Schubert’s Winter Journey: Anatomy of an Obsession
by ian bostridge
knopf, 528 pages, $29
One hundred and fifty years ago, lieder—art songs, in English—held a place in society that no music holds today. These were songs for a soloist with piano accompaniment, something for two people of reasonable skill to entertain their friends with after dinner. The greatest composer of lieder was Franz Schubert, who wrote over six hundred before his death at thirty-one. This corpus includes two song cycles, Winterreise (Winter Journey) and Die schöne Müllerin (The Beautiful Girl of the Mill), both settings of works by the poet Wilhelm Müller. Die schöne Müllerin is more typical of lieder. Its pleasant songs conjure a spring day, and even its tragic ending is subdued.
Winterreise is different. Joseph von Spaun, one of Schubert’s friends, recounted the circumstances of its composition: “For some time Schubert appeared very upset and melancholy. When I asked him what was troubling him, he would only say, ‘Soon you will hear and understand.’” One day Schubert invited von Spaun to another friend’s house, promising, “I will sing you a cycle of horrifying songs. I am anxious to know what you will say about them. They have cost me more effort than any of my other songs.” Schubert sang through the entire Winterreise, which takes over an hour. His friends were “utterly dumbfounded by the mournful, gloomy tone,” and his host said that he liked only one of the pieces. Schubert replied, “I like these songs more than all the rest, and you will come to like them as well.”
