Death in Winterreise Musico-Poetic Associations in Schubert's Song Cycle [Hardcover]

Lauri Suurp?? brings together two rigorous methodologies, Greimassian semiotics and Schenkerian analysis, to provide a unique perspective on the expressive power of Franz Schubert's song cycle. Focusing on the final songs, Suurp?? deftly combines textual and tonal analysis to reveal death as a symbolic presence if not actual character in the musical narrative. Suurp?? demonstrates the incongruities between semantic content and musical representation as it surfaces throughout the final songs. This close reading of the winter songs, coupled with creative applications of theory and a thorough history of the poetic and musical genesis of this work, brings new insights to the study of text-music relationships and the song cycle.

Death in Winterreise presents a unique and captivating study of Schuberts cycle, exposing us to new musico-poetic relationships between M?llers poems and the composers text-settings.Suurp??'s Death in Winterreise is a collection of nuanced and musically sensitive analyses that are a welcome addition to Lieder analysis. . . . Suurp??'s innovative combination of methodologies, his astute interpretation of textual and tonal relations across the second half of the cycle, and his consistently clear communication of musical insights create an analytical journey well worth following.

Lauri Suurp?? is Professor of Music Theory at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, Finland.

Death in Winterreise is a wide-ranging study of Schubert's winter songs, one that navigates gracefully between the intricate rigors of Greimassian semiotics and Schenkerian analysis, the intersection of which offers a systematic approach to the study of text-music relationships in song. Surpaa's explanation of his methodology is remarkably clear in the early chapters and well executed in the analytical chapters. The book offers a new methodology for the study of musico-poetic associations in song . . . . The book will be of immediate value to those interested in the study l3ë