Making Words Sing

Jonathan Dunsby asks what distinguishes a art song from other vocal music. His study ranges across composers as different as Brahms and Berberian, and as Schubert and Kurtág, to examine how the voice functions in nineteenth- and twentieth-century songs. It looks closely at how poetry and literary content generate meaning within the German Lied tradition, testing those ideas against the claims of new musicology and established music theory. Throughout, the book argues for a careful, evidence-based way of talking about music.