ABSTRACT
Songs were produced in almost unimaginable profusion throughout the nineteenth century: one could cover the whole of Germany with song, says Schumann in 1837. The term ‘ Liederflut’ (flood of songs) becomes a common trope among the reviewers in the AMZ and elsewhere. 1 Many hundreds of composers, the great majority of whom are unknown today, wrote Lieder: most histories of the genre are thus like maps with only the high mountains drawn in. Occasionally, half a dozen of the less familiar composers will be disposed of in a paragraph. Even the big music encyclopedias have little or nothing to say about most of these minor figures as song-composers, even where their eminence in other fields merits a few column-inches. But a view of nineteenth-century song based solely on the small minority of obviously great composers is in danger of overlooking some quite important considerations and trends. So, in the account that follows I will try to pay due attention to some of the forgotten composers, in order to reveal a picture of nineteenth-century song rather different from, perhaps even rather more interesting than, that possessed by someone who knows only Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, etc.
