The Aesthetic Foundations and Subjective Performance Interpretation of Late Romantic German Lieder

This study investigates the aesthetic foundations of performers’ subjective interpretation in late-Romantic German Lieder, with particular attention to orchestral songs. Employing a dual framework of the “aesthetics of concord,” understood as structural and formal coherence, and the “aesthetics of transcendence,” associated with emotional and existential expression, the study examines how poetic structure, musical form, and orchestral texture shape the parameters of interpretation. The findings indicate that late-Romantic orchestral songs moved beyond the intimacy of salon music and developed into a public genre engaging themes of life, death, suffering, and transcendence. This shift provided aesthetic justification for expressive conventions—rubato, portamento, extended fermatas, messa di voce, and timbral nuance—beyond literal fidelity to the score. Performers thus assume an active interpretive role, mediating between structural logic and emotional-philosophical resonance. In this interplay of concord and transcendence, performance emerges as a co-creative act that completes the aesthetic meaning of the late-Romantic Lied.