This book challenges the assumption that Franz Schubert (1797-1828), best known for the lyricism of his songs, symphonies and chamber music, lacked comparable talent for drama.

This book challenges the assumption that Franz Schubert (1797-1828), best known for the lyricism of his songs, symphonies and chamber music, lacked comparable talent for drama.

It is commonly assumed that Franz Schubert (1797-1828), best known for the lyricism of his songs, symphonies, and chamber music, lacked comparable talent for drama. Challenging this viewDrama in the Music of Franz Schubert provides a timely re-evaluation of Schubert's operatic works, while demonstrating previously unsuspected locations of dramatic innovation in his vocal and instrumental music. The volume draws on a range of critical approaches and techniques, including semiotics, topic theory, literary criticism, narratology, and Schenkerian analysis, to situate Schubertian drama within its musical and cultural-historical context. In so doing, the study broadens the boundaries of what might be considered 'dramatic' within the composer's music and offers new perspectives for its analysis and interpretation.Drama in the Music of Franz Schubert will be of interest to musicologists, music theorists, composers, and performers, as well as scholars working in cultural studies, theatre, and aesthetics.

JOE DAVIES is College Lecturer in Music at Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford.

JAMES WILLIAM SOBASKIE is Associate Professor of Music at Mississippi State University.

Contributors: Brian Black, Lorraine Byrne Bodley, Joe Davies, Xavier Hascher, Marjorie Hirsch, Anne Hyland, Christine Martin, Clive McClelland, James William Sobaskie, Lauri Suurpää, Laura Tunbridge, Susan Wollenberg, Susan Youens

Preface - and
Introduction: Internal Dramas - Laura Tunbridge
Opera that Vanished: Goethe, Schubert andClaudine von Villa Bella - Lorraine Byrne Bodley
Pioneering German Musical Drama: Sung and Spoken Word in Schubert'sFierabras - Christine Martin
The Dramatic Monologue of Schubert's Mass in A flat major
Schubert's Dramatic Lieder: Rehabilitating 'Adelwold und Emma', D. 211 - Susan Wollenberg
Gretchen abbandonata: The Lied as Aria - Marjorie Hirsch
The Dramatic Strategy Within Two of Schubert's Serenades
'Durch Nacht und Wind':Tempesta as a topic in Schubert's Lieder - Clive McClelland
Reentering Mozart's Hell: Schubert's 'Gruppe aus dem Tartarus', D. 583 - Susan Youens
'Zumsteeg Ballads without Words': Inter-Generic Dialogue and Schubert's Projection of Drama through Form - Anne Hyland
Lyricism and the Dramatic Unity of Schubert's Instrumental Music: The Impromptu in C Minor, D. 899/1 - Brian Black
Music as Poetry: An Analysis of the first movement of Schubert's Piano Sonata in A major, D. 959 - Xavier Hascher
Virtual Protagonist and Musical Narration in the Slow Movements of Schubert's Piano Sonatas D. 958 and D. 960 - Lauri Suurpaa
Stylistic Disjuncture as a Source of Drama in Schubert's Late Instrumental Works
Select Bibliography