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Heather Platt
Ball State University
Schubert's Poets and the Making of Lieder. By Susan Youens. (Harmonologia Series, 8.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. [xv, 384 p. ISBN 0-521-55257-5. $64.95.]
Most of us are drawn to lieder by the music, but when we study or write about this repertory we often begin, as the composers themselves did, with the poetry. Nevertheless, musicians still know relatively little about the lives and works of many of the poets whose works were set by rome of the most acclaimed nineteenth-century
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composers. This seems a particularly significant lacuna in the case of Franz Schubert's poets, since some of his closest friends were writers, and literature was important to the members of his social circle. In Schubert's Poets , Susan Youens argues that a greater knowledge of these poets and their works will provide a better context in which to understand Schubert's lieder. (As Kristina Muxfeldt has also demonstrated, this increased awareness ultimately leads to more sensitive readings of the poems, which in turn influences the analysis of the respective musical settings: ''Schubert, Platen, and the Myth of Narcissus,'' Journal of the American Musicological Society 49 [fall 1996]: 480-527.) Youens focuses on four of Schubert's poets: Gabriele yon Baumberg, Theodor Körner, Johann Mayrhofer, and Ernst Schulze. Although their works are no longer in the literary canon, all were well-known figures in Schubert's Vienna. Youens vividly describes their lives, often focusing on the experiences that influenced their writings, and she speculates on some of the reasons that might have drawn Schubert to particular works.
Each poet receives a lengthy chapter, including a biography, an overview of the poetry, and an analysis of some or all of Schubert's related settings. Youens's enthusiastic style of writing as well as the inclusion of portraits of the poets and their associates make these sections the most compelling part of the book. Youens has deliberately chosen poets with extraordinary lives and she sensitively navigates their personal difficulties and successes. Her chapter on Baumberg is an excellent study of the conflicting issues for nineteenth-century female writers, and it includes numerous intriguing quotations that show Baumberg's deep insights on such issues as marriage and the fickleness of passion. Although able to attain early recognition as a writer,...