What are medieval polyphony and song? Who composed this music, sang it, and wrote it down? Where and when did the different kinds of polyphony and song originate, and under what circumstances were they composed and performed? This chapter provides definitions of the key terms and sets out the scope of the book. It explains how we have grouped the material into chapters based on geographical locations, and the rationale for this organization. We then give a broad, outline history of the medieval period (or ‘Middle Ages’) to help readers navigate the major events, characters, and places that helped to shape this long historical period. A timeline of key musical and historical events of the Middle Ages concludes the chapter, giving a helpful point of reference for readers to understand the overlapping chronologies of different kinds of medieval polyphony and song, and their historical contexts.

Chapter 4 begins by exploring the productive tension that can exist between gestural articulation and formal continuity in Schubert’s music, and its affinity with Schubert’s paratactic forms which exploit unexpected disjunction as a formal premise. It focuses on the expositional interpolations in Schubert’s sonatas that exhibit characteristics normally associated with development sections. The three analytical case studies that follow have been chosen for their distinctive approach to this formal practice, and demonstrate its early stages of development in D36/i and D353/i as well as a mature example, D804/i. Three fundamental questions underline my analyses: first, in what sense do the interpolations in Schubert’s first-movement expositions function as development (D353/i); second, the question of whether or not synthesis of the formal dialectic is achieved (D36/i), and finally, what the implications of this are for the articulation of a lyrically conceived teleology (D804/i). This chapter also contains a methodological interlude wherein I define my extension of Edward T. Cone’s concept of stratification to Schubert’s music and its relevance to the sonatas.

The introduction outlines the musicological context for the book’s engagement with Schubert’s string quartets. It offers a fresh perspective on the issues surrounding the early reception of Schubert’s instrumental music and considers the lingering tendencies of that history in more recent scholarship. It situates Schubert in relation to Carl Dahlhaus’ concept of the Stildualismus of the nineteenth century, and problematises the frequent setting of Schubert and Beethoven as opposites, exposing the disciplinary remnants of Beethoven’s centrality to the formalisation of music theory in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.It also lays the foundation for considering the lyric as a category of form, which the later chapters develop, and defines the concept of ’lyric teleology’ which is foundational to the book’s analytical case studies. Finally, the introduction explains and rationalises the book’s specific areas of focus (string-quartet first movements) and situates the book within existing and emerging debates surrounding nineteenth-century musical form and Schubert’s place within them.

Chapter 5 brings questions of musical time front and centre in order to explore and explicate the diverse temporal modes that co-exist in Schubert’s quartet movements. The static nature of the lyric mode is first considered via a reading of the Andante con moto from the Quartet in D, D94, which furnishes an example of the ways by which Schubert progressivises lyric time. The chapter then considers Schubert’s prominent amalgamation of sonata and variation impulses and its implications for the sense of time articulated by his music since the temporal perspective articulated by variation form is typically understood as being one of retrospection in contrast to the sonata. The role of variation as a technique of expansion is explored via the Quartet in G Minor, D173, and the chapter culminates in a reading of the late G-Major Quartet, D887. The analyses pursue two related ends: first, to analyse the movements’ formal syntax afresh by bringing their variational structures into dialogue with form-functional theory, and second, to demonstrate the role played by ambiguity and form-functional multiplicity in the movements’ generation of competing manifestations of musical time.

Chapter 2 considers Schubert’s string quartets, their early reception, broader historical circumstances, and some contemporaneous examples of the genre. It begins by considering the issues surrounding the posthumous dissemination of the quartets and the ramifications of that for the reception of the works in future generations, focusing in particular on the disparity of treatment between the post-1824 quartets and Schubert’s earlier examples of the genre. It goes on to clarify the backdrop against which Schubert’s quartets were written by exploring string-quartet publication and performance in Vienna in the period 1800–28. From this, it isolates Joseph Mayseder’s quartets as providing a novel and distinct formal context for Schubert’s contemporaneous works and considers areas of overlap and their meaning for Schubert’s works.

The epilogue draws together the book’s main aims: to define and explore the formal tendencies of Schubert’s lyric teleology; to revive analytical engagement with the composer’s pre-1816 string quartets, and to reflect on analytical methodology. It also considers paths not taken and questions not asked in an attempt both to rationalise the contribution made by the book and to contextualise its findings. Finally, it addresses the lingering question of how impactful Schubert’s instrumental lyricism was, and whether it can be perceived in the music of later nineteenth-century composers. To this end, the chapter considers the music of Brahms (whose debt to Schubert is well documented), Bruckner (who knew Schubert’s music intimately and whose compositions were the subject of similar criticisms of formal redundancy and seemingly disjunctive and self-contained themes), and Chopin (in whose early work we see formal strategies akin to those of Schubert’s lyric form). These correspondences suggest that Schubert’s lyric teleology can be understood as prescient of a distinct turn to Romantic form, and provide recommendations for further study.

Chapter 1 focuses on the concept of ’the lyric’, considering various definitions of the term from literary criticism (the lyric mode in poetry), philosophy (via Hegel and Adorno), and musicology. It argues that the lyric mode’s professed ’unitary nature’ is offset by a distinctly sectional and disjunctive musical setting (via Marx’s Liedsatz), and illustrates this critical tension through an analysis of Schubert’s ’Ihr Bild’. Second, it examines Felix Salzer’s account of lyricism in Schubert’s sonatas, isolating the questions raised by this regarding the potentiality of lyrical themes and their will to repetition in contrast to the sonata’s imperative to develop. Third, it presents Schubert’s lyric parataxis (Mak, Adorno) as a viable alternative to the ’dramatic-dialectic’ model of sonata form exemplified in Beethoven’s music and explores the implications of this for the temporal unfolding of the music and the sense of directionality it articulates. In Part II, the chapter lays out three central propositions for a definition of lyric form and explains the book’s analytical methodology, placing it into the context of recent developments in the field of the new Formenlehre.