10/13/2014
In 1828, Franz Schubert gathered his circle of friends to perform Winterreise (Winter Journey), his latest song cycle, for them; they found the music gloomy and mournful, but Schubert—who died that year at age 31—said that he liked these songs more than all the others he had composed, and that his listeners would come to like them as well. Schubert’s 24-song cycle, originally written to be recited by a male vocalist and piano for 70 minutes, without interruption, in intimate settings, is now performed in large concert halls around the world. English tenor Bostridge, who has sung these pieces frequently, offers his take on the meaning and enduring power of Winterreise. Most of the short chapters are written in elegant prose that soars off the pages, though some fall surprisingly flat. Bostridge probes the historical context of each piece and explores its connections to other arts. For example, he points out the connections between the music and lyrics of the cycle’s first song, “Good Night,” and Goethe’s two poems “Fairy King” and “Gretchen at the Spinning Wheel”: the poems animate the entire song and, musically, “subtle changes are used to shift perspective or emotional temperature.” The words of “Rest,” the 10th song in Winterreise, reflect a “rebellious ferocity and a testament to repressed energy and pain.” Bostridge’s illuminating reflections will guide readers as they listen again, or for the first time, to the nuances of Schubert’s great work. (Jan.)
2014-11-06
A singer, author and professor expertly escorts us through Winterreise, Franz Schubert's 24-song cycle.The subtitle refers to an obsession, and that is no exaggeration. Reporting that he has sung the cycle about 100 times, Bostridge (Music/Oxford Univ.; A Singer's Notebook, 2011, etc.) frequently confesses his fondness for the piece, an affection that is patent throughout this illuminating and comprehensive work. Although the author pauses at times to discuss music theory, it's not often, and he keeps in mind a more general reading audience. Devoting a section to each of the 24 songs, Bostridge employs an organization that is both fixed and flexible. He begins with the lyrics (poems by Wilhelm Müller, with German and English, on facing pages) and then both focuses and digresses in ways that explain the music and illustrate the value of a liberal arts education. In his rich, highly readable text are allusions to Rousseau, Shakespeare, Dante, Napoleon, the Nazis, J.M. Coetzee, Paul Auster, Thomas Mann, Gustav Mahler, James Fenimore Cooper and countless others. He shares the remarkable story of Schubert's decline and death, a period during which he was compulsively reading Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales. However, it is the winter journey itself that most interests Bostridge, and he dives into the text, explores how the words and music relate, looks for analogues in the composer's life, and discusses his own performances and performances by others that helped shape his view of the piece. He treats readers to some things they would not expect in such a book: the history of postal delivery, the scientific explanation of the will-o'-the-wisp, the theme of loneliness in Romantic art, and the differences between crows and ravens. A graceful confirmation that reading can be an integrative education that offers a surprise with every turn of the page.
Illuminating.”—The New Yorker
“Enthralling.... After reading it, we may listen differently to this supreme work of art.”—The New York Review of Books
“Exquisite.... [An] engaging mélange of memoir, cultural history, close musical reading, glimpses of biography and wide-reaching examples of the ripple effect of Winterreise's influence on writers, composers, historians, and thinkers.’” —The Independent (UK)
“Tantalizing....It’s easy to imagine stunned young acolytes carrying [Schubert’s Winter Journey] around the way they used to carry around Goethe’s Sorrows of Young Werther.” —Opera News
"Ian Bostridge, one of Britain’s foremost tenors...knows every last nuance of the work and has given it a great deal of thought. His beautifully produced book offers many new insights that will inform the enjoyment of both old admirers and newcomers to the music." —The Economist
"Wouldn't it be great if we nonexpert folks could get experts to give us guided tours of great music in humane, rather than technical, terms? That is what we have in Schubert's Winter Journey by Ian Bostridge. He is a well-known tenor/writer, and Franz Schubert's Winterreise, or Winter Journey (composed 1827-1828) is among his favorite works. After you read this book, it might become one of yours, too." —The Philadelphia Inquirer
"Bostridge’s curiosity enriches the book and the music." —The Boston Globe
"An unusual and compelling book: Omnivorous and digressive, it captures the enduring mystery of this seminal work in the lieder tradition. Readers who love “Winterreise” will find the book a rare treat, and those who do not yet know the piece have here a fine companion as they listen....Mr. Bostridge’s mastery of the music and the text is evident throughout." —The Wall Street Journal
“Elegant....Both deepens and contextualizes this emotionally somber masterpiece, the ideal music for darkest February.” —Washington Post
“A magnificent study of one of the most influential and simultaneously mysterious musical works of the Romantic period. And there’s no one better to crack it open than Bostridge, who knows its wormholes better than anyone.” —The Daily Beast
“Bostridge brings the knowledge of an expert but none of their jargon to this unexpected book that treats each song in this inscrutable cycle as an object in a cabinet of curiosities — to be handled and enjoyed as well as theorised.” —The Spectator (UK)
“Schubert’s Winter Journey provides a fascinating insight not just into the song cycle and the mindset of its composer but also that of a leading interpreter.” —Financial Times (UK)
“Winterreise, Bostridge argues, is ‘a message in a bottle set afloat in the cultural ocean of 1828’ and, with the confidence of a master oarsman, Bostridge sails these waters with awesome virtuosity.” —The Times (UK)
“Bostridge encourages us to experience the work as though we were eavesdropping on a performer's own dilemmas....Like the cycle itself, the study is a heady, circling journey of cross-reference, association and allusion.” —Hilary Finch, BBC Music Magazine (Music Books Choice)
“Bostridge’s highly enjoyable book provides a rewarding, intelligently written companion to the piece for those who know it well, as well as for those who are approaching it for the first time....This wide-ranging book is a fine tribute to his devotion to Schubert’s masterpiece.” —Sunday Times (UK)
“The songs are discussed in a series of insightful and gracefully written chapters, each drawing on a vast range of learning in cultural and social history, musicology and psychoanalysis.” —Daily Telegraph (UK)
“An impressive success: a long-gestated, intensely enjoyable study.” —Literary Review (UK)
“As one of our greatest exponents of German song, lieder, [Bostridge] brings to this book an insight which must elude most other scholars....What makes his approach so especially appealing is his love of Winterreise and his openness to its possibilities.” —Alan Taylor, The Herald (UK)
“Illuminating and comprehensive....Rich, highly readable.” —Kirkus
“Bostridge’s illuminating reflections will guide readers as they listen again, or for the first time, to the nuances of Schubert’s great work.” —Publisher’s Weekly
“Usually great singers cannot explain what they do. Ian Bostridge can. Whether or not you know Schubert’s Winter Journey, the book is gripping because it explains, in probing, simple words, how doomed love is transformed into art.” —Richard Sennett
★ 11/01/2014
World-renowned British tenor Bostridge offers here his take on Franz Schubert's famed Winterreise (Winter's Journey), a cycle of 24 songs composed near the end of the composer's tragically brief life (1797–1828)and set to poems of Wilhelm Müller. The format is a kind of "primer" that presents each song, including the original German and the English translation, on facing pages. As the Oxford-educated author explains, the songs, which tend toward the dark and brooding, roughly chronicle the wanderings and moods of an apparently rejected lover, a popular 19th-century theme, with titles like "Backwards Glance" and "Deception." Though somewhat technical musical commentary is included here and there, this enchanting book is much more than just a treatise on the songs. Bostridge ranges widely and with great ease over cultural and historical terrain to provide a context for the songs, or Lieder, teasing out the undercurrents that run through them so that "We are drawn in by an obsessively confessional soul, apparently an emotional exhibitionist, who won't give us the facts; but this allows us to supply the facts of our own lives, and make him our mirror." VERDICT Highly recommended for lovers of both fine music and European cultural history.—Edward B. Cone, New York
