Franz Schubert and His World

Franz Schubert and His World is the title of an essay anthology edited by Christopher H. Gibbs and Morten Solvik and recently published by Princeton University Press. Despite the title, most of the volume is devoted to what might be called Schubert sidelights, secondary topics, or even tangents. One chapter restates an already well-known position. A promising essay on Schubert and the Vienna Volkstheater descends into superficial melodic comparisons.

The great exception to the rule is John M. Gingerich's brilliant essay on the Schubert circle, "'Those of us who found our life in art': The Second-Generation Romanticism of the Schubert-Schober Circle, 1820-1825." Level-headed evaluations are greatly welcome about a number of issues--from assumptions about the Schubertkreis (which Gingerich narrows to a circle about Schubert and his friend Franz von Schober, a group with Romantic ideals about art and artists), about Schubert and money (a communitarian attitude prevailed among the group), about sexuality (Gingerich debunks the once fashionable notion of Schubert and homosexuality), and about religious non-conformity.