It would be hard to say whether I learned more, or rolled my eyes more, in reading this book. On the positive side, it's a comprehensive and in-depth biography that acquainted me with Schubert's life, thought, and music. But on the negative side, much of it is chaff: idle speculation and irrelevancies, platitudes and banalities, incoherent arguments.
Beginning with the Acknowledgements section, which runs a full 14 (!) pages, the book is sprawling. My dominant impression was that the author simply wrote and wrote without sustained attempts to revise, streamline, or reconcile contradictions in her arguments.
The fatal flaw is a tendency to speculate. Much of the book reads more like a 19th-century biography—boldly (and without warrant from sources) making claims about Schubert's personality or motivations—than a careful academic study from 2024. These interpretations aren't always entirely off base, but they are fatuously presented as fact rather than suggestion. There is also an unsavory thread of determinism, so damning to historical writing: "things happened this way because they had to, because that's how things turned out."
And sometimes the interpretations seem very sketchy, especially when mingled with the determinism, like the claim that Schubert intentionally sabotaged his chances to marry Therese Grob because he recoiled from the idea of matrimony. (After all, if he became tied down at 18, how could he have written the freespirited music he would go on to write in his 20s?) And when he began a diary and failed to write more than a few entries? Clear evidence that he couldn't sustain a monologue (despite the fact that later in his life he continued journaling).
Apparently all Schubert's friends were also possible sexual partners—does evidence exist for this? No, but we can't rule it out—and although the early 19th-century German discourse of friendship sounds quite erotic to modern ears, that was merely the cultural expectation...and actually it was erotic. We can know with certainty what Schubert believed because of phrases from the Nicene Creed that he omitted in his masses; besides, we can extrapolate from the clear credal statements that Goethe made what Schubert (an entirely different person) believed. We will never know what liaison led to Schubert's contracting syphilis, and we should respect his privacy and not inquire, but only after several pages of speculation that fail to turn up an answer.
Moreover, if the Virgin Mary has been objectified as the ideal woman, can anyone still perform Schubert's Marian settings in the modern day? Yes, because Mary is actually, more fundamentally, a symbol of universal compassion. And who, exactly, was the historical Gretchen from Goethe's Faust? The answer is crucial for appreciating Schubert's setting of her words in "Gretchen am Sprinnrade"—though whether Schubert was familiar with the backstory of Faust is highly doubtful. Nevertheless, we need to know about the historical Gretchen, who was raped (alas, history hates women!) but given the most soaringly erotic poetry by Goethe set impeccably by Schubert (so let's now celebrate her sexual liberation!).
Sarcasm aside, there are some things I can admire in this book. The author's obvious love and zeal for Schubert is one—although I had the uncomfortable feeling that these sentiments led her to fabricate the image of Schubert that most appealed to her personally. Her familiarity with contemporary German literature and philosophy is also a selling point—although I was unwilling to trust most of her judgments (and the inclusion of Goethe especially often seemed gratuitous), I was glad to see her bring Goethe and Schiller and others so prominently into the conversation, because Schubert, quite a man of letters himself, was attuned to these discussions. Perhaps the book's greatest and most unadulterated strength is the detailed discussion of Schubert's training with Salieri and the Neapolitan style and partimento approach that influenced so much of his subsequent work. Here the author is on the firmest ground and doing the best scholarship. Her musicology seems on point; her historical scholarship sadly deficient and her rhetoric often incoherent.