Schubert’s practice of Symphony in B Minor. Unfortunately, de- including dominants within a larger tonal spite the book’s readability and clarity, axis. Clark emphasizes throughout that in- some readers may not be able to negotiate stead of placing the tonic-dominant polar- the more theoretical portions of this indis- ity at his formal center, Schubert centers pensable book. Nevertheless, even readers around a particular pitch, and a flexible lacking major theoretical chops should be common tone anchor replaces the empha- rewarded by the attempt to negotiate the sis on dominant preparation. As Clark ex- book’s inherent difficulties. plains, “A single pitch can belong to many In her history of Schubert theory, Clark keys or harmonies that both diatonically concludes that while earlier theorists for and chromatically related to the ‘home’ key Book Reviews 303

(or main key of a section), and it can be bertian fingerprint of major and minor as the focal point around which the har- equivalent sharply contradicts Schenkerian monies turn,” thus “instead of presenting theory, which considers this notion hereti- such themes ‘in a key,’ ” Schubert presents cal. According to Clark, until recently such them “around a pitch” (p. 194). theoretical paradigms more often than not Schubert’s approach to key and harmony inhibited common sense. presents problems for traditional music Though her topic is complex and, well, theory. Representing the prevailing theo- theoretical, Clark argues practically, per- retical paradigm, Beethoven prepares the suasively, elegantly, and often with humor mediant for his second key in the first as she explains in her epilogue that much movement of the “Waldstein” Sonata with of the case against Schubert “lies with the the dominant of the mediant (an authentic sheer force of music theory in shaping our cadence). When mediants appear without ways of understanding music” (p. 268). dominant preparation, as they often do in What Clark asks theorists to do is “to work Schubert, the modulation can appear towards a distinctly Schubertian paradigm, abrupt, even when the movement from one one that analyzes Schubert through key to another is connected by a common Schubertian rather Beethovenian or tone. Interestingly, as we have seen, a mod- Classical or other lenses.” (pp. 269–70). ulation not prepared by a dominant was In her concluding remarks to Schubert’s the central objection voiced by Fink in the Fingerprints Wollenberg remarks that 1820s. Perhaps the two best known exem- “Beethoven has intentionally been ex- plars of this technique are the pivots by cluded almost entirely from consideration thirds around D (the third of B minor and alongside Schubert” in order to “take his fifth of G major) in the Symphony in B music on its own term, outlawing the Minor and around G (the third of E-flat customary comparisons with Beethoven” major and fifth of C major) in the C-Major (p. 287). Although lurking in the back- String Quintet. According to the Schenk- ground and occasionally the foreground, erian (i.e., Beethovenian) paradigm, for example in the discussion of the G- Schubert’s third relations “are assessed as Major Quartet in the section called “The obstacles to conventional harmonic goals” Schubertian, or the Non-Beethovenian” (p. 240). Instead, Schubert “emphasizes the (pp. 161–74), Clark’s Beethoven for the non-teleological potential of third relations most part similarly occupies a backseat to and does not seek to compensate for their her central subject. Nevertheless, the non- non-teleological status in the manner Schubertian does make an important achieved by Beethoven and Brahms” (p. appearance in the final sentence of Clark’s 240). Since Vogl praised his friend for his indispensable and important if barely af- clairvoyance and somnambulism, writers fordable book when she acknowledges that starting with Fink have framed Schubert’s while “Beethoven’s music was certainly the music in terms of what it lacks (in relation vehicle through which much tonal theory to the classical harmonic axis). From was shaped,” Schubert’s music presents Clark’s perspective, although she is too “the ideal vehicle through which it can be polite to come out and say so, it is the theo- questioned” (p. 271). rists who until recently have played the role Geoffrey Block of the somnambulists. Even the Schu- University of Puget Sound

OPERA AND SONG The Song Cycle. By Laura Tunbridge. (Cambridge Introductions to Music.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. [xvii, 230 p. ISBN 9780521896443 (hardcover), $84; ISBN 9780521721073 (paperback), $29.99.] Works list, music examples, illustrations, index, bibliography.

Pedagogical guides to art song have tradi- to sort through narrowly focused studies of tionally granted the song cycle cursory individual cycles. Laura Tunbridge’s The space, leaving those curious to know more Song Cycle (in the Cambridge Introductions Copyright of Notes is the property of Music Library Association Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.