Of Poetry and Song

Interdisciplinary studies of some of the greatest examples of German art song by major scholars in musicology and German literature. Singers and pianists never tire of exploring the songs of Schubert and Schumann, Wolf and Mahler. But discussions of these marvelous works have too often given only brief consideration to the artistry of the poems -- by such masters as Goethe, Heine, and Eichendorff -- and to the composers' insightful interaction with that verbal art. Of Poetry and Song: Approaches to the Nineteenth-Century Lied is an anthology of truly interdisciplinary studies of text-music relations in the German Lied. The chapters gathered in it (including some published here for the first time in English or indeed at all) were written by two musicologists -- Rufus Hallmark and Jürgen Thym -- and two German-literature specialists -- Harry Seelig and the late Ann C. Fehn. An extensive introduction by the volume's editor, Jürgen Thym, considers the fruitful ways in which the four authors meet the challenge of combining literary and musical analysis. Jürgen Thym is Professor Emeritus of Musicology at the University of Rochester's Eastman School of Music.