December Songs

December Songs is a song cycle for singer and pianist by musical theatre composer-lyricist Maury Yeston. The work is a "retelling" of Franz Schubert's Winterreise, (a song cycle of art songs), with a cabaret sensibility. The songs in both December Songs and Winterreise are linked as a sequence of reflections by the singer taking a lonely walk in winter, thinking back on his or her lost love.

The piece crosses over the line from classical music to Broadway to cabaret. Where the Schubert masterpiece features words by Wilhelm Müller portraying a jilted young man's wandering the snows of the Vienna woods and ultimately sinking into madness, the Yeston lyrics depict a contemporary young woman wandering a snowy Central Park in New York City and finding recovery and hope on her journey.

December Songs paints a vivid portrait of a worldly young woman, jilted and adrift in a wintry New York City, interpreting everything she encounters as a reflection of her broken heart through richly varied melodies and striking yet unforced poetic imagery.

It has been recorded six times in English, and once each in French, German, and Polish.