Synopses & Reviews
What makes a classical song a song? Covering such contrasting composers as Brahms and Berberian, Schubert and Kurtág, Jonathan Dunsby considers the nature of vocality in songs of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The essence and scope of poetic and literary meaning in the Lied tradition is subject to close scrutiny against the backdrop of "new musicological" thinking and music-theoretical orthodoxies. The reader is thus offered the best insights available within an evidence-based approach to musical discourse.
Review
"Dunsby offers a highly original examination of the quality of sung sound in light of the interaction of music settings and their texts. [A] wide-ranging, in-depth study...Recommended." R. Miller, Oberlin College, CHOICE
Synopsis
In a wide-ranging discussion, Jonathan Dunsby considers the nature of vocality in songs of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements; Introduction; 1. An introduction with no words, with intended words, and untheory; 2. A love song: Brahms's Von ewiger Liebe; 3. Boundless opulence: postscripts on Schoenberg's Premonition; 4. Interlude on peace, laws, flowers, and men flying; 5. To Amherst via Vienna; 6. By way of brief conclusion; Bibliography; Index.