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Schubert's Winter Journey: Anatomy of an Obsession
An exploration of the world's most famous and challenging song cycle by one of the world's most renowned singers, a leading interpreter of the work, who teases out the themes - literary, historical, psychological--that weave through the twenty-four songs comprising this legendary masterpiece.
Written in 1828, in the last months of the young Schubert's life, 'Winterreise' ("Winter's Journey"), has come to be considered the single greatest piece of music ever written for the male solo voice. Deceptively brief - the twenty-four short poems are performed uninterrupted in 70 minutes - it nonetheless has an emotional depth and power that no music of its kind has ever equalled.
Originally intended to be sung to an intimate gathering, performances of 'Winterreise' now pack the greatest concert halls around the world. Drawing on his firsthand experience with this work (he has performed it more than one hundred times), on his musical knowledge, and on his training as a scholar, Ian Bostridge teases out the enigmas and subtle meanings of each song, exploring the world and the states of heart and mind in which Schubert created them, and the exquisite resonance and affinities that continue, even today, to move us so profoundly.
Written in 1828, in the last months of the young Schubert's life, 'Winterreise' ("Winter's Journey"), has come to be considered the single greatest piece of music ever written for the male solo voice. Deceptively brief - the twenty-four short poems are performed uninterrupted in 70 minutes - it nonetheless has an emotional depth and power that no music of its kind has ever equalled.
Originally intended to be sung to an intimate gathering, performances of 'Winterreise' now pack the greatest concert halls around the world. Drawing on his firsthand experience with this work (he has performed it more than one hundred times), on his musical knowledge, and on his training as a scholar, Ian Bostridge teases out the enigmas and subtle meanings of each song, exploring the world and the states of heart and mind in which Schubert created them, and the exquisite resonance and affinities that continue, even today, to move us so profoundly.
502 pages, Hardcover
First published December 16, 2014
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December 29, 2023
Exploring Schubert's Winterreise With A Singer-Scholar
Schubert's song cycle "Winterreise" is one of the essential works of classical music and a work I have loved for many years. I respond to this cycle of lost love whenever I return to it. Written in the last year of Schubert's life, "Winterreise" is a setting for solo voice and piano of 24 poems by Wilhelm Muller. Schubert first set a group of twelve poems and, shortly thereafter returned to set the entire cycle of 24 songs. The cycle has been recorded and performed innumerable times.
The British tenor Ian Bostridge has performed "Winterreise" over 100 times in a thirty year career. He has recorded the work with pianist Leif Ove Adnes and prepared a dramatization of the cycle with pianist Julius Drake. Bostridge does not have an academic degree in music. He received a doctoral degree from Oxford in 1990 for a dissertation on witchcraft in English life from 1650 -- 1750 and taught political theory and British history at the university level before devoting himself to a career as a singer in 1996.
Bostridge's love for Schubert's "Winterreise" and his passion for music and for learning all are on full display in his book, "Schubert's Winter's Journey: Anatomy of an Obsession." The obsession in question is shared by Muller and Schubert's nameless wanderer in the cycle, by Bostridge himself, and by the reader of the book and listener to the music. In a brief introduction, Bostridge writes: 'It is surely remarkable that the piece lives and makes an impact in concert halls all over the world, in cultures remote from its origins in 1820s Vienna." He says of his goal in the book:
"I want to use each song as a platform for exploring these origins; setting the piece in its historical context, but also finding new and unexpected connections, both contemporary and long dead -- literary, visual, psychological, scientific, and political. Musical analysis will inevitably play its part, but this is nothing as systematic as a guide to Winter Journey, or which there are plenty already out there."
The book consists of 24 chapters of varying lengths each of which explores one of the songs in "Winterreise". Each chapter begins with the German text of the song with Bostridge's own translation on a facing page. From that point, the chapters move in wildly varying directions. Often Bostridge begins with a short musical or textual discussion. But he uses each song as a springboard for a wide-ranging discussion about Schubert's and Muller's lives, politics in Vienna in the years following the Napoleonic wars, the Enlightenment, art, religion, literature, science, and much more. The book displays a prodigious learning and presents it well. Often, the book moves from subject to subject in a chain of free association. The discussion moves freely from sources and references predating Schubert, to politics, science, and such during his lifetime, through the latter 19th Century and to the present. It is dazzling. I also found it highly useful in gaining understanding of "Winterreise" even when I thought some of the themes, such as the cycle's covert political message, were overstated. At times, the associations go far afield and become "tangential" to "Winterreise", as Bostridge notes. But the book is absorbing and infused with love and learning about its subject. The purely musical discussions tend to be brief. But Bostridge draws excellent parallels between particular songs in "Winterreise" and other parts of Schubert's output. For example, his discussion of "Einsamkeit" (loneliness), no. 12 in the cycle, discusses many other songs of Schubert with loneliness as a theme. The discussion of "Mut" (courage), no. 22 in "Winterreise", discusses the state of religious belief in Schubert's Vienna and the treatment of religious themes in the composer's songs, masses, and other music.
The book uses art extensively and includes many full-color illustrations of works bearing upon the songs and themes of "Winterreise". Bostridge's discussions are invariably illuminating. The book has an extensive bibliography but no index.
I accompanied my reading by listening to a recording of "Winterreise". From several versions that I own, I chose a famous 1942 recording by baritone/bass Hans Hotter and pianist Michael Raucheisen. I began by listening to each song after reading the chapter Bostridge devoted to it in his book. Somewhat beyond the middle of the cycle, this approach became too cumbersome and distracting, and I listened to the songs in groups of two or three. Bostridge in fact discusses the Hotter/Raucheisen recording when he explores the Nazi's use of "Winterreise" during WW II. During the middle of the War, Raucheisen, whom Bostridge describes as "Goebbel's client and Hitler's favorite" had projected a complete account on record of German songs as part of the war effort. Bostridge tries to understand the appeal German romanticism and "Winterreise" held for the Nazis. I was disconcerted to learn the background of the recording I selected, much as I love its way with the music. I am also listening to the Bostridge/Drake dramatization of "Winterreise" which is readily accessible on media.
I learned much about Schubert and "Winterreise" from Bostridge. This book will appeal to readers who already love or who want to get to know Schubert's great song cycle.
Robin Friedman
Schubert's song cycle "Winterreise" is one of the essential works of classical music and a work I have loved for many years. I respond to this cycle of lost love whenever I return to it. Written in the last year of Schubert's life, "Winterreise" is a setting for solo voice and piano of 24 poems by Wilhelm Muller. Schubert first set a group of twelve poems and, shortly thereafter returned to set the entire cycle of 24 songs. The cycle has been recorded and performed innumerable times.
The British tenor Ian Bostridge has performed "Winterreise" over 100 times in a thirty year career. He has recorded the work with pianist Leif Ove Adnes and prepared a dramatization of the cycle with pianist Julius Drake. Bostridge does not have an academic degree in music. He received a doctoral degree from Oxford in 1990 for a dissertation on witchcraft in English life from 1650 -- 1750 and taught political theory and British history at the university level before devoting himself to a career as a singer in 1996.
Bostridge's love for Schubert's "Winterreise" and his passion for music and for learning all are on full display in his book, "Schubert's Winter's Journey: Anatomy of an Obsession." The obsession in question is shared by Muller and Schubert's nameless wanderer in the cycle, by Bostridge himself, and by the reader of the book and listener to the music. In a brief introduction, Bostridge writes: 'It is surely remarkable that the piece lives and makes an impact in concert halls all over the world, in cultures remote from its origins in 1820s Vienna." He says of his goal in the book:
"I want to use each song as a platform for exploring these origins; setting the piece in its historical context, but also finding new and unexpected connections, both contemporary and long dead -- literary, visual, psychological, scientific, and political. Musical analysis will inevitably play its part, but this is nothing as systematic as a guide to Winter Journey, or which there are plenty already out there."
The book consists of 24 chapters of varying lengths each of which explores one of the songs in "Winterreise". Each chapter begins with the German text of the song with Bostridge's own translation on a facing page. From that point, the chapters move in wildly varying directions. Often Bostridge begins with a short musical or textual discussion. But he uses each song as a springboard for a wide-ranging discussion about Schubert's and Muller's lives, politics in Vienna in the years following the Napoleonic wars, the Enlightenment, art, religion, literature, science, and much more. The book displays a prodigious learning and presents it well. Often, the book moves from subject to subject in a chain of free association. The discussion moves freely from sources and references predating Schubert, to politics, science, and such during his lifetime, through the latter 19th Century and to the present. It is dazzling. I also found it highly useful in gaining understanding of "Winterreise" even when I thought some of the themes, such as the cycle's covert political message, were overstated. At times, the associations go far afield and become "tangential" to "Winterreise", as Bostridge notes. But the book is absorbing and infused with love and learning about its subject. The purely musical discussions tend to be brief. But Bostridge draws excellent parallels between particular songs in "Winterreise" and other parts of Schubert's output. For example, his discussion of "Einsamkeit" (loneliness), no. 12 in the cycle, discusses many other songs of Schubert with loneliness as a theme. The discussion of "Mut" (courage), no. 22 in "Winterreise", discusses the state of religious belief in Schubert's Vienna and the treatment of religious themes in the composer's songs, masses, and other music.
The book uses art extensively and includes many full-color illustrations of works bearing upon the songs and themes of "Winterreise". Bostridge's discussions are invariably illuminating. The book has an extensive bibliography but no index.
I accompanied my reading by listening to a recording of "Winterreise". From several versions that I own, I chose a famous 1942 recording by baritone/bass Hans Hotter and pianist Michael Raucheisen. I began by listening to each song after reading the chapter Bostridge devoted to it in his book. Somewhat beyond the middle of the cycle, this approach became too cumbersome and distracting, and I listened to the songs in groups of two or three. Bostridge in fact discusses the Hotter/Raucheisen recording when he explores the Nazi's use of "Winterreise" during WW II. During the middle of the War, Raucheisen, whom Bostridge describes as "Goebbel's client and Hitler's favorite" had projected a complete account on record of German songs as part of the war effort. Bostridge tries to understand the appeal German romanticism and "Winterreise" held for the Nazis. I was disconcerted to learn the background of the recording I selected, much as I love its way with the music. I am also listening to the Bostridge/Drake dramatization of "Winterreise" which is readily accessible on media.
I learned much about Schubert and "Winterreise" from Bostridge. This book will appeal to readers who already love or who want to get to know Schubert's great song cycle.
Robin Friedman
April 12, 2015
My first compliment goes to Knopf, the publisher of this deliberately white, hefty little tome. Its glossy stock made it too heavy to carry around, which was fine because I took my time with it anyway, listening to Schubert’s lieder with each chapter, following the German poetry as best I could. Up to now I’ve regarded Winterreise as a cold slog. Bostridge completely transformed my appreciation.
The book of course has its conceits, in terms of format and indulgences. As other reviewers noted, some of Bostridge’s digressions are silly or slightly absurd, as if he’s reaching too far to “embroider” (his word), but almost always I appreciated his eccentricity, the capacious range of reference, the splendor of citations and illustrations – after all, this is High Culture and we might as well enjoy the trimmings. Some stand-outs: a brisk tour around the linden tree through German literature; the musical illumination of Will-o-the-Wisp; another excursus on ice flowers in German literature (including photographs of snowflakes by Wilson Bentley); the melancholy semantic echoes in einsamkeit (loneliness), which draw us in turn to the weird paintings of Caspar David Friedrich; the inspired choice of a typographical poem by e. e. cummings to introduce the discussion of “Last Hope.” Yet every conceit is grounded by Bostridge's evident love for the music and his long history of performing it.
Schubert based his song cycle on the poems of Wilhelm Müller – and, as Bostridge remarks with reference to his re-creation of Goethe’s “Erlkönig”
The book of course has its conceits, in terms of format and indulgences. As other reviewers noted, some of Bostridge’s digressions are silly or slightly absurd, as if he’s reaching too far to “embroider” (his word), but almost always I appreciated his eccentricity, the capacious range of reference, the splendor of citations and illustrations – after all, this is High Culture and we might as well enjoy the trimmings. Some stand-outs: a brisk tour around the linden tree through German literature; the musical illumination of Will-o-the-Wisp; another excursus on ice flowers in German literature (including photographs of snowflakes by Wilson Bentley); the melancholy semantic echoes in einsamkeit (loneliness), which draw us in turn to the weird paintings of Caspar David Friedrich; the inspired choice of a typographical poem by e. e. cummings to introduce the discussion of “Last Hope.” Yet every conceit is grounded by Bostridge's evident love for the music and his long history of performing it.
Schubert based his song cycle on the poems of Wilhelm Müller – and, as Bostridge remarks with reference to his re-creation of Goethe’s “Erlkönig”
Schubert never lets go of the musical or poetic logic… it is difficult to go back to the poem without the music and not feel, somehow, robbed.When it comes to Müller’s poetry, Schubert's transmutation of Romantic agony is sublime. It’s impossible for me to read the utterances of this tortured soul wandering through his snowy landscape without hearing “the self-indulgence of endlessly perpetuated, inner-directed pain.” As with, for example Cioran, there’s the sense that one is celebrating misery itself. But the music moves us past the ridiculous, into something more mysterious, the Joycean “ineluctable modality of the visible” in which everything is a signature of something more furtive, more profound, more “German.” You’ve got to decide to go with it, as with any work of art. This “anatomy of an obsession” is beautifully done, a work of art in itself.
January 2, 2015
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 2, 2015
From BBC radio 4 - Book of the Week:
Award-winning tenor Ian Bostridge explores Franz Schubert's enigmatic masterpiece Winterreise, or Winter's Journey. Composed in 1827, this powerful song-cycle for voice and piano uses twenty-four poems by Wilhem Muller and is considered one of classical music's most powerful compositions.
Drawing upon his experience as a performer (he has performed Winterreise more than a hundred times), on his musical knowledge and on his training as a scholar, Bostridge unpicks the enigmas and subtle meanings behind the songs to explore the world Schubert inhabited.
Award-winning tenor Ian Bostridge explores Franz Schubert's enigmatic masterpiece Winterreise, or Winter's Journey. Composed in 1827, this powerful song-cycle for voice and piano uses twenty-four poems by Wilhem Muller and is considered one of classical music's most powerful compositions.
Drawing upon his experience as a performer (he has performed Winterreise more than a hundred times), on his musical knowledge and on his training as a scholar, Bostridge unpicks the enigmas and subtle meanings behind the songs to explore the world Schubert inhabited.
Read
February 14, 2017A highly informative book on Schubert's famous song cycle (the greatest piece of classical music ever, as far as I'm concerned) by the eminent British singer Ian Bostridge. I admit I'd have preferred if he'd delved a bit deeper into the musicological side of things, but he makes up for that by putting his historical education to excellent use and presenting the reader with a wealth of information on not only Schubert's life and times but also on the broader context of early 19th century Austria.
Bostridge proceeds song by song and has something interesting to say about each of them, on a very wide range of subjects - whether he interprets Wilhelm Müller's poetry, takes a look at a song's structure, places it in a biographical context, considers possible political implications or elucidates it from his extensive experience of performing the cycle. This is no deep analysis and is not meant to be; rather it is someone who loves Schubert's songs and knows them intimately chatting about them in an almost conversational tone. I assume that there probably is not very much new here for the Schubert expert but for the layman it is a treasure trove of both information and insight. The author is not afraid to go off on a tangent, either, and his frequent digressions are just as rewarding as when he is staying on subject. The book contains many illustrations, too, although that part did not come across too well in my Kindle edition. As, judging by other reviews, the book is quite beautifully designed, too, I'm regretting a bit that I did not invest in a hardcover version, but the book was well worth it for the written content alone and is recommended to everyone who wants to explore the background of Schubert's Winterreise in more depth than the liner notes of a CD generally provide.
Bostridge proceeds song by song and has something interesting to say about each of them, on a very wide range of subjects - whether he interprets Wilhelm Müller's poetry, takes a look at a song's structure, places it in a biographical context, considers possible political implications or elucidates it from his extensive experience of performing the cycle. This is no deep analysis and is not meant to be; rather it is someone who loves Schubert's songs and knows them intimately chatting about them in an almost conversational tone. I assume that there probably is not very much new here for the Schubert expert but for the layman it is a treasure trove of both information and insight. The author is not afraid to go off on a tangent, either, and his frequent digressions are just as rewarding as when he is staying on subject. The book contains many illustrations, too, although that part did not come across too well in my Kindle edition. As, judging by other reviews, the book is quite beautifully designed, too, I'm regretting a bit that I did not invest in a hardcover version, but the book was well worth it for the written content alone and is recommended to everyone who wants to explore the background of Schubert's Winterreise in more depth than the liner notes of a CD generally provide.
November 15, 2022
Un meraviglioso (anche se cupo) viaggio interiore
Un approfondimento immersivo, a 360°, nel mondo del "Viaggio d'inverno" di Franz Schubert che spazia da musica (ovviamente) a storia, sociologia, arte, scienza, letteratura (altrettanto ovviamente) e tanto tanto altro. Stupende le poesie di Müller (tradotte e con testo originale a fronte). Qualche digressione forse un po' fine a sé stessa, ma nel complesso un ottimo libro, utile per comprendere come la musica di questo compositore viennese di inizio Ottocento possa in qualche modo essere del tutto attuale ancora oggi e cogliere, se si vuole (perché a volte bisogna compiere dei collegamenti non proprio così evidenti), i mille rimandi e riferimenti nascosti o più semplicemente disseminati lungo lo spartito di queste "canzoni" sublimi. Grazie a questo libro questo ciclo di brani per canto e pianoforte non si limita a essere musica da ascoltare, ma una vera propria esperienza da vivere (meglio se in sala da concerto), un viaggio interiore, per certi versi spirituale, alla fine del quale si giunge cambiati. Grande musicista Ian Bostridge, di certo uno che non si limita a cantare le note sulla pagina. Consiglio di accompagnare la lettura del libro con l'incisione del "Viaggio d'inverno" dello stesso Bostridge con il pianista Leif Ove Andsnes (ormai la mia interpretazione di riferimento). Molto buona l'edizione de Il Saggiatore, non fosse per l'esorbitante prezzo di copertina (ben 32 euro), per fortuna esistono le biblioteche. Solita nota per la traduttrice (che in ogni caso ha fatto un ottimo lavoro): in italiano in musica non si parla di "chiave" maggiore o minore, ma di "modo" maggiore o minore, o di "tonalità" maggiore o minore! In italiano la chiave è solo il simbolo che sta all'inizio del pentagramma!
Un approfondimento immersivo, a 360°, nel mondo del "Viaggio d'inverno" di Franz Schubert che spazia da musica (ovviamente) a storia, sociologia, arte, scienza, letteratura (altrettanto ovviamente) e tanto tanto altro. Stupende le poesie di Müller (tradotte e con testo originale a fronte). Qualche digressione forse un po' fine a sé stessa, ma nel complesso un ottimo libro, utile per comprendere come la musica di questo compositore viennese di inizio Ottocento possa in qualche modo essere del tutto attuale ancora oggi e cogliere, se si vuole (perché a volte bisogna compiere dei collegamenti non proprio così evidenti), i mille rimandi e riferimenti nascosti o più semplicemente disseminati lungo lo spartito di queste "canzoni" sublimi. Grazie a questo libro questo ciclo di brani per canto e pianoforte non si limita a essere musica da ascoltare, ma una vera propria esperienza da vivere (meglio se in sala da concerto), un viaggio interiore, per certi versi spirituale, alla fine del quale si giunge cambiati. Grande musicista Ian Bostridge, di certo uno che non si limita a cantare le note sulla pagina. Consiglio di accompagnare la lettura del libro con l'incisione del "Viaggio d'inverno" dello stesso Bostridge con il pianista Leif Ove Andsnes (ormai la mia interpretazione di riferimento). Molto buona l'edizione de Il Saggiatore, non fosse per l'esorbitante prezzo di copertina (ben 32 euro), per fortuna esistono le biblioteche. Solita nota per la traduttrice (che in ogni caso ha fatto un ottimo lavoro): in italiano in musica non si parla di "chiave" maggiore o minore, ma di "modo" maggiore o minore, o di "tonalità" maggiore o minore! In italiano la chiave è solo il simbolo che sta all'inizio del pentagramma!
September 8, 2022
It took me forever but it was interesting
May 12, 2015
Fascinating study of Ian Bostridge's ruminations and digressions on various aspects of Schubert's Winterreise [Winter Journey], the famous song cycle about a jilted young man, wandering through a winter landscape. The cycle takes us through the young man's gamut of emotions at his lost love and thoughts of death. Mr. Bostridge, the famous tenor and Lieder singer, has sung this work many times in the concert hall. He covers each individual song of the 24 songs in the cycle, touching on all kinds of information; his interpretation of what he feels the meaning might be behind the lyrics; and short musical analyses. Many very complete musical analyses have been written so he keeps this part brief. His subjects range from famous literary figures from Aesop to Kerouac, popular culture figures such as Bob Dylan and his Tambourine Man as descendants of Schubert's Leiermann [Hurdy-Gurdy Man] and German/Austrian folklore. There was much science information such as on climate, frost flowers on windowpanes, WHY a leaf falls, and sundogs. I liked how it humanized Schubert: as he was in his last days, revising music, the book brought out how much he loved the writings of James Fenimore Cooper.
I personally feel this music should be sung by a baritone; it just sounds "better" to me; I guess I'm used to my Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau recording. [He was the sine qua non of Lieder singers.] This was a wonderful book on this subject; I recommend it to anyone who loves this music already or to anyone wishing to learn about this classic. I commend Mr. Bostridge for his own translations of Wilhelm Müller's poetry from the German, which opened each chapter.
I personally feel this music should be sung by a baritone; it just sounds "better" to me; I guess I'm used to my Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau recording. [He was the sine qua non of Lieder singers.] This was a wonderful book on this subject; I recommend it to anyone who loves this music already or to anyone wishing to learn about this classic. I commend Mr. Bostridge for his own translations of Wilhelm Müller's poetry from the German, which opened each chapter.
March 1, 2016
Winterreise
De Duitse dichter Wilhelm Müller schreef 24 gedichten over een nog jonge man wiens liefde niet beantwoord wordt. Hij verlaat zijn huis en zijn stad en trekt de koude winterwereld in. De gedichtencyclus die het verslag is van een waarschijnlijk persoonlijke queeste en een zoektocht naar zichzelf noemde hij ‘Die Winterreise’.
Franz Schubert heeft de gedichten op muziek gezet en in 1827 gepubliceerd onder de naam Winterreise (dus zonder het lidwoord). Sindsdien zijn er wel een honderttal interpretaties van dit werk voor piano en zang. De bekendste is wellicht de interpretatie van de Duitse bariton Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau.
Dus toen de Engelse tenor Ian Bostridge zijn interpretatie gaf, was de verwachting hooggespannen. Maar hoe schitterend is zijn winterreis. Hoe treffzeker laat hij horen en zien (er is ook een dvd opname) hoe afwijzing, teleurstelling en hoop klinken. Hij begrijpt iedere zin en ieder woord en dat maakt zijn weergave uniek. Maar als je zijn boek ‘Schuberts Winterreise. Een meesterwerk ontleed’ leest dan begrijp je dat hij niet alleen een voortreffelijk zanger is, maar ook een kundig in Oxford en Cambridge afgestudeerd historicus, die van elk lied de achtergrond wil weten en nog meer diepte geeft aan deze gedichten over een afgewezen liefde.
De Duitse dichter Wilhelm Müller schreef 24 gedichten over een nog jonge man wiens liefde niet beantwoord wordt. Hij verlaat zijn huis en zijn stad en trekt de koude winterwereld in. De gedichtencyclus die het verslag is van een waarschijnlijk persoonlijke queeste en een zoektocht naar zichzelf noemde hij ‘Die Winterreise’.
Franz Schubert heeft de gedichten op muziek gezet en in 1827 gepubliceerd onder de naam Winterreise (dus zonder het lidwoord). Sindsdien zijn er wel een honderttal interpretaties van dit werk voor piano en zang. De bekendste is wellicht de interpretatie van de Duitse bariton Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau.
Dus toen de Engelse tenor Ian Bostridge zijn interpretatie gaf, was de verwachting hooggespannen. Maar hoe schitterend is zijn winterreis. Hoe treffzeker laat hij horen en zien (er is ook een dvd opname) hoe afwijzing, teleurstelling en hoop klinken. Hij begrijpt iedere zin en ieder woord en dat maakt zijn weergave uniek. Maar als je zijn boek ‘Schuberts Winterreise. Een meesterwerk ontleed’ leest dan begrijp je dat hij niet alleen een voortreffelijk zanger is, maar ook een kundig in Oxford en Cambridge afgestudeerd historicus, die van elk lied de achtergrond wil weten en nog meer diepte geeft aan deze gedichten over een afgewezen liefde.
December 27, 2018
I got this originally because it is such a lovely looking book, and although I wasn't familiar with the song cycle I figured I could become so. In the end I have only listened to it once all the way through, so reading the book could have thrown up a few difficulties. That was not the case however, as Ian Bostridge has written a really accessible appreciation of the songs. Each song is given a chapter, and, depending on the lyrics, subjects covered range from the musicology of the pieces (not a lot), to social and political history, Schubert's life, or maybe even a performance memory from the singer/author. It became more fascinating as I read on, and makes a wonderful accompaniment to the music.
September 3, 2015
A disorderly book, and not in any sort of good way. Uneven; some chapters are little gems, but most are at best trivial throw-aways. I definitely came away with a cultural appreciation of Schubert and his works - so in this Bostridge succeeds - but the journey there was pretty difficult (dare I say icy?). If you plan on reading this book, take a look at the many youtube videos or listen to Bostridge (or others) singing this as you read-along; essentially this is extra-long program notes, and it will make the experience far more pleasant.
January 20, 2019
I’m working up a performance of Schubert’s Winterreise for this semester, and decided to finish this book I started a few years ago. While I don’t look to Ian Bostridge’s vocalism as a model, he earned a Doctor of Philosophy from Cambridge studying history and literature, so he knows literature better than just about any musician you can think of. And he proves it in this book. Winterreise is full of symbols and themes, and political undercurrents lay one foundation for interpreting the poetry, all of which demand explanation and clarification. To me, an analysis and exploration of these aspects is almost more relevant to the performer of this music than picky musicological debates.
April 6, 2023
Maravilloso, estética y narrativamente. Un homenaje a la obra por alguien que la ama apasionadamente.
March 7, 2015
This is never less than interesting and often more. I admire Bostridge's Schubert recordings and he's obviously an intelligent artist and a decent writer. (But I must say that I disagree with his assertion that the tenor voice is as well-suited to this work as the voices of the great baritones who have recorded it. I find both Fischer-Dieskau's and Goerne's more convincing than his,and I think that the fact that they're baritones is at least a part of the reason.)
Bostridge does tend now and then to wander rather far astray from the subject at hand. The silliest example is surely in the chapter on "Rast" where he includes a chart illustrating the sources of energy (in megajoules!)-- coal, water wind, etc. -- in England from 1561 to 1859, as commentary on the waning importance of charcoal burners in European economies.
I also found myself wishing that he had included more musical examples, since, although he says that he's no musicologist and has no theoretical training, he does often spend some time talking about both the vocal and piano lines, and it would have been helpful if these comments had been accompanied by many more illustrations. A minor complaint certainly for anyone who has a score at hand.
I did find a bit annoying the casualness with which Bostridge dismisses serious consideration of the evidence that Schubert may well have been homosexual. ("Gay" isn't a suitable designation for the time period, I agree.) Although he comments several times on the oppressive political situation in which Schubert and his circle found themselves and how it caused them to be circumspect in so many ways, he seems oblivious to the fact that the entire culture of Schubert's time would have been at least as oppressive to anyone with homosexual feelings, and, indeed, far more so in as much as the anti-homosexual attitudes, unlike the political, would inevitably have been internalized to at least some extent. Barring the, at this date unlikely, discovery of some now unknown contemporaneous documents, we'll never know for sure either way, but the question doesn't deserve to be dismissed as lightly as Bostridge does here.
Bostridge does tend now and then to wander rather far astray from the subject at hand. The silliest example is surely in the chapter on "Rast" where he includes a chart illustrating the sources of energy (in megajoules!)-- coal, water wind, etc. -- in England from 1561 to 1859, as commentary on the waning importance of charcoal burners in European economies.
I also found myself wishing that he had included more musical examples, since, although he says that he's no musicologist and has no theoretical training, he does often spend some time talking about both the vocal and piano lines, and it would have been helpful if these comments had been accompanied by many more illustrations. A minor complaint certainly for anyone who has a score at hand.
I did find a bit annoying the casualness with which Bostridge dismisses serious consideration of the evidence that Schubert may well have been homosexual. ("Gay" isn't a suitable designation for the time period, I agree.) Although he comments several times on the oppressive political situation in which Schubert and his circle found themselves and how it caused them to be circumspect in so many ways, he seems oblivious to the fact that the entire culture of Schubert's time would have been at least as oppressive to anyone with homosexual feelings, and, indeed, far more so in as much as the anti-homosexual attitudes, unlike the political, would inevitably have been internalized to at least some extent. Barring the, at this date unlikely, discovery of some now unknown contemporaneous documents, we'll never know for sure either way, but the question doesn't deserve to be dismissed as lightly as Bostridge does here.
October 12, 2016
Of all the different sub-genres of Classical Music, Lieder is one that I know the least about. This is partly due to some classical voices being difficult to listen to, with wide vibrato, but mainly due to the fact that most art songs are in languages I do not speak and so I cannot understand them. Winterreise is often considered the pinnacle of Lieder, so I bought this book as a way in.
Ian Bostridge takes us through the 24 songs in the cycle. I appreciated that each chapter begins with the text and his translation, but that in the following text he would often give slightly different words in English, reminding the reader that words have nuances that a single translation cannot always convey. Bostridge uses the content of the songs to go into history, science, art and anywhere his thinking takes him. These diversions are what make this book so special. He finds more allusions than Schubert would have been aware of, but then today's listeners bring their knowledge of the world and their experience to the text and the music.
Of course Bostridge also covers much of the technique that Schubert uses in setting and accompanying the words. He tries not to get too musicollogically technical though some is needed. (Occasionally, the Dr Bostridge with his PH.D in history makes an appearance in the vocabulary used, but not too often.)
I read a chapter a day, listening to Bostridge's own recording. His singing is very direct and beautifully annunciated, without that full operatic vibrato. I suspect this is one of the best ways or reading the book, allowing it to lead you back to the music.
My only complaint about the book is the shortness of the epilogue. Having taken the piece apart, song by song, I would have liked a little more to put it back together and allowing the reader to view it as a whole. Bostridge highlights different ways the cycle and individual songs can be understood and interpreted; I would have liked to hear how he views and approaches the cycle as a whole.
Very informative and stimulating read.
Ian Bostridge takes us through the 24 songs in the cycle. I appreciated that each chapter begins with the text and his translation, but that in the following text he would often give slightly different words in English, reminding the reader that words have nuances that a single translation cannot always convey. Bostridge uses the content of the songs to go into history, science, art and anywhere his thinking takes him. These diversions are what make this book so special. He finds more allusions than Schubert would have been aware of, but then today's listeners bring their knowledge of the world and their experience to the text and the music.
Of course Bostridge also covers much of the technique that Schubert uses in setting and accompanying the words. He tries not to get too musicollogically technical though some is needed. (Occasionally, the Dr Bostridge with his PH.D in history makes an appearance in the vocabulary used, but not too often.)
I read a chapter a day, listening to Bostridge's own recording. His singing is very direct and beautifully annunciated, without that full operatic vibrato. I suspect this is one of the best ways or reading the book, allowing it to lead you back to the music.
My only complaint about the book is the shortness of the epilogue. Having taken the piece apart, song by song, I would have liked a little more to put it back together and allowing the reader to view it as a whole. Bostridge highlights different ways the cycle and individual songs can be understood and interpreted; I would have liked to hear how he views and approaches the cycle as a whole.
Very informative and stimulating read.
December 29, 2017
Five stars for depth. I've never seen this incredible detail from a music historian—and it feels as if Bostridge is just warming up. As a renowned Lieder performer with decades of experience, Bostridge puts a lot of himself into this book. Schubert's Winterreise is a deeply personal experience, moving through many states of soul-searching, introspection, mood swings, ramblings, and reflections on nature. The ingredients are simple: you, a vocal performer, an accompanying pianist, and the music. The result is a symphony of sensation. Müller's text, Goethe's philosophy, and Schubert's music—brace yourself for a freezing torrent of German culture.
Full disclosure: I was almost entirely unfamiliar with Winterreise before seeing Hayao Miyazaki's "The Wind Rises" (2013) two years ago, almost to the day. In one scene, Jiro and Honjo are taking a frigid stroll (hmm) through nighttime pre-war Dessau. They stop to listen to Winterreise emanating from the gramophone of some distant tenement, then stand impassively as German Secret Police chase and apprehend a fugitive.
Jiro: "Schubert's Winter Journey."
Honjo: "Just perfect for us. A masterpiece of misery and woe."
That piqued my interest, to say the least. Two years later, I've listened to the entire song-cycle over a hundred times, and sung through it half a dozen times. With the addition of Bostridge's impressive tome, it's been a most profound musical experience. I would consider it necessary reading for any student of Lieder.
One last note: the jacket design for Anatomy of an Obsession (by Peter Mendelsund) is worth remarking on. The digital thumbnail doesn't do it justice. The jacket is a toothy 80 lb. letterpress paper with 14 de-bossed footprints as the cover's only ornamentation. Solid white, no color except the registration black of the title. It's understated, profound, and obviously Germanic. While boring at first glance, I think its a highly appropriate piece of design.
Full disclosure: I was almost entirely unfamiliar with Winterreise before seeing Hayao Miyazaki's "The Wind Rises" (2013) two years ago, almost to the day. In one scene, Jiro and Honjo are taking a frigid stroll (hmm) through nighttime pre-war Dessau. They stop to listen to Winterreise emanating from the gramophone of some distant tenement, then stand impassively as German Secret Police chase and apprehend a fugitive.
Jiro: "Schubert's Winter Journey."
Honjo: "Just perfect for us. A masterpiece of misery and woe."
That piqued my interest, to say the least. Two years later, I've listened to the entire song-cycle over a hundred times, and sung through it half a dozen times. With the addition of Bostridge's impressive tome, it's been a most profound musical experience. I would consider it necessary reading for any student of Lieder.
One last note: the jacket design for Anatomy of an Obsession (by Peter Mendelsund) is worth remarking on. The digital thumbnail doesn't do it justice. The jacket is a toothy 80 lb. letterpress paper with 14 de-bossed footprints as the cover's only ornamentation. Solid white, no color except the registration black of the title. It's understated, profound, and obviously Germanic. While boring at first glance, I think its a highly appropriate piece of design.
May 8, 2016
Voor wie houdt van de befaamde liedcyclus Winterreise van Schubert ('het eerste en meteen ook het beste van alle conceptalbums'), is het boek van Ian Bostridge een onomwonden aanrader. Bostridge geeft geen 'opsomming van modulaties, cadensen en akkoordliggingen', zoals je misschien zou vrezen als je boek van een geschoolde musicus over liederen in handen neemt. In plaats daarvan kiest Bostridge 'een fenomenologische invalshoek, door de subjectieve en cultureel beladen trajecten van de luisteraar en de uitvoerder te volgen'.
Geschiedenis, sociologie, filosofie, muzikale anecdotes, geen invalshoek is Bostridge te dol. Het is een verrijking van de beleving van deze liederen.
Geschiedenis, sociologie, filosofie, muzikale anecdotes, geen invalshoek is Bostridge te dol. Het is een verrijking van de beleving van deze liederen.
May 27, 2021
La verdad que me he echado mis tres semanitas leyendo poco a poco esta maravilla y yo no soy de leer libros normalmente de 400 páginas, (por la ansiedad de terminar cosas).
Sin embargo, menuda delicia, este libro es de lo mejor, si no lo mejor, que he leído sobre música en mi vida. No solo por el hecho de que sea de la editorial Acantilado y esté traducido por el gran Luis Gago, sino por la lucidez, la fantasía y la descomunal cantidad de referencias culturales a las que el autor, Ian Bostridge, nos expone en su lectura.
Gracias a joyas como estas me planteo la opción de la investigación y la escritura en algún momento de mi vida.
Sin embargo, menuda delicia, este libro es de lo mejor, si no lo mejor, que he leído sobre música en mi vida. No solo por el hecho de que sea de la editorial Acantilado y esté traducido por el gran Luis Gago, sino por la lucidez, la fantasía y la descomunal cantidad de referencias culturales a las que el autor, Ian Bostridge, nos expone en su lectura.
Gracias a joyas como estas me planteo la opción de la investigación y la escritura en algún momento de mi vida.
February 4, 2017
Dit boek van de professionele zanger (en in die hoedanigheid meervoudig uitvoerder van de cyclus) Ian Bostridge plaatst elk van de liederen in "Winterreise" in hun maatschappelijke, politieke, artistieke context en werkt daardoor heel verhelderend. Soms wordt een (gepopulariseerd) musicologische uitleg gegeven, soms persoonlijke bespiegelingen maar steeds weer leer je het werk en de componist beter kennen. Sommige stukken zijn iets te lang naar mijn gevoel, maar voor de rest kan ik dit enkel als een interessant en goed geschreven boek bestempelen.
Shelved as 'maybe'
July 21, 2015 x
December 3, 2021
A Polyhistor Backstage Tour of Schubert`s Winterreise with Ian Bostridge
Just as Schubert performs a musical appropiation of Wilhelm Müller`s cycle of poems Die Winterreise, making the most of the accidental, like all great artists, Ian Bostridge reenacts Schubert`s Winterreise through a monumental lacing of unexpected conections. The simply brillant method underpinning Schubert`s Winter Journey. Anatomy of an Obsession consists in the circuit of analogies that see the unseeable in those poems of Müller converted into songs by Schubert.
The winter as the stage of Schubert`s song cycle had a greater phantasmal impact than nowadays, since we are living under the threat of climate change. We rarely encounter frost flowers, frozen rivers, ice storms and snow blizzards, and our central heating systems does not favor the possibility of a truly cruel winter.
Ian Bostridge is a subtle vivisector of Schubert`s Winterreise, beginning with the suppression of the definite article from Schubert`s sequence of songs: this winter journey could be yours and mine too. The subtitle, an obvious paraphrase of Robert Burton`s The Anatomy of Melancholy, is more than eloquent. While Burton dissects the concept of melancholy, Bostridge reveals the musical landscapes of Schubert`s Winterreise and the multifaceted melancholia of its solitary actor.
The great trump card of Winterreise is the omission that incites creation. We have no idea who is the dramatis personae: a stranger, a wanderer, an outcast? We know so little about this ”emotional exhibitionist” that lulls us with his fragmentary confessions, and thus we make him our own mirror. This Byronic method of absence and displacement of narrative is modern and even postmodern.
In our times, winters are mild, feelings and piano-accomapanied songs are no longer fashionable.
Nevertheless, the modern alienation is closely akin to the sombre pilgrimage of this being that seeks to freeze his feelings, which is to preserve them and to anaesthetise them as well. Solitude is not just an attitude of the Romantic era, Bostridge argues, but an effect of various social and political realities. Schubert himself was drawn to Müller`s poems because of his aesthetic predispositions and political leanings.
Our author is our Winterreise guide not only as a talented and trained tenor, but also as an expert historian, a social analyst, a witty scholar, and essentially, an artist who cannot escape the back-and-forth between art and life, hence a musical being prone to self-dramatisation, as Schubert himself. His self-professed ”very particular Romantic disposition” was the perfect conductor for this inspiring, major art book, especially in our times of market-driven frenzy, commodification and general regress of recording business. Bostridge launches bold queries on the status of art, the artist`s fate and the way we approach Schubert`s universe: ”Is the wanderer of interest to us because he or she is everyman or everywoman, or because he or she is a pathological study, an outsider? As I make my way through Winterreise is one of the questions that return again and again. Do we identify with him, or seek to separate ourselves from him? Is he symphatetic or repellent? Insightful or embarassing? Weird? Normal? These disconforting responses are what make Winterreise so compelling.” (p. 364)
An unhappy love affair may have its advantages for the lyric poet and the composer, as Schubert’s friend the playwright Eduard von Bauernfeld rightly clamed. Ian Bostridge`s splendid study incites us, either musicians or music lovers, to indulge in the backstage of Schubert`s Winterreise.
October 27, 2019
Winterreise on Franz Schubertin tunnetuimpia teoksia. Vain 31-vuotiaana kuollut säveltäjäsuuruus viimeisteli Wilhelm Müllerin runoihin sovitetun 24-osaisen Liederkreisin eli laulusarjan kuolinvuoteellaan. Winterreise on syvällinen ja monimutkainen taideteos, joka on kiehtonut laulajia ja pianisteja sekä kuulijoitaan kohta jo 200 vuoden ajan. Se kertoo rakkaudessa pettyneestä nuoresta miehestä, joka pakenee rakastettunsa luota ja vajoaa talvisen kuljeskelunsa aikana vähitellen kohti täyttä toivottomuutta ja hulluutta.
Kuka olisikaan parempi kumppani avaamaan laulusarjan sisältöä ja merkityksiä kuin sitä kolmenkymmenen vuoden ajan esittänyt brittiläinen huipputenori Ian Bostridge, joka on paitsi maailmankuulu lied-laulaja myös historiasta väitellyt tohtori, joka toimii nykyään musiikin professorina Oxfordin yliopistossa. Bostridgen mukana lukija pääsee perehtymään Schubertin musiikin ja sen tulkitsemisen kysymyksiin. Samalla Bostridge avaa teoksen historiallista taustaa, Müllerin runojen enemmän tai vähemmän piilotettuja merkityksiä ja ilmiöitä laulujen aiheiden ympäriltä. Virvatulia, haloilmiöitä, tanssilehmuksia, variksia, tuonelan tienviittoja, kampiliiransoittajia – Winterreise on moninaisten aiheiden yhteenliittymä.
Bostridge on valinnut Winterreise-kirjansa käsittelytavaksi edetä järjestyksessä laulusarja alusta loppuun. Jokainen teoksen 24 osasta esitellään ensin tekstin ja sen käännöksen kanssa, jonka jälkeen Bostridge kertoo kyseisen laulun esittämistavoista ja erityisistä huomioistaan sävellykseen liittyen. Bostridge tuntee teoksen läpikotaisin, joten hänellä on terävää ja punnittua sanottavaa kaikista yksityiskohdista. Bostridgen musiikkianalyysi ei mene kovinkaan syvällisiin teknisiin yksityiskohtiin, joten se on helppoa luettavaa myös vähemmän ammattimaiselle musiikinystävälle.
Jokaisessa osassa on myös jokin teema, josta Bostridge haluaa kertoa enemmän. Lukijalle välittyy Winterreisen kautta monipuolinen kuva 1800-luvun alun wieniläisten elintavoista, ajattelusta ja historian käännekohdista. Ian Bostridgen omin sanoin:
Winterreise on toki ensisijaisesti sävellys, eikä kirjaa kannata lukea kuuntelematta musiikkia. Itse valitsin kirjan kanssa nautittavaksi Bostridgen tuoreen konserttilevytyksen Winterreisesta, jonka hän on tehnyt pianisti Thomas Adèsin kanssa. Oivallinen on myös David Aldenin elokuvallinen sovitus vuodelta 1997, jossa Bostridgen kanssa esiintyy Julius Drake. Eikä Winterreisen kuuntelua tietenkään tarvitse Ian Bostridgeen rajoittaa – loistavia tulkitsijoita on muitakin. Oma suosikkini vain sattuu olemaan Bostridge, joten ainakin minulle Winterreise – Schubertin Talvinen matka on ihan täysosuma. Suosittelen.
Kuka olisikaan parempi kumppani avaamaan laulusarjan sisältöä ja merkityksiä kuin sitä kolmenkymmenen vuoden ajan esittänyt brittiläinen huipputenori Ian Bostridge, joka on paitsi maailmankuulu lied-laulaja myös historiasta väitellyt tohtori, joka toimii nykyään musiikin professorina Oxfordin yliopistossa. Bostridgen mukana lukija pääsee perehtymään Schubertin musiikin ja sen tulkitsemisen kysymyksiin. Samalla Bostridge avaa teoksen historiallista taustaa, Müllerin runojen enemmän tai vähemmän piilotettuja merkityksiä ja ilmiöitä laulujen aiheiden ympäriltä. Virvatulia, haloilmiöitä, tanssilehmuksia, variksia, tuonelan tienviittoja, kampiliiransoittajia – Winterreise on moninaisten aiheiden yhteenliittymä.
Bostridge on valinnut Winterreise-kirjansa käsittelytavaksi edetä järjestyksessä laulusarja alusta loppuun. Jokainen teoksen 24 osasta esitellään ensin tekstin ja sen käännöksen kanssa, jonka jälkeen Bostridge kertoo kyseisen laulun esittämistavoista ja erityisistä huomioistaan sävellykseen liittyen. Bostridge tuntee teoksen läpikotaisin, joten hänellä on terävää ja punnittua sanottavaa kaikista yksityiskohdista. Bostridgen musiikkianalyysi ei mene kovinkaan syvällisiin teknisiin yksityiskohtiin, joten se on helppoa luettavaa myös vähemmän ammattimaiselle musiikinystävälle.
Jokaisessa osassa on myös jokin teema, josta Bostridge haluaa kertoa enemmän. Lukijalle välittyy Winterreisen kautta monipuolinen kuva 1800-luvun alun wieniläisten elintavoista, ajattelusta ja historian käännekohdista. Ian Bostridgen omin sanoin:
Historian saatossa taidetta ovat luoneet elävät, kokevat ja ajattelevat ihmiset, emmekä saata ymmärtää heidän teoksiaan, ellemme tavoita niihin punottuja viitteitä perustaviin emotionaalisiin maailmoihin, ideologioihin ja käytännön pakotteisiin. Taide ei elä idealisoidussa tyhjiössä, vaan se syntyy elämän ja muotojen yhteentörmäyksissä.
Winterreise on toki ensisijaisesti sävellys, eikä kirjaa kannata lukea kuuntelematta musiikkia. Itse valitsin kirjan kanssa nautittavaksi Bostridgen tuoreen konserttilevytyksen Winterreisesta, jonka hän on tehnyt pianisti Thomas Adèsin kanssa. Oivallinen on myös David Aldenin elokuvallinen sovitus vuodelta 1997, jossa Bostridgen kanssa esiintyy Julius Drake. Eikä Winterreisen kuuntelua tietenkään tarvitse Ian Bostridgeen rajoittaa – loistavia tulkitsijoita on muitakin. Oma suosikkini vain sattuu olemaan Bostridge, joten ainakin minulle Winterreise – Schubertin Talvinen matka on ihan täysosuma. Suosittelen.
October 31, 2019
(Review first published in Shelf Awareness)
In 1828, Franz Schubert, one of Vienna's most celebrated composers, wrote a cycle of songs called Winterreise, or Winter Journey, the lyrics of which are taken from a poem written by Wilhelm Müller. Ideally performed in one sitting, this 70-minute cycle has since become one of the world's most significant musical pieces for a male soloist. In Schubert's Winter Journey: Anatomy of an Obsession, Ian Bostridge, an English tenor, takes readers through Winterreise, examining each of the 24 songs.
Bostridge himself has sung Winterreise for 30 years, and he believes what Schubert accomplished is as worthy of praise and study as works by Shakespeare and Dante. In his own time, Schubert enjoyed a renown not known to many composers; but when he first performed Winterreise at an intimate gathering of friends, the reception was middling. The piece marked a departure from Schubert's previous compositions, and he focused on it with a single-minded passion, convinced even his reluctant first audience would come to love it as his best work.
Bostridge dissects and explains each song in depth, providing detailed historical, biographical and cultural backgrounds through which readers may come to understand them better. He captures how, and in many instances why, Winterreise is a singular work that has a profound effect on audiences even today. Whether explaining what the music is designed to do, and its various effects, or recalling his own experiences performing it, Bostridge shows, in a book that is just as captivating, how psychologically, emotionally and physically thrilling the composition is.
In 1828, Franz Schubert, one of Vienna's most celebrated composers, wrote a cycle of songs called Winterreise, or Winter Journey, the lyrics of which are taken from a poem written by Wilhelm Müller. Ideally performed in one sitting, this 70-minute cycle has since become one of the world's most significant musical pieces for a male soloist. In Schubert's Winter Journey: Anatomy of an Obsession, Ian Bostridge, an English tenor, takes readers through Winterreise, examining each of the 24 songs.
Bostridge himself has sung Winterreise for 30 years, and he believes what Schubert accomplished is as worthy of praise and study as works by Shakespeare and Dante. In his own time, Schubert enjoyed a renown not known to many composers; but when he first performed Winterreise at an intimate gathering of friends, the reception was middling. The piece marked a departure from Schubert's previous compositions, and he focused on it with a single-minded passion, convinced even his reluctant first audience would come to love it as his best work.
Bostridge dissects and explains each song in depth, providing detailed historical, biographical and cultural backgrounds through which readers may come to understand them better. He captures how, and in many instances why, Winterreise is a singular work that has a profound effect on audiences even today. Whether explaining what the music is designed to do, and its various effects, or recalling his own experiences performing it, Bostridge shows, in a book that is just as captivating, how psychologically, emotionally and physically thrilling the composition is.
March 12, 2016
Schubert’s Winter Journey: Anatomy of an Obsession by Ian Bostridge
Reviewed by: Emily Locke
Ian Bostridge is a professional tenor and author. The title Schubert’s Winter Journey: Anatomy of an Obsession is Bostridge’s own thirty year obsession with Winterreise, the German title of the song cycle. Bostridge tells the reader he is not a musicologist. However, since he has immersed himself in the piece for so long, he knows the cycle intimately. He is constantly trying to find new ways to sing, present, and understand it. He believes “Winter Journey is incontestably a great work of art which should be as much a part of our common experience as the poetry of Shakespeare and Dante, the paintings of Van Gogh and Pablo Picasso, the novels of the Brönte sisters or Marcel Proust.” Bostridge separates the book into twenty-four chapters, one for each song in the cycle, explores the historical context for the song, and presents various unconventional connections. In this way, he successfully shows the reader that Schubert’s complex tale of a winter wanderer has great significance for a contemporary audience.
Franz Schubert wrote the song cycle Winterreise based on Wilhelm Müllers poems in the 1820’s. Müller wrote the first twelve poems which Schubert read while he was in Urania. Later Müller wrote twelve more poems and interspersed them throughout the first twelve for a complete twenty-four poem version. Schubert chose not to intersperse the poems but to add them to the end of his first twelve songs. He was still correcting proofs of the song cycle on his deathbed in November of 1828. According to Bostridge, it is important to place music in both its personal and social historical contexts. He holds the somewhat debated belief that “art does not exist in an idealized vacuum.” Winterreise is a complex work of art that warrants our understanding of what it meant to listeners in the late 1820’s as well as exploring what it means to us today.
Bostridge addresses the reason Schubert was impressed with Müller’s poetry throughout his book. Schubert lived in Vienna during the Biedermeier period, a time in Central Europe after the Napoleonic Wars but before the European Revolutions, 1815-1848. It was a time of political stability and the rise of the middle class. However, the political stability under Clemens von Metternich, the first State Chancellor of the Austrian Empire, was held at a cost to personal freedom. There was no compromise for liberalism, and artists had to accommodate censorship. Within Müller’s poems there was often a hidden meaning. For example, in the poem “Rest”, the tenth song in the cycle, the wanderer takes shelter in a charcoal burner’s hut. The charcoal burner is translated in Italian to carbonari. The Carbonari were a secret society of Italy that was feared by the Hapsburg regime. In this way Müller celebrates a secret society similar to the German Bildung Circle that represented a commitment to a democratic society. The Bildung Circle believed they could self-improve through education and by individual improvement effect social improvement. Bildungfollowers, like Schubert and Müller, did not believe in society as status quo but as a constant maturation which was feared as possibly revolutionary by the reigning powers. Müller’s poetry appealed to Schubert because, as Bostridge so eloquently put it, they were “part of that quiescent mourning which was all that was left to those who could not act.”
Another example of Müller’s hidden meanings resonating with Schubert is evident in the seventeenth song “In the Village.” Schubert opens the piece with the piano sounding like the dogs of the village barking at the wanderer. The villagers are sleeping, dreaming of things they do not possess. The villagers represent the rising middle class, their pettiness and social stagnation. The wanderer who feels he is rejected by society or has rejected society, we never fully know which, cannot stay; he must move on. Is not the middle class complacency and disillusionment alluded to in these two songs something that we are keenly aware of in the twenty-first century?
Interspersed in the text are many unconventional and varied musings. It is fascinating to read the history of the glacial theory in the seventh song “On the River”, an allusion to Orpheus in the next song “Backward Glance”, the Romantic fascination with the “Mock Suns” of cycle twenty-three. Bostridge explains, “By gathering such a disparate mass of material I hope to explain and to deepen our common response.” He is particularly eloquent explaining the music of cycle nine “Will-o-the-Wisp”orignisfatuus. He speaks of Schubert’s inventiveness here giving musical examples and explaining how they feel to the listener and the singer. At first the song is playful in an arabesque but moves to painful diphthongs that are the wanderer’s wail of anguish. Bostridge alludes to the quest for a scientific explanation for the phenomenon and ends the chapter with a Dickenson poem to further explain what Schubert is demonstrating in this song. The poemlike Schubert’s song resonates so much with twenty –first century sentiment.
“Those—dying then,
Knew where they went—
They went to God’s Right Hand—
That hand is amputated now
And God cannot be found—
The abdication of Belief
Makes the Behavior small—
Better an ignisfatuus than no illume at all.”
Bostridge’s disparate musings indeed illuminate the significance of understanding Winterreisein all of its complexities. The historical background and explanations he offers amplify a modern day listener’s ability to understand the humanity and empathy within Winterreise. “All these historical cross-currents may seem tenuous and beside the point; but they remind us that Winterreise is a historical artifact, made in history and transmitted through and by it.” As a history book, Schubert’s Winter Journey will appeal to a wide audience. Not only classical musicians and classical music fans but all history lovers will gain an unprecedented, well researched understanding of Schubert, his time, and his music.
Schubert’s Winter Journey: Anatomy of an Obsession by Ian Bostridge. Alfred A. Knopf, 2015. H/C, 504 pgs, Color and B/W pictures. Includes bibliographical references and index.Costs $29 from A.A. Knopf 1745 Broadway NY, NY 10019. For more information visit www.aaknopf.com
Reviewed by: Emily Locke
Ian Bostridge is a professional tenor and author. The title Schubert’s Winter Journey: Anatomy of an Obsession is Bostridge’s own thirty year obsession with Winterreise, the German title of the song cycle. Bostridge tells the reader he is not a musicologist. However, since he has immersed himself in the piece for so long, he knows the cycle intimately. He is constantly trying to find new ways to sing, present, and understand it. He believes “Winter Journey is incontestably a great work of art which should be as much a part of our common experience as the poetry of Shakespeare and Dante, the paintings of Van Gogh and Pablo Picasso, the novels of the Brönte sisters or Marcel Proust.” Bostridge separates the book into twenty-four chapters, one for each song in the cycle, explores the historical context for the song, and presents various unconventional connections. In this way, he successfully shows the reader that Schubert’s complex tale of a winter wanderer has great significance for a contemporary audience.
Franz Schubert wrote the song cycle Winterreise based on Wilhelm Müllers poems in the 1820’s. Müller wrote the first twelve poems which Schubert read while he was in Urania. Later Müller wrote twelve more poems and interspersed them throughout the first twelve for a complete twenty-four poem version. Schubert chose not to intersperse the poems but to add them to the end of his first twelve songs. He was still correcting proofs of the song cycle on his deathbed in November of 1828. According to Bostridge, it is important to place music in both its personal and social historical contexts. He holds the somewhat debated belief that “art does not exist in an idealized vacuum.” Winterreise is a complex work of art that warrants our understanding of what it meant to listeners in the late 1820’s as well as exploring what it means to us today.
Bostridge addresses the reason Schubert was impressed with Müller’s poetry throughout his book. Schubert lived in Vienna during the Biedermeier period, a time in Central Europe after the Napoleonic Wars but before the European Revolutions, 1815-1848. It was a time of political stability and the rise of the middle class. However, the political stability under Clemens von Metternich, the first State Chancellor of the Austrian Empire, was held at a cost to personal freedom. There was no compromise for liberalism, and artists had to accommodate censorship. Within Müller’s poems there was often a hidden meaning. For example, in the poem “Rest”, the tenth song in the cycle, the wanderer takes shelter in a charcoal burner’s hut. The charcoal burner is translated in Italian to carbonari. The Carbonari were a secret society of Italy that was feared by the Hapsburg regime. In this way Müller celebrates a secret society similar to the German Bildung Circle that represented a commitment to a democratic society. The Bildung Circle believed they could self-improve through education and by individual improvement effect social improvement. Bildungfollowers, like Schubert and Müller, did not believe in society as status quo but as a constant maturation which was feared as possibly revolutionary by the reigning powers. Müller’s poetry appealed to Schubert because, as Bostridge so eloquently put it, they were “part of that quiescent mourning which was all that was left to those who could not act.”
Another example of Müller’s hidden meanings resonating with Schubert is evident in the seventeenth song “In the Village.” Schubert opens the piece with the piano sounding like the dogs of the village barking at the wanderer. The villagers are sleeping, dreaming of things they do not possess. The villagers represent the rising middle class, their pettiness and social stagnation. The wanderer who feels he is rejected by society or has rejected society, we never fully know which, cannot stay; he must move on. Is not the middle class complacency and disillusionment alluded to in these two songs something that we are keenly aware of in the twenty-first century?
Interspersed in the text are many unconventional and varied musings. It is fascinating to read the history of the glacial theory in the seventh song “On the River”, an allusion to Orpheus in the next song “Backward Glance”, the Romantic fascination with the “Mock Suns” of cycle twenty-three. Bostridge explains, “By gathering such a disparate mass of material I hope to explain and to deepen our common response.” He is particularly eloquent explaining the music of cycle nine “Will-o-the-Wisp”orignisfatuus. He speaks of Schubert’s inventiveness here giving musical examples and explaining how they feel to the listener and the singer. At first the song is playful in an arabesque but moves to painful diphthongs that are the wanderer’s wail of anguish. Bostridge alludes to the quest for a scientific explanation for the phenomenon and ends the chapter with a Dickenson poem to further explain what Schubert is demonstrating in this song. The poemlike Schubert’s song resonates so much with twenty –first century sentiment.
“Those—dying then,
Knew where they went—
They went to God’s Right Hand—
That hand is amputated now
And God cannot be found—
The abdication of Belief
Makes the Behavior small—
Better an ignisfatuus than no illume at all.”
Bostridge’s disparate musings indeed illuminate the significance of understanding Winterreisein all of its complexities. The historical background and explanations he offers amplify a modern day listener’s ability to understand the humanity and empathy within Winterreise. “All these historical cross-currents may seem tenuous and beside the point; but they remind us that Winterreise is a historical artifact, made in history and transmitted through and by it.” As a history book, Schubert’s Winter Journey will appeal to a wide audience. Not only classical musicians and classical music fans but all history lovers will gain an unprecedented, well researched understanding of Schubert, his time, and his music.
Schubert’s Winter Journey: Anatomy of an Obsession by Ian Bostridge. Alfred A. Knopf, 2015. H/C, 504 pgs, Color and B/W pictures. Includes bibliographical references and index.Costs $29 from A.A. Knopf 1745 Broadway NY, NY 10019. For more information visit www.aaknopf.com
September 26, 2022
Ian Bostridge to angielski tenor, który pomimo braku wykształcenia muzycznego jest niesamowitym śpiewakiem. Jak się okazuje po przeczytaniu tej książki, również nie byle jakim pisarzem. Otrzymał doktorat na podstawie swojej rozprawy o wpływie magii na życie ludzi w XVII i XVIII w.
"Podróż zimowa" jest tutaj opisana niezwykle barwnie i interesująco. Każda pieśń cyklu ma osobny rozdział, w którym autor stara się wyjaśnić tajemnice wierszy, zasugerować własną interpretację i zapewnić mocne historyczne, społeczne i polityczne tło. Warstwa muzyczna również jest szeroko i bajkowo sportretowana. Bostridge stroni od suchego muzykologicznego bełkotu i zawsze dodaje coś od siebie.
Książka oferuje niebywałą ilość informacji i ciekawostek z życia Schuberta, Müllera i ich rówieśników. Przedstawia wpływy kompozytora i poety jak i sam wpływ dzieła na przyszłych artystów.
Po lekturze cykl jest dla mnie czymś jeszcze bardziej wyniosłym, transcendentalnym i unikającym pochwycenia przez ludzki umysł.
Książkę poleciłbym też osobom niezwiązanym z muzyką klasyczną, bo jest to frapująca lektura mogąca służyć za dobry wstęp do niemieckiej pieśni i twórczości Schuberta w ogóle.
Polecam nagranie cyklu live w wykonaniu autora i kompozytora Thomasa Adèsa z 2019 r. wydawnictwa PentaTone.
"Podróż zimowa" jest tutaj opisana niezwykle barwnie i interesująco. Każda pieśń cyklu ma osobny rozdział, w którym autor stara się wyjaśnić tajemnice wierszy, zasugerować własną interpretację i zapewnić mocne historyczne, społeczne i polityczne tło. Warstwa muzyczna również jest szeroko i bajkowo sportretowana. Bostridge stroni od suchego muzykologicznego bełkotu i zawsze dodaje coś od siebie.
Książka oferuje niebywałą ilość informacji i ciekawostek z życia Schuberta, Müllera i ich rówieśników. Przedstawia wpływy kompozytora i poety jak i sam wpływ dzieła na przyszłych artystów.
Po lekturze cykl jest dla mnie czymś jeszcze bardziej wyniosłym, transcendentalnym i unikającym pochwycenia przez ludzki umysł.
Książkę poleciłbym też osobom niezwiązanym z muzyką klasyczną, bo jest to frapująca lektura mogąca służyć za dobry wstęp do niemieckiej pieśni i twórczości Schuberta w ogóle.
Polecam nagranie cyklu live w wykonaniu autora i kompozytora Thomasa Adèsa z 2019 r. wydawnictwa PentaTone.
August 9, 2020
Franz Schubert’s song cycle “Winterreise” is one of the masterworks of Western art music, and tenor Ian Bostridge is one of its renowned interpreters. In this book, Bostridge sets out to place the work in an historical and aesthetic context. Bostridge admits that he was not trained to be a musician (his degrees are in history and the humanities, not music), so gratefully, this study is not mired in music theory or jargon that might make it inaccessible to the general reader. There is some discussion of the cycle’s musical content, but this is always in the context of understanding what Schubert was trying to say about the 24 poems of Wilhelm Müller that he set to music in 1827-28. Bostridge provides an interdisciplinary perspective here, drawing on visual art, literature, and general cultural history, to place the songs in both Schubert’s life and milieu, and the events in Vienna around the time of its composition. I’ve listened to these songs for many years now, but I will hear them now with a fresh perspective, thanks to this fine analysis.
February 20, 2018
Although it risks coming off as self indulgent, Bostridge's confidence in subjecting a such a canon to a contemporary, eclectic analysis is admirable. Anyone aware of his Winterreise film should know already what they are in for and if they don't, the title is an open disclaimer. If you are willing to delve this overtly subjective interpretation of the music there are many interesting and beautiful insights to enjoy. While Bostridge is probably best known for his performances of this work, his rich collection of "actors notes" on the songs are not all he has to offer. He deserves credit for his work as a historian, specifically for placing this seemingly a navel-gazing work back into its radical context. The chapter on the Carbonari was particularly good. My only criticism is that the liner notes structure of the book feels a bit patchy. I recommend reading a chapter at a time while revisiting the recording of your choice.
April 19, 2020
Ian Bostridge is widely recognized as one of the most important interpreters of Lieder, or German Art Song, and as such has masterfully performed Schubert’s “Winterreise” (Winter journey) hundreds of times. This beautiful and engaging book is the product both of his imagination and a punctilious research and, far from a thick academic text, is a work of love and understanding between an artist and the object of his obsession. Trough its pages we will follow the course of this intensely romantic composition from the first up to its last song, learning along the way interesting and colorful details about its creators, their lives and historical context, and of course the meaning and literary background of each and every one of the 24 pieces conforming the cycle.
This book, notwithstanding some freedom of interpretation that sometimes goes a little to far, is a must read for professional singers and music lovers alike.
This book, notwithstanding some freedom of interpretation that sometimes goes a little to far, is a must read for professional singers and music lovers alike.
December 15, 2021
There are many interesting passages, but it's too loosely organized, and there's way too much of the author's voice in there. He says one thing, then another, then another, with no clear goal or direction. At times it seems like the author is hectoring Wikipedia articles at me. I tried to read the whole thing while translating the words and listening to the songs, sung by the author. However, it took me years just to get through the first half that way. I finally finished it. The topic is interesting but it would nave been better if the author had solicited essays and introduced them instead. 500 pages of him was way too much. It was like being at a really long party where only one guest speaks. When he brings up things I am unfamiliar with he does sound really knowledgeable, but when he talks about things i know a little bit about, like birds or hurdy-gurdies, I can tell it's not particularly authoritative or relevant.
January 31, 2018
It was such a treat to read this book slowly, savoring each song-chapter, while listening to Schubert's Winterreise, song by song. It's filled with interesting pictures and ideas, most of which are not specifically musical, but all of which relate to the song cycle and individual songs very particularly. Bostridge draws upon literary, historical, socio-political and scientific sources, in his quest for a deeper understanding of Schubert's haunting work. Here and there he also includes his own personal experience in singing and performing the song cycle, describing his own experience - his musical collaborations and choices; his long-standing relationship with Winterreise has the feel of that with an old, familiar and somewhat difficult friend.
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