Metric dissonance and music-text relations in the German Lied

This dissertation investigates the use of metric dissonance in the German Lied. I outline characteristic features of metric dissonances in the songs of individual composers and discuss the expressive functions of these dissonances in relation to the poetic texts and broad trends of German Romanticism. Extensions of metric-dissonance theory are developed to account for passages in songs by Schumann, Brahms and Schoenberg.; Chapter I establishes a foundation for the study of metric dissonance in the Lied. I introduce features of German Romanticism which forms of metric dissonance may express, outline my approach to the relationship between music and text, introduce tools of metric-dissonance analysis, review previous studies of metric conflicts in the German Lied, and introduce the notion of a progressive breakdown of metric hierarchies, in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.; Chapter II consists of five semi-independent essays on displacement (or "syncopation-type") dissonances in the songs of Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Wolf and Schoenberg. I find that offbeat and weak-beat accents correlate with forms of motion and stasis in songs from Schubert's Die Winterreise; more extensive and metrically unsettling displacement dissonances correlate with processes of interiorization in songs by Schumann; displacement dissonances in Brahms's songs blur the sense of meter and correlate with poetic depictions of blurred perception; syncopations in Wolf's vocal lines emerge as a function of declamation but may also be correlated with levels of expressivity and melodic contour; and metric indeterminacies in Schoenberg's songs symbolize the uncertainty of subjects experiencing formerly unknown passions.; Chapter III traces a link between displacement dissonances and Romantic longing (Sehnsucht). Chapter IV extends current theories of grouping (or "hemiola-type") dissonances. I adapt a graphing technique developed by Richard Cohn to reveal hidden affinities between apparently distant metric states, and I develop a new method for referencing superpositions of metric dissonances, drawing on the work of Harald Krebs. The theoretical advances prepare an extended analysis of Schoenberg's "Valse de Chopin" Op. 21 No. 5 and a discussion of oscillatory patterns in songs by Lang, Schumann, Brahms, and Wolf. Chapter V summarizes the original findings of this study and considers some implications.