Overview
Lauri Suurpaa 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, Suurpaa deftly combines textual and tonal analysis to reveal death as a symbolic presence if not actual character in the musical narrative. Suurpaa 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.
Full Product Details
Author: Lauri Suurpää
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Imprint: Indiana University Press
Dimensions:
Width: 15.60cm
, Height: 1.70cm
, Length: 23.50cm
Weight: 0.499kg
ISBN: 9780253011008
ISBN 10: 0253011000
Pages: 272
Publication Date: 06 January 2014
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Undergraduate
,
Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: Manufactured on demand
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.
Reviews
""Death in 'Winterreise' brings a fresh new perspective on the expressive power of Schubert's great cycle. Suurpaa negotiates skillfully between larger contexts and individual details. Neither imposing nor ignoring its cyclic aspects, he allows the inexorable trajectory of the latter part of these winter songs to tell its own narrative and musical story."" - Frank Samarotto, Jacobs School of Music, Indiana University
<p> Death in 'Winterreise' brings a fresh new perspective on the expressive power of Schubert's great cycle. Suurpaa negotiates skillfully between larger contexts and individual details. Neither imposing nor ignoring its cyclic aspects, he allows the inexorable trajectory of the latter part of these winter songs to tell its own narrative and musical story. --Frank Samarotto, Jacobs School of Music, Indiana University--Frank Samarotto, Jacobs School of Music, Indiana University
Death in 'Winterreise' brings a fresh new perspective on the expressive power of Schubert's great cycle. Suurpaa negotiates skillfully between larger contexts and individual details. Neither imposing nor ignoring its cyclic aspects, he allows the inexorable trajectory of the latter part of these winter songs to tell its own narrative and musical story. - Frank Samarotto, Jacobs School of Music, Indiana University
Death in 'Winterreise' brings a fresh new perspective on the expressive power of Schubert's great cycle. Suurpaa negotiates skillfully between larger contexts and individual details. Neither imposing nor ignoring its cyclic aspects, he allows the inexorable trajectory of the latter part of these winter songs to tell its own narrative and musical story. -Frank Samarotto, Jacobs School of Music, Indiana University [This] book will doubtless give professional analysts plenty of fodder to chew over. Those with a less analytical bent should certainly not be put off; the chapters teem with helpful summations and thorough cross-referencing. The chapters on the nature of cycles and the relationship between music and text are highly informative, and worth reading in their own right... this book cannot but help deepen a peformer's understanding of the cycle. -Early Music Review Death in Winterreise presents a unique and captivating study of Schubert's cycle, exposing us to new musico-poetic relationships between Muller's poems and the composer's text-settings. -Music Theory Online Suurpaa's book offers scholars, analysts, and performers a path through Winterreise and constructs a valuable theoretical system for analyzing musico-poetic relationships. Its eclectic analytical approach, paradoxically, reveals unity behind Winterreise's familiar story... Suurpaa's psychologically compelling interpretation and deep musical insights will be warmly received by anyone wishing to discover yet further meanings in Schubert's challenging cycle. -Notes Lauri Suurpaa's book is a significant contribution to Schenkerian studies. -Music Theory and Analysis 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 of textmusic relationships in song, the study of Schenkerian analysis, especially close readings of individual songs, the study of Winterreise in particular, and the study of musical meaning in general. -Journal of Schenkerian Studies Lauri Suurpaa's Death in Winterreise is a welcome addition to the literature on Schubert's second song cycle. -Music Analysis Notwithstanding the substantial contribution to textual analysis provided by Death in Winterreise, the book's ultimate value lies in its detailed engagement with the music of this song cycle, and the author's facility for vivid analytical elucidation. Just as Muller draws us towards the innermost thoughts and despairs of his wanderer, so Suurpaa conveys his reader inwards towards a deeper, more profound appreciation of these songs and their musicopoetic associations. -Music and Letters
Author Information
Lauri Suurpää is Professor of Music Theory at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, Finland.
