What makes a classical song a song? Covering such contrasting composers as Brahms and Berberian, Schubert and Kurtág, Jonathan Dunsby considers the nature of vocality in songs of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The essence and scope of poetic and literary meaning in the Lied tradition is subject to close scrutiny against the backdrop of "new musicological" thinking and music-theoretical orthodoxies. The reader is thus offered the best insights available within an evidence-based approach to musical discourse.