The German part-song in the first half of the nineteenth century

Abstract

This work is a genre study of the German part-song between about 1790 and 1850. The primary goals of the study were (1) to identify and define a recognizable and common set of characteristics which constitute the typical German part-song of the period, also (2) to relate the social and political conditions which helped give it its shape, and finally (3) to select out a number of part-songs of interest to both historians and performers.

Three major areas are covered in the course of the work. The first looks at the social/political setting, including the drive toward German unification as it relates to the topic. The second investigates the part-songs of, primarily, Schubert, Schumann, and Mendelssohn, but also of other composers, and then treats the question of performance practice. The third consists of an Appendix containing a translation of Hans Georg Nageli's "Eighty-One Part-Songs and Choruses...", some bylaws of representative choruses of the period, and finally, a rather large number of part-songs, many of which are not otherwise available in print and which, together, give a broad overview of the early nineteenth-century part-song.