Qualities of motion and emotion in song come from poetic images, melody, harmony, and voice leading, but they also come from rhythm and meter-the flow and articulation of words and music in time. This book explores rhythm and meter in the nineteenth-century German Lied, including songs for voice and piano by Fanny Hensel nee Mendelssohn, Franz Schubert, Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms, and Hugo Wolf.

The Lied, as a genre, is characterized especially by the fusion of poetry and music. Poetic meter itself has expressive qualities, and rhythmic variations contribute further to the modes of...