Robert Schumann: The Book of Songs

by Jon W. Finson

Arguably no other nineteenth-century German composer was as literate or as finely attuned to setting verse as Robert Schumann. Jon W. Finson challenges long-standing assumptions about Schumann's Lieder, engaging traditionally held interpretations. He argues against the belief that the "Year of Song" simply reflects Schumann's personal life. Finson also devotes attention to the form and metric structure of German poetry that is almost entirely new to the discussion of Schumann's songs.

Arranged in part thematically, rather than merely by strict compositional chronology, this book speaks to the heart of Schumann's music. Finson's sustained attention to performance, such as questions of whether two singers might divide performance of cycles or whether miscellanies form coherent entities, allows the reader to engage Schumann's songs in novel ways.

Finson brings original research and the most recent scholarship to the musically literate public and the expert alike. This represents the definitive work on Schumann's songs and the standard reference for any Schumann enthusiast.

336 pages, Hardcover

First published January 31, 2008

About the author

Jon Finson grew up in the northern suburbs of Chicago and attended New Trier High School. He received a baccalaureate degree from the University of Colorado, Boulder, an M.A from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. After a year abroad in Vienna and Berlin supported by The Martha Baird Rockefeller Foundation, he accepted a position at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where he taught the history of music and American Studies for 35 years.

Finson has authored seven books, including Death on the Drive (CreateSapce, 2018), A Chosen Landscape: Adventures in the Gay Academy (CreateSpace 2016), A Time of Confidences: Novel of Summer (CreateSpace, 2014, rev. 2018), Robert Schumann: The Book of Songs (Harvard University Press, 2007), and The Voices That Are Gone (Oxford University Press, 1994).

Finson holds the 2013 Robert Schumann Prize for outstanding scholarship and editorial work in the promotion of the composer's symphonies and songs. Finson's award-winning edition of Schumann's D-minor Symphony (first version; Breitkopf & Härtel, 2003) is available online in the Digital Concert Hall of the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Simon Rattle, and on CD performed by the North German Radio Orchestra (Hamburg) conducted by Thomas Hengelbrock and by the West German Radio Orchestra (Düsseldorf) conducted by Heinz Holliger.