Complete Song Cycles

Rating:
Summary: Essential for Singers and Scholars: Schubert's Song Cycles
Review: This is the Dover edition of Franz Schubert's two song cycles on the poetry of Wilhelm Mueller -- Die Schoene Muellerin and Die Winterreise -- plus the collection of songs known as Schwanengesang, which is not a true cycle but rather a group of songs written by Schubert near the end of his short life (d. 1828), packaged as cycle posthumously by his publisher. If you are interested in art song, this plus a few other volumes -- for instance Schubert's Goethe Lieder, also available from Dover -- are an essential aid to enjoyment and understanding. One down side is that this is the usual Dover repackaging of an older source, and as such lacks things such as measure numbers and Deutsch catalogue numbers that would be useful to have. For the money, however, this is an essential value. English translations of the poems are included in the back of the volume.