'Winter Journey' a guide through Schubert song cycle

Schubert's Winter Journey

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nolead begins By Ian Bostridge

Knopf. 528 pages. $29

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Reviewed by John Timpane

Wouldn't it be great if we nonexpert folks could get experts to give us guided tours of great music in humane, rather than technical, terms?

That is what we have in Schubert's Winter Journey by Ian Bostridge. He is a well-known tenor/writer, and Franz Schubert's Winterreise, or Winter Journey (composed 1827-1828) is among his favorite works. After you read this book, it might become one of yours, too.

 Winterreise is an enduringly strange, haunting 24-song cycle, with words by poet Wilhelm Müller. It embraces love and alienation, darkness and hope, certainty and the unknown.  You could scarcely ask for a more inviting guide than Bostridge. Many have written about this masterwork, so his book isn't going to be systematic or industrial-strength academic. But it will address the world around the work, the meaning and emotion, what we get out of the songs and how we get it: " . . . I hope to illuminate, to explain, and to deepen our common response . . . to intensify the experience of those who already know the piece, and to reach out to those who have never heard it or heard of it." As a singer who has performed and recorded Winterreise, Bostridge is ideally suited for it.

Bostridge reminds us that "art is created in history, by living, feeling human beings." We take excursions into history, science, painting, and even the poetry of e.e. cummings. Müller's poems portray a wanderer in a stark landscape of love and loss. They are romantic but not soppy - and Schubert's treatment is all but modern. Plus, as Bostridge wryly speculates, "the theme of the outcast cursed by failed love appeals to a man such as Schubert, who was suffering from the early stages of syphilis." He devotes a chapter to each song, concluding with a modest "Afterword," after a journey to many surprising places.

Here's a suggestion. Get a copy of Winterreise - perhaps Bostridge's version with the great Swedish pianist Leif Ove Andsnes. Then (1) read the chapter in Winter Journey corresponding to the song you're on; (2) listen to the song; and (3) repeat. Thus you can make a double winter journey through both artwork and book.

Winterreise is one of those unrepeatable, unparaphrasable encounters we all should seek. Schubert's Winter Journey reaches out in the name of a work that will never be clear or simple. As "Good Night," the first song, reminds us: "Love loves wandering; / That's how God made it."

Ian Bostridge 7:30 p.m. Friday at the Free Library, 1901 Vine St. Tickets: $15; $7, students. 215-686-5322 or www.freelibrary.orgEndText