Schubert’s Instrumental Music: A Listener’s Guide

In this survey of Schubert’s instrumental music, John Bell Young explores some of the richest and most memorable music ever written. How, Young asks, did the prolific composer of the C major String Quintet and more than a thousand other masterpieces manage to achieve so much in a career that spanned less than two decades? Was the devastating illness that alienated him from society and eventually killed him in any way responsible for the furious pace at which he worked? Young’s colorful analyses of a representative swath of Schubert’s greatest orchestral, piano, and chamber works deftly illuminate these issues.