Books on Schubert

[virginia]

I am reading -- slowly and enjoyably -- "Schubert's Poets and the Making of Lieder" by Susan Youens. Youens is the J.W. Van Gorkom Professor of Music at Notre Dame. She has written a number of Schubert-related books, many of which are in the accessible and reasonably priced Cambridge Music series. I have read her "Die schoene Muellerin" (also Cambridge), and can recommend it strongly. Here is Youens's bio:

http://music.nd.edu/faculty-and-staf...an/index.shtml

What books on Schubert do you folks like?

[Florestan]

That sounds like a great book.

[haydnguy]

I have The Schubert Song Companion by John Reed which I feel must be considered the bible on Schubert lieder. It has the lyrics and and description (history, something about the song itself, etc.) of each song. The songs are listed in alphabetical order for easy lookup. The book is only about the lieder though and not much about the instrumental music.

I also have a New Grove book called simply Schubert by Maurice Brown which is a rather light read on Schubert. The text is only 100 pages and gives an overview of his life and has a chapter on each genre of his work discussing the most important works in each.

[virginia]

Thanks for prod on the Reed book, SchubertGuy, which I bought the other day but have not opened yet. I don't think I would ever read it all the way through, but I am certainly going to dip into it when I'm listening to the songs.

As you say, the Reed book covers every single one of the songs. Has anybody here actually heard all of them? I'm nowhere near that.

[virginia]

Hi folks. Been away for a while but now I'm back. About two years ago I was singing the praises of Susan Youens's book on Die schoene Muellerin. For quite a while, I think, her book, "Retracing a Winter's Journey: Schubert's Winterreise," was either out of print or hard to find. It's now back, and I bought it the other day. It looks great and I'm looking forward to reading it closely. Here's a link to the book on Amazon:

[ame]http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=susan+youens&x=0&y=0[/ame]

Virginia

[virginia]

Susan Youens's "Retracing a Winter's Journey: Schubert's Winterreise" was everything I'd hoped for. This is a wonderful companion to her book on Die schoene Muellerin (and "Schubert's Poets and the Making of Lieder" as well). Youens gives equal weight to the poetry -- she thinks Mueller is way underrated -- and the music. I like how she provides the first page of the scores of all the songs. Makes you start singing as you read. Combine this book with the liner notes provided in Goerne's Winterreise on Hyperion and you'll have a thorough knowledge about one of the high points not just of music but of Western culture.

[haydnguy]

Hi Virginia,
I'm getting ready to go to bed but I'll get back to Schubert in the morning. I'm beginning to think I need to keep a listening journal so that I can remember what I thought of a CD two years down the road.