Songs and Song-Writers

Extract

Wishing to economise time and space as much as possible, seeing that the materials of my paper offer a little difficulty in their proper selection and arrangement within the limits afforded me, I prefer, to any extended preambulum, briefly to make you acquainted with the exact line upon which I endeavour to approach the subject of “Songs and Song-Writers.” As this is a theme which might be led up to from so many directions, your attention being otherwise taxed throughout much of the time to discover from which I set out, I will simply state that I propose treating the subject from what may be termed the musical-literary point of view—regarding the mutual bearing of music and poetry—strictly, be it understood, in the field of song-composition. I take the German lied in particular (for reasons which I will give) as a model, and in support of a theory I presume to put forward; next, I would consider the formal structure of songs—as affected by the style of the accompanying poetry; then, the words of songs considered separately; the translation of foreign songs; the question of art-songs in the concert-room: these, with one or two subsidiary matters, are the branches of the subject I undertake to deal with.