The aim of this thesis is to present a survey of Swedish vocal music.

This thesis discusses the lieder of Richard Strauss including a comparison between Richard Strauss and Johannes Brahms.

Hugo Wolf drew the strands of form, rhythm, and other elements together to form tightly woven songs, each element of which can be traced to the text as its original inspiration. Truly this was a genius of romantic expression, who took the tools developed by his predecessors in song, tempered them with his own sensitive personality, and used them to the fullest in setting the meaning and the mood, as well as the words, of the poems he had chosen.

Arnold Schoenberg's atonal monodrama, Erwartune. Op. 17 (1909). has been viewed as an unanalyzable athematic aberration, without any discernible form. Recognizing Erwartune's forward-looking aspect, this dissertation also explores the melodrama and the Lied, a connection with the past which forges a new understanding of its form and structure.

The poems of Mignon have inspired song writers for almost two centuries. They have served as the texts for more composers than almost any other single set of poetry. The Romantic composers were especially fond of the words. The poems are full of sadness and yearning and composers found they could be set in different moods. Some settings are in major tonalities while other settings of the same poem can be found in minor. Simple harmonies are used in some settings while others contain more complex harmonies. There are those composers who would have Mignon appear as a lost soul throughout all the poems with each song quietly sung, while others use a variety of dynamics adding drama to the setting and picturing Mignon as full of optimism at the end.

This thesis studies the problem of combining a poem with music in nineteenth-century Lieder so that the music enhances the poetry rather than detracting from it. Eight settings of Goethe's poem "Kennst du das Land," from his novel Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahr, are compared. Settings by Johann Friedrich Reichardt, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Liszt, Tchaikowsky, and Wolf are analyzed, after initial treatment of the literary aspects of the poem. The degree of musico-poetic synthesis varies in these settings, and it becomes evident that total fusion of poetry and music is not possible. However, the settings by Schumann and Wolf achieve strong balance of word and tone.

Analysis in relation to performance of the six authentic motets of J.S. Bach: Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied ; Geist hilft unsrer Schwachheit auf ; Fürchte dich nicht ; Jesu, meine Freude ; Komm, Jesu, komm ; Lobet den Herrn, alle Heiden.