Franz Schubert: Music and Belief

Anyone who knows enough about Schubert to read this review knows the composer was not a conventionally religious person, which is hardly the same as saying his struggles with the human spirit had nothing to do with his artistic creations. Leo Black, the BBC's longtime chief producer for music, draws on a lifetime of intimacy with Schubert's compositions to deliver a point of view probably only he could provide. Offering neither a narrow, dusty study of Schubert's "sacred" music nor a bland, comprehensive summary of Schubert's entire musical output, Black instead shows how the genuinely spiritual elements in Schubert's music appear and reappear and inform even many of his "secular" masterpieces.Black's individual insights are far too many to mention, but among them, I must thank him for encouraging me to hear and learn Schubert's marvelous choral work, "Gesang der Geister uber den Wassern" (D.714), of which I have now accumulated many recordings. Also, because of the attention Black gives throughout to the central role of vocal music in Schubert's life and work, I ended up purchasing every individual volume in Graham Johnson's "Complete Songs" cycle for Hyperion, as well as the full box set when it was issued -- no small investment, but easily worth the price.Anyone who already loves Schubert will find this book valuable and thus appreciate him even more. If you don't know Schubert, I can't think of a better guidebook to read as an introduction.