This chapter concentrates on Clara Schumann’s three published song opuses: the three songs from op. 12 (a collaborative song cycle that she produced with Robert), the six songs of her op. 13 collection, and the Sechs Lieder aus Jucunde, op. 23. My discussion of the songs without opus numbers shows how the songs of opp. 12, 13, and 23 bear the telltale signs of her songwriting style. At the same time, I make a broader argument about a feature that binds these three opuses together and distinguishes them from her other songs: they show a preoccupation with strophic form, deploying this commonplace song form in ways that are at once subtle and novel.

This chapter analyzes both Wagner's formal processes and his harmonic and motivic structure in the Ring. The first half of the chapter focuses on the forms Wagner employed in these four operas, including such traditional operatic forms as arias and ensembles, as well as Wagner’s own theory of the "poetic-musical period" and the use of Stabreim, and various strophic and "symphonic" forms. The chapter's second half turns attention onto structure, which largely means Wagner's approach to handling tonality. Far from abolishing this system, as is sometimes supposed, Wagner worked exclusively within it. And yet the extreme way in which he sometimes pushed its logic explains in large part the magnetic effect he has had on radical artists and thinkers of the last century and a half.