Although there seems to be an essential relationship between scholarship and performance of the Lied, the process by which scholarly inquiry and practices of performance mutually benefit one another can seem mysterious and undefined. In this introduction to The Lied at the Crossroads of Performance and Musicology, the editors trace the state of research touching these issues, including the role of the “performative turn” in Lied scholarship, historical performance practice research in the genre, and the tradition of scholars’ guides for performers. They then summarize how the essays of the collection model new ways in which scholarship can contribute to new performance experimentation in the genre, and how reflecting on performance can continue to lead to new research perspectives.

This chapter turns to a series of interviews with five distinguished Lied interpreters, at various stages in their careers and coming from both German and Anglo-American contexts, to look at how professional performers think about the role of musicological inquiry or information in relationship to their art form. Based on interviews with Christian Gerhaher, Thomas Quasthoff, Martha Guth, Randall Scarlata, and Clara Osowski, the chapter examines issues including: the role of understanding historical context in preparing or relating to song performance; “dramatic” vs. more “lyric” approaches to singing and thinking about Lieder; the use of historical research in assembling concert programs; and the role of historical knowledge in decisions concerning transposition and other performance concerns.

In this essay, I explore the text and contexts of Richard Strauss’s “Schlechtes Wetter,” Op. 69 No. 5 (1918), in order to illustrate the nature of song as interpretation. First, from the musicological side (and with brief reference to two classic theoretical accounts of the methodology of Lied analysis by Kofi Agawu and Lawrence Zbikowski), I consider Heinrich Heine’s poem and Strauss’s setting of it as meta-texts that reflect on the artists’ creative processes, observing in particular how Strauss’s song can also be heard to reveal the creative and interpretative essence of the traditional manner of identifying text-music relationships in the Lied. Turning then toward the work and perspectives of performers, I explore Strauss’s song as it was interpreted by soprano Elisabeth Schumann and the composer at the piano on their 1921 tour of the United States, along with some brief concluding reflections on my own performance of the song as pianist with soprano Sari Gruber in recitals given over the past decade. These performances radically alter our understanding of what the song is about and who we are to understand its vocal persona to be, illustrating the vital role of performance in determining what a song is and means.

We think we know what Winterreise is: a formal live performance by a classically trained baritone and concert pianist in a recital or concert hall, featuring all twenty-four songs of the cycle presented without interruption or deviation from the printed score in Schubert’s original publication order. But in the full sweep of Winterreise’s reception history since 1827, performances satisfying all or even most of these conditions have been much less common than we might assume. The fact is that there are just as many Winterreises as there are performances, each informed by its own set of social, cultural, personal, historical, and technological factors. In this survey of Winterreise’s life in performance from Schubert’s day up until the present, we will observe how the cycle’s meaning is fundamentally dependent upon the manner and context of its presentation: performance as reception.