‘Im Volkston’

Here, the most famous and influential work is J.A.P. Schulz’s Lieder im Volkston (3 parts, 1782-90). It is not, of course, entirely without predecessors; even as early as Görner we can find a handful of songs possessing something of the directness and immediacy of folksong, although any pastiche of the strains of folksong was certainly far from Görner’s mind. But, as we have seen, too many songs by Gorner’s contemporaries and immediate successors smacked of the study rather than of the open fields or even the informal drawing-room.