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Late-Victorian Decadent Song Literature

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 December 2021

Jane Desmarais
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Abstract

This article considers the Victorian and Edwardian vogue for setting late-Victorian decadent poetry to music. It examines the particular appeal of Ernest Dowson's and Arthur Symons's verse to the composers Cyril Scott and Frederick Delius, whose Songs of Sunset (1911) was regarded as the “quintessential expression of the fin-de-siècle spirit,” and discusses the contribution of women composers and musicians—particularly that of the Irish composer and translator Adela Maddison (1866–1929)—to the cross-continental tradition of decadent song literature and the musical legacy of decadence in the late-Victorian period and beyond.

Type
Research Article
Information
Victorian Literature and Culture , Volume 49 , Special Issue 4: Special Issue: Scales of Decadence , Winter 2021 , pp. 689 - 710
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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