Schubert's Reputation from His Time to Ours by Geoffrey Block (review)

Geoffrey Block's Schubert's Reputation from His Time to Ours is the newest book on Franz Schubert in Pendragon Press's series Monographs in Musicology, which includes David Montgomery's Franz Schubert's Music in Performance: Compositional Ideals, Notational Intent, Historical Realities, Pedagogical Foundations (2003), Mark Devoto's Schubert's Great C Major: Biography of a Symphony (2011), and Martin Chusid's Schubert's Dances: For Family, Friends and Posterity (2013). Also recently published are two collections of essays about Schubert, both edited by Lorraine Byrne Bodley and Julian Horton: Rethinking Schubert (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016) and Schubert's Late Music: History, Theory, Style (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016). Among these titles, Block's book focuses on reception history across time and through the lens of genre, biography, popular culture, and sexuality. Furthermore, Block proposes a new paradigm to counter the old attitude that has Schubert unfavorably compared to Beethoven: "Although some of Schubert's music gained critical and popular traction early on … it was not until the end of the twentieth century that most of Schubert's symphonies, chamber music, and piano sonatas fully emerged from Beethoven's shadow. For this to happen it was crucial to reinterpret perceived non-Beethovenian formal and stylistic characteristics not as flaws but as strengths and hallmarks of a new paradigm" (p. 4). Block's promise to pursue this new paradigm is, however, only partially achieved. While he illustrates the ways in which Schubert differed from Beethoven (such as his use of long melodies in sonata forms) and reinterprets these as Schubert's strengths, the strong presence of Beethoven still dims the view—though perhaps differently from how the previous critics had perceived it—of Schubert's individuality.

Using as a starting point a 2011 article in the New York Times, in which Anthony Tommasini ranked Schubert fourth in his list of the top ten classical composers ("The Greatest," New York Times, 11 January 2011), Block sets out to show Schubert's path from supposed obscurity to popularity. He argues that Schubert's popularity has reached "the point of achieving a rough parity with those of his famous contemporary" and states that "[t]his book tells the story of how and why this happened" (p. 4). The opening chapter, "'Heavenly Length and 'Fairer Hopes,'" addresses how Schubert has been misunderstood. For example, early critics viewed his style as overly feminine, an adjective they also prescribed to the genre for which he was best known—the lied. Schubert's lyricism was seen as incompatible with larger instrumental genres and a critical weakness that impeded his wider acceptance. This chapter begins to clear away misunderstandings and dispel the unwarranted criticisms of Schubert's work.

The next two chapters turn to two instrumental genres. "Schubert's 'Ode to Joy': The 'Great' C Major Symphony" traces the performance history of the Symphony in C Major, D. 944, and how it entered the repertoire, showing that some remarks by early critics—particularly Robert Schumann and George Grove—strongly influenced, both negatively and positively, the reception of the work. Block strives to elevate the status of Schubert's "Great" Symphony by showing its similarities to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and compares the reception history of both works. To demonstrate Schubert's rising reputation, "The Piano Sonatas: An Acquired Taste" shows the increasing frequency of performance and number of recordings of Schubert's piano sonatas. Block's music analyses aim to disprove two criticisms of Schubert's music: (1) that his lyricism disqualified him from being a composer on Beethoven's level, partly because his lyrical themes were often reiterated instead of "developed" like Beethoven's, and (2) that his recapitulations were often identical to his expositions. Block concludes that Schubert successfully "[created] a formal masterpiece out of a songlike theme" (p. 109). Despite Block's convincing music analysis, the dominating presence of Beethoven...