ABSTRACT
In different branches of the arts there is often little synchronicity between the waxing and waning of certain broad artistic ideas and influences. Thus the term ‘romanticism’ means something rather different in literature from what it does in music, and in each case it encompasses a somewhat different period. It seems that music almost always takes a certain amount of time to catch up with literature and painting (nothing could illustrate this better than the time-gap between visual and musical impressionism). Music is more influenced by literature than the other way around: in the world of song there is usually a gap, sometimes quite a long one, between the publication of a poem and its musical settings. Whether a song can ever be said to embody the characteristics of the school to which its poet belongs, rather than its composer, is a moot point. In this matter of classification the music surely takes precedence.
