Schubert’s Vienna
Title: Schubert’s Vienna
Editor: Raymond Erickson
Publisher: Yale University Press, New Haven and London
Other Details: ISBN 0-300-07080-2, 448pp, illustrated
Date Published: 1997
Introduction
The Schubert bicentenary has been the justification or excuse for the publication of many works, not all of them being particularly worthy. However, without the bicentenary it is unlikely that a book such as this one would have appeared, which would have been a great shame, as it is rather splendid, and fills an important niche.
The book itself is handsomely produced under the Aston Magna Academy imprint. It exudes quality and is very richly illustrated, both throughout the text, and in the section of 23 full colour plates. Great care has evidently been taken in getting an appropriate mix of pictures, without simply displaying the ‘usual’ ones. For example, there is an engraving of Eduard von Bauernfeld by Kriehuber that I don’t recall ever having seen before. There are over 250 pages, with a comprehensive index and plenty of footnotes and each essay has a useful list of suggestions for further reading.
Sections of the book
The book is a collection of essays about Vienna’s history and politics, class structures and social conventions. They are divided into three sections: Politics and Social Life, Musical Life, and The Other Arts. The Musical Life section is the smallest, as the point of this book is to be about Vienna rather than Schubert. Nevertheless it frequently makes the point that in some contexts Schubert’s Vienna was different to, say, Beethoven’s Vienna, and it is Schubert’s Vienna that is under discussion here.
The essays are written by what the blurb describes as ‘eminent authorities’, though the only name that I recognised was Ernst Hilmar, who writes a short closing essay which carries on the recent trend of debunking all the old Schubert myths. Nevertheless, the essays are all clearly written by academics who know their subjects, but write in a style which does not seem to be overtly academic.
The Politics and Social Life section gives us essays on the Congress of Vienna, Vienna and Its European Context and People, Class Structure, and Society which are consistently interesting and informative. In the Musical Life Section, Leon Plantinga discusses the old chestnut of whether Schubert was a Classic or a Romantic composer. He contrasts this with the poetic movements and the views of the Schlegel brothers, and ends up sitting on the fence, or rather pointing out that the distinction isn’t really meaningful. The other essays are on the City of Music, and Social Dancing in Schubert’s World.
The Other Arts section has the expected essays on architecture and sculpture, painting and classical and popular theatre. The other essay in the section is on The Poetry of Schubert’s Songs by Jane Brown. She surveys Schubert’s most popular poets, and argues convincingly that Schubert largely ignored the high romantic poets and that even with Goethe, his favourite poet, he was quite selective, setting a disproportionate number of early works and ignoring all Goethe’s openly philosophical poetry.
Conclusions
All in all this is a most welcome addition to the handful of books in English with this breadth of background information. The nearest comparison that I know is with Vienna in the Biedermeier Era, edited by Waisenberger, which might look more substantial on your coffee table, but somehow lacks the style of Schubert’s Vienna.