Music and culture: Lyricism, structure, and gender in Schubert's G Major String Quartet

Musical Quarterly

Volumn 81, Issue 1, 1997, Pages 51-63

  Burstein, Poundie ^a  

^a NONE

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 84863300845     PISSN: 00274631     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/mq/81.1.51     Document Type: Article

References (26)

1. Robert Bruce, "The Lyrical Element in Schubert's Instrumental Forms", Music Review 30(1969):132.
2. Hans Gal, Franz Schubert and the Essence of Melody (London: Gollancz, 1974), 103.
3. See also similar comments in Karl Kobald, Franz Schubert and His Times, trans. Beatrice Marshall (Port Washington, N. Y.: Kennikat Press, 1970), 176.
4. Anton Rubinstein, A Conversation on Music, trans. Mrs. John Page Morgan (New York: 1892; reprint, New York: Da Capo Press, 1982), 48.
5. Felix Salzer, "Die Sonatenform bei Schubert", in Studien zur Musikwissenschaft 15(1928):86-125.
6. "[Diese] Neuerung Schuberts [konnte] für die Zunkunft absolut keine fruchtbringende sein... [I]n der Geschichte der Sonatenform, so können wir feststellen, dass der Fall Schubert eine Abzweigung in der Entwicklungslinie ergibt.... Hervorgerufen war diese abzweigende Richtung nur durch das Eindringen des, dem Wesen der Sonatenform widersprechenden lyrischen Elementes und seiner ritardierenden Folgen, in die, bisher von der dramatisch-treibenden Kraft des improvisatorischen Elementes, beherrschten Bestandteile dieser Formgattung." Salzer, "Die Sonatenform", 125 (translation mine).
7. For instance, Hans Gal noted, "What his works lose in dynamic tension they make up for in lyrical expansiveness and an abundant wealth of richly chiseled detail." Franz. Schubert and the Essence of Melody, 103.
8. For instance, Robert Bruce implies this in "The Lyrical Element", 136-37.
9. Edward Cone, "Schubert's Promissory Note: An Exercise in Musical Hermeneutics", Nineteenth-Century Music 5(1982):233-41;
10. reprinted with revisions in Schubert: Critical and Analytical Studies, ed. Walter Frisch (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1986), 13-30.
11. See James Webster, "Schubert's Sonata Forms and Brahms's First Maturity", Nineteenth-Century Music 2(1978):20-21;
12. Mi-Sook Hur, "Irregular Recapitulations in Schubert's Instrumental Music" (Ph. D. diss., City University of New York, 1992);
13. and David Beach, "Schubert's Experiments with Sonata Form: Formal-Tonal Design versus Underlying Structure", Music Theory Spectrum 15(1993):16-17.
14. Carl Dahlhaus, "Die Sonatenform bei Schubert: der Erste Satz des G-dur-Quartetts D 887", Musica 32 (1978)
15. translated by Thilo Reinhard as "Sonata Form in Schubert: The First Movement of the G-Major String Quartet, op. 161 (D. 877) " in Schubert: Critical and Analytical Studies, 7.
16. This issue was first raised openly by Maynard Solomon in "Franz Schubert and the Peacocks of Benvenuto Cellini", Nineteenth-Century Music 12(1989):193-206;
17. the most sustained set of responses and reactions may be found in a series of essays by a number of scholars in Schubert: Musïc, Sexuality, Culture, ed. Lawrence Kramer, Nineteenth-Century Music 17 (1993).
18. See Susan McClary, "Constructions of Subjectivity in Schubert's Music", in Queering the Pitch, ed. Philip Brett, Elizabeth Wood, and Gary C. Thomas (New York: Routledge, 1994), 205-9.
19. A number of commentators have complained that the investigations into Schubert's sexuality are politically motivated. Yet such investigations have long been with us. For instance, consider the following typical comments by Joseph Wechsberg in Schubert: His Life, His Work, His Time (New York: Rizzoli, 1977), 131; note that even while admitting he does not have any specific evidence, Wechsberg nevertheless makes speculations regarding Schubert's sexual orientation: That Schubert could express a woman's feelings so well in music is in contrast with his shy and clumsy behavior when he met a woman in his life. His biographers are often puzzled about his relationship with women. Schubert himself, very reticent in his private affairs, is not much help. Some writers have "expanded" the new facts that are known which only confuses the matter. He was in love-more than once-that much we know. But his love mostly remained unfulfilled; that too is part of the record. But why? What was wrong? Could it be that the girls he was in love with sensed that his only real passion was music? "Not a single love letter from Schubert survives and perhaps none ever existed", says O. E. Deutsch. Schubert was too shy to write about his personal feelings. Surely, speculations regarding Schubert's possible heterosexuality should not be regarded as any less politically motivated than speculations regarding his possible homosexuality.
20. See, for instance, Wechsberg, 131; A. E. F. Dickinson, "Schubert and Beethoven: A Contrast of Methods", Music and Letters 9(Jan. 1928):48;
21. and Alfred Einstein, Music in the Romantic Era (New York: Norton, 1947), 89.
22. See also David Gramit, "Constructing a Victorian Schubert: Music, Biography, and Cultural Values", Nineteenth-Century Music 17(1993):65-78;
23. and Susan McClary, "Music and Sexuality: On the Steblin/Solomon Debate", Nineteenth-Century Music 17(1993):86-87.
24. "So wird [man]... Beethoven und Schubert auf den ersten Seiten erkennen und unterscheiden. Schubert ist ein Mädchencharakter, an jenen gehalten, bei weitem geschwätziger, weicher und breiter; gegen jenen ein Kind, das sorglos unter den Riesen spielt.... [D]och verhält er sich immer wie Weib zum Mann, der befiehlt, wo jenes bittet und überredet." Robert Schumanns Gesammelte Schriften über Musik and Musiker, 5th ed. (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1914), 330.
25. Rubinstein, A Conversation in Music, 48-49. This quote comes on the heels of Rubinstein's comments cited above regarding the failings of Schubert's sonatas, implying that Rubinstein felt that femininity and difficulty in handling epic structures are somehow intrinsically related.
26. Feminine Endings (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991), 105.