Schubert's Mature Instrumental Music

"Every section under discussion is clearly illustrated with music examples or graphs that highlight the author's command of Schenkerian analytic techniques. Beach sheds light on some of the most radical aspects of [Schubert's] late music, such as structure, formal hybridity, innovative key relationships, formal and tonal organization, motivic and thematic relationships, and his treatment of harmony. His findings are aptly summarized in an epilogue: a short reflection on Schubert's mature style as evidenced in the instrumental works just analyzed." JOURNAL OF AUSTRIAN STUDIES

"The detailed attention to phrase rhythm and phrase expansion that this book offers is welcome in Schubert scholarship. Beach provides a nicely nuanced reading of the hypermeter of the first movement of the 'Trout' quintet, with due consideration of points when tonality and timbre destabilise the expected pattern. Students will gain understanding of what makes for onward drive (for example, places where arrival points become departure points, metrically speaking) and also for multi-layered listening in this movement." AD PARNASSUM

"It is always welcome when a distinguished music theorist writes a book with a wide readership in mind. The graphic analyses are detailed, numerous, well indexed, and clearly presented, and the Schenkerian graphs alone make the book deserving of detailed inspection. The mode of writing will be attractive to many readers inasmuch as the author takes on a direct-almost conversational-tone. Most compelling.is the historical question that is touched on in the final pages[: an invitation] to think about the mature Schubert's place as a forerunner to currents in twentieth-century composition that might eventually come to rival the perceived influence exerted on that much later modernist repertory by late Beethoven." MUSIC & LETTERS