This book joins two other recent volumes that examine Schubert's work from a music-theoretical standpoint: David Damschroder's Harmony in Schubert, recently reviewed in this journal by Suzannah Clark, and Clark's own Analyzing Schubert, reviewed in this journal by Xavier Hascher.Footnote ¹ While quite different from each other in purpose and in what they make of other writers’ contributions, each of these books examines and addresses the writings of other theorists about Schubert, emphasizing the variety in analytical approaches, techniques and conclusions. By contrast, Susan Wollenberg, though she frequently refers to other writers’ ideas from a wide range of scholarly writing on Schubert, is concerned first and foremost with Schubert's musical works themselves. What musical features make them what they are, creating a ‘Schubertian’ result? How do various elements in Schubert's compositional approach work together to create a coherent and expressive oeuvre? Using a variety of methods and tools, Wollenberg explores what she calls the composer's ‘fingerprints’: notable and consistent features of his music that recognizably identify his individuality as a composer.Footnote ² The author's deep and intimate familiarity with Schubert's instrumental works enables her to compare them with one another and to view a single work from multiple perspectives, depending on which fingerprint she is addressing.

The book is organized in a quasi-arch form, with a framing introduction and conclusion surrounding eight chapters that address various elements in Schubert's compositions. These fingerprints are of various kinds. Chapters 3 and 4 address formal elements (transitions and second themes), while Chapters 7 and 8 address musical procedures (three-fold construction and variation of several types). Chapters 2 and 9 address two qualities of Schubert's music that have been widely remarked: his mixed use of major and minor, and his ‘heavenly length’. At the book's centre, Chapters 5 and 6 examine some links to external factors: Schubert's use of Mozart's music as a model, and his ‘violent nature’.

Alternation between major and minor has often been noted in Schubert's songs; Wollenberg explores how shifts between major and minor modes within a single key create ‘a vocabulary of wordless expressive effects’ (p. 15) in the instrumental music as well. Using songs and their texts as models to interpret instrumental works, she divides the uses of major and minor into various categories, such as the ‘divided character’ type and tierce de Picardie; she also investigates the significance of the use of the Neapolitan minor. The following chapter addresses Schubert's ‘poetic transitions’ in sonata-form movements and other instrumental works; Wollenberg argues for an almost gravitational effect in some works that draws the music back to its earlier keys and pivotal pitches, describing this with words like ‘magnetic,’ ‘nostalgia,’ and ‘fascination.’ (p. 57). Her next chapter is closely related, as she finds that second themes are often tonally unstable and express a longing for the tonic. Both chapters 3 and 4 address the theme of wandering as it is expressed in the song Der Wanderer (D 489) and the ‘Wanderer’ Fantasy (D 760) based on that song; Wollenberg links the quintessential Romantic desire to be elsewhere with that song text by Schmidt von Lübeck. She also emphasizes the ‘Trout’ Quintet in Chapter 4, showing that some of its key areas arise from minor chromatic inflections and that the tonal relationships among the movements of the work are linked to those between movements.

In Chapter 5, Wollenberg argues that Schubert deeply appreciated and paid homage to Mozart's music through use of similar thematic structures, figurations, sonorities and musical organization. At times, she points out, this homage may also include elements of parody. Schubert's violent nature is the subject of Chapter 6, where Wollenberg discusses the strong links in several works between apparently tranquil passages and fast, loud, dissonant sections. The psychological implications of a calm A theme containing the seeds of an aggressive, tempestuous B theme are fascinating. Wollenberg proposes that the apparently calm music is based in a kind of unreality, connecting it with songs that contain dream episodes and characterizing it as ‘surreally serene’ and ‘trance-like’ (pp. 167–8).

In Chapter 7, Wollenberg argues that Schubert had a tendency to think in threes; thus, she examines his ‘three-fold constructions’ at various levels: from the structures of individual themes (including ABA themes and those that begin with two ‘false starts’) to larger-scale relationships such as the structure of a Minuet and Trio movement. In Chapter 8, on variations, she also goes beyond what one might expect from this title, looking at his variation procedures in instrumental works that are not in theme-and-variations form; particularly compelling is her long discussion of the first movement of the G Major String Quartet, D 887, in which ‘dispersed’ variations are interlinked with the sonata structure. Chapter 9 is a defence of Schubert's tendency to write long instrumental works. Wollenberg argues for the integrated nature of these works, both within and among their movements: the lengths are justified, she argues, by virtue of many of the fingerprints discussed earlier in the book, such as the complex interrelations among themes, their multiple meanings, complex key relations, and so on.

The breadth of repertoire discussed here is impressive. Wollenberg addresses piano sonatas, impromptus and duets, many genres of chamber works, and several of the symphonies. Her selection of pieces ranges from very early to very late works, supporting her claim of the centrality and frequency of these fingerprints. One interesting result of the book's organization is that most of the pieces considered are discussed more than once. The String Quintet in C major, D 956, for example, is mentioned in eight of the ten chapters, with close readings of particular passages appearing in Chapters 3, 5 and 6.Footnote ³ While this might initially frustrate a reader who is seeking information solely about one piece, such a reader would do well to pause for a moment and consider the value of the rich contexts such an approach provides.

Although instrumental music is her focus, Wollenberg makes frequent comparisons with Schubert's songs – not only in cases where a lied becomes a source for an instrumental work, such as the ‘Trout’ Quintet (D 667), but also for the broader purpose of considering characteristics and procedures that are found both in songs and instrumental works. For example, she remarks regarding ‘Der Lindenbaum’ and ‘Frühlingstraum’ from Winterreise that ‘[t]he antithesis between dreams of past happiness and awakening to present reality engenders disturbing contrasts in these songs which can be seen as having their equivalents, on a larger scale, in the slow movements of Schubert's late chamber and piano works such as the String Quintet, D 956, and the Piano Sonata in A major, D 959’ (p. 19). She sees Schubert's experiences in song composition as being of central importance for his instrumental works: ‘The essence of Schubert as an instrumental composer … is the essence of Schubert as a composer of song. In this, he became an instrumental poet’ (p. 295). Her view, as I understand it, is that even in the absence of the specific scenarios and narratives of poetry, his instrumental works reflect his poetic sensibility and compositional practice with lieder, and that the spacious arenas of instrumental genres offer him a broad canvas on which to explore the psychological and dramatic structures that are often embodied in poetic texts.

A central concern for Wollenberg, as for so many Schubert scholars at present, is to dispel any vestiges of the old Schubertbild that saw the composer as an instinctive but basically irrational genius who was frequently compared to Beethoven and found wanting.Footnote ⁴ She constantly demonstrates the coherence of Schubert's musical structures at all levels: from the design of individual themes to the form of single movements to the interconnectedness of multi-movement works. A few examples will suffice to show the range of material she draws on to make this point:

• • She demonstrates that the intense, violent second themes in Schubert's music are often based on musical features of the apparently calm first themes (pp. 172–9).

• • She points out that in the Quartettsatz, D 703, the keys of themes 2 through 4 outline the neighbour-note motive that is central to the first theme (pp. 207–8).

• • Examining Schubert's cuts to the Finale of the E-flat Trio, D 929, she argues for the musical worthiness of the original uncut version, as all the musical choices there are appropriate to the task Schubert has set himself of setting up references to past movements in the finale (pp. 246–59).

Through these and other examples, readers of this book will come away with a stronger understanding of the deep inner logic of Schubert's music.

Wollenberg's view of the composer is broad and balanced. Thus, for example, after exploring Schubert's ‘violent nature’ in Chapter 6, she provides a counterbalance in Chapter 7, pointing out that Schubert's often humorous threefold constructions ‘seem to provide almost an antidote to Schubert's ‘volcanic temper’ … with their infusion of wit and playful deception into the proceedings’ (p. 211). This balance is welcome, as it reminds us to address Schubert's music primarily as creative expression and to avoid over-psychologizing or medicalizing in our approach to his work.

For me, this book presented some new ideas well worth pondering – but even more delightful were the moments when Wollenberg, writing about a work that I know well as a listener but have never analyzed, made a point about its musical structure that immediately connected with my own aural experience. Two such moments, for me, were the observation of how in movement 1 of the String Quartet in G major, D 887, the key of B major/minor ‘exerts a kind of fascination, drawing the music back, as if magnetically, to the dominant chord’ (pp. 57–9), and the discussion of the retransition in the first movement of the Sonata in A major, D 664, in which the first attempt through the tonic key fails, leading to ‘the vision of a much more imaginative route … by means of the F♯ minor passage from the central section of Theme I’ (pp. 120–22). Read along with the musical examples in the text, Wollenberg's analytical commentary can be extremely persuasive.

The ample number of music examples is a fine quality of this book. Since Wollenberg often brings into one discussion multiple passages from one or more works, it would be difficult to read this book without them – readers would need multiple scores at hand, and this would slow the reading process considerably. In some ways, though, the examples create some awkwardness for the reader, simply because the example being discussed is frequently a few pages away. It is necessary to pay close attention to example numbers in order to be sure one is looking at the relevant passage. Nevertheless, it is clearly a benefit that Ashgate allowed such a generous number of examples.

Schubert's Fingerprints should be heartily welcomed to the literature on Schubert's instrumental music. Susan Wollenberg persuasively argues that Schubert's music takes its essence from the combination of poetic sensibility and rational structure – and most appropriately, the same is true of her book, whose eloquent descriptions are supported by careful analysis. These two aspects of this book work together to offer a deeper understanding of how Schubert's specific musical tendencies and processes work together to create powerful musical experiences.