Schubert's Instrumental Music and Poetics of Interpretation

Music scholarship has been rethinking its understanding of Franz Schubert and his work. How might our modern aesthetic values, conceptions of Schubert's life, and historiographies affect how we interpret his music?

Schubert's Instrumental Music and Poetics of Interpretation examines the conditions that have prompted scholarship to reassess the composer's music and legacy. In six chapters, each devoted to one or two of Schubert's pieces, René Rusch offers critical assessments of biographical and intertextual influence, investigates the role of narrative, and explores alternate forms of unity and coherence through updated analyses of the composer's instrumental works. Rusch's comparative analyses and interpretations address four significant areas of scholarly focus in Schubert studies, including his use of chromaticism, his unique forms, the impact of events in his life, and the influence of Beethoven.

Drawing from a range of philosophical, hermeneutic, historical, biographical, theoretical, and analytical sources, Schubert's Instrumental Music and Poetics of Interpretation offers readers a unique and innovative foray into the poetics of contemporary analysis of Schubert's instrumental music and develops new ways to engage with his repertoire.