Schubert's Winter Journey: Anatomy of An Obsession

With Schubert's Winter Journey we do get what the subtitle promises, an "anatomy of an obsession." -- tenor Ian Bostridge's obsessive plumbing of the depths of the song cycle Winterreise.  It’s a real treat to read a loving account of a piece of music by somebody who has lived fully with the composition.

Bostridge has written a chapter for each of the 24 songs of the cycle where he gives a close reading of both Wilhelm Müller's poems and Schubert's musical setting.  He also brings a personal perspective to his account, describing how, as a child, he came to Schubert’s music and Winterreise, and the variety of circumstances where he has performed the cycle.

He details Schubert's creative path to the work as well as its performance history.  Bostridge goes into the circumstances of composer's life, discusses his circle of friends, plus the literature, politics, wars, censorship of that time, as well as Schubert's health difficulties and their effect on his outlook.

The changing reception and meaning of the work over time is also discussed, even the work’s place in Nationalist Socialist Germany.  Climate science, energy usage, changes in transportation, changes in social and sexual mores through history are not outside the book's purview.

Bostridge writes that the complete Winterreise was performed for the first time in 1860 by Julius Stockhausen.  Other sources, most recently Graham Johnson's Franz Schubert: The Complete Songs, state that the complete was first performed by Stockhausen in 1851.

The first complete performance of Winterreise was given in San Francisco on November 16, 1941 at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, then located at 3438 California Street.

San Francisco Call November 14, 1941, source: San Francisco Programs. Music.

Pianist Ashley Pettis reviewed the performance in The Argonaut. (Pettis, a California native, had founded the Composers Forum Laboratory in New York in 1935 which he moved to San Francisco when he joined the San Francisco Conservatory of Music in 1940).

He was struck that this was the cycle's first complete San Francisco performance which he described as "an illuminating commentary on the general run of program building, especially by singers, where, paradoxically, the lesser often obscures the greater." He reported that "Nicholas Goldschmidt succeeded to a remarkable degree in projecting the deeply subjective moods of Schubert's great songs" and that "Carl Fuerstner, at the piano, was completely en rapport with the singer as well as the requirements of Schubert's difficult and musically demanding accompaniments."

 source: The Argonaut (November 21, 1941).

Pettis sums up the event:

In the hands of these artists, who approached their task with admirable and unusual self-abnegation, Schubert's Winterreise sounded as fresh and modern as the day they were born, and took their listeners on a journey of rare musical experience for which we shall ever be grateful.

Nowadays a complete performance, while still a special occasion, is not such a rare event.  The library offers several recordings, in CD, LP, and streaming audio and video formats.  There are also myriad performances online. One recent treat in our collection is a DVD performance of the cycle by Matthias Goerne accompanied by Markus Hinterhäuser with an animated film by South African artist William Kentridge.

Even though it's an in-depth look at a complex musical composition, Bostridge’s presentation includes very few passage that require a knowledge of music or music theory. A read through Schubert's Winter Journey will deeply enrich the experience and understanding of this timeless music.


"American Music's Spark Plug," by Alfred Frankenstein, San Francisco Chronicle (September 1, 1940), p. 26.

Franz Schubert: The Complete Songs by Graham Johnson; translations of the song texts by Richard Wigmore (Yale University Press, 2014).

Julius Stockhausen: Der Sänger des deutschen Liedes (Englert und Schlosser, 1927).

"Music," by Ashley Pettis, The Argonaut (November 21, 1941), p. 14.

San Francisco Programs. Music (San Francisco Public Library, Oct./Dec. 1941).

Schubert's Winter Journey: Anatomy Of An Obsession by Ian Bostridge (Alfred A. Knopf, 2015).

Winterreise [videorecording] by Franz Schubert (C Major Entertainment, 2017).