Words and Music

Recent studies of the role of words in music have tended to privilege the literary elements of musical texts, leaving theoretical, analytical, and musicological concerns almost an afterthought. Words and Music provides a much-needed corrective to that trend, bringing together experts in fields from musicology to literary studies to popular culture in order to explore the relationship between words and music. Covering the works of artists and composers as wildly different from one another as Patti Smith, Arnold Schoenberg, and Eminem, the essays successfully apply serious analysis and theoretical understanding to all aspects of song.

John Williamson is professor in the School of Music at the University of Liverpool. He is the author of The Music of Hans Pfitzner and is currently editing The Cambridge Companion to Bruckner.