About the Book

Many of Schubert's six hundred songs were composed quickly, and often in the midst of a gathering of friends loudly revelling or performing other music. Sometimes that remarkable facility would be exercised while walking in company through the woods round Vienna. John Watson has composed a sequence of scenes from this prodigious working life - sometimes in Schubert's own voice, sometimes in the voices of critics or friends. Here are glimpses - forming a song cycle, as it were - depicting Schubert at work or between songs, until the final fortnight's struggle when he leaves them behind.