The Cambridge Companion to the Lied

by James Parsons (Editor)

Several generations before Schubert, the Lied emerged as domestic entertainment destined to move beyond the home to the symphony hall. This introductory chronicle of this fascinating genre analyzes the Lied in its musical, literary, and cultural contexts--with chapters devoted to focal composers; influence of the Lied on other musical genres; use as a musical commodity and issues of performance. The volume includes a chronology and a comprehensive bibliography.

Genres: Music, Reference

438 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2004

Reviews

[Carol · Rating 4 out of 5]

This Cambridge Companion was more enjoyable than I'd expected. It covers the German Lied of the 19th and first half of the 20th century. Luckily, it completely eschews laundry-list styles overviews of the repertoire or exhaustive descriptions and analyses of large numbers of songs. Instead, the chapters focus on larger issues of style and method, even when covering the work of specific composers. Thus, the book as whole provides a wonderful examination of the genre and its trajectory. I especially enjoyed the sections on Schubert, Brahms, and the circulation of the Lied as both art and commodity.

[James F · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of articles on the German Lied, in the Cambridge Companion series. It begins with an article on the poetry most often set, which discusses the history of German poetry from the late eighteenth century on and distinguishes more historical styles than I was really aware of -- I tend to think of all the poetry of this period at least after Goethe as "Romantic", but this article divides it into Classic, Sturm und Drang, Romantic, Biedermeier, and so forth. The next article discusses the Lied before Schubert, and gives a good history of the development of the genre and its original aesthetic presuppositions. The third article discusses the lieder of Mozart and Beethoven in more depth. Then come the articles on the expected figures, chapters on Schubert, Schumann, the mid-century, Brahms and Wolf; followed by a discussion on the transformation of the lied at the end of the century, an article on Mahler and Strauss and one on the other twentieth century composers. The book ends with an article on "the circulation of the lied", i.e. the economic conditions of lieder production/reproduction (which is in some respects the most interesting chapter) and one on performance issues. All the articles were interesting to me, which is not always the case with a multiple author book like this.