German Song Onstage: Lieder Performance in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries. Ed.Natasha Loges and Laura Tunbridge.

Abstract

German Song Onstage: Lieder Performance in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries originated from the conference German Song Onstage 1789–1914, which took place at the Royal College of Music and Wigmore Hall in February 2016. With this exceptional volume, Natasha Loges and Laura Tunbridge continue to lead art song research, moving beyond earlier lied scholars’ words-to-music hermeneutics to embrace the interpretative significance of lieder performance. In the very first paragraph of her introduction, Tunbridge declares the volume’s purpose: ‘to unsettle some of our assumptions about what it meant and still means to present German song onstage’ (p. 1). The twelve chapters after Tunbridge’s preface deliver on this promise, taking up topics arranged in loosely chronological order. The chapters highlight the diverse performance culture of the lied in the long nineteenth century, disposing of some long-standing myths in the process—not least the concepts of Werktreue (fidelity to the work) and Innigkeit (expression of internal emotions).