Poem and Music in the German Lied from Gluck to Hugo Wolf

The lied—or art song—is a synthesis of two arts, poetry and music. The ideal musical setting for a poem is one that enhances its essence and thus creates a second work of art as great or even greater than the original poem. Students of literature, however, have always tented to study the poem alone and to leave analysis of the song to musicologists. Jack Stein here combines a unique familiarity with both arts to produce an engaging and balanced study of the lied’s evolution in Germany between 1750 and 1900. He discusses the problems inherent in the lied as an art form, devoting separate chapters to the songs of Shubert, Shumann, Brahms, and Hugo Wolf. His analyses of major lieder, which couple literary exegesis with musical analysis, shed new light on the type of synthesis that represents the highest achievement of the lied.