Throughout his career, David Lewin laboured to make even the most abstract theory speak to the experience of the ordinary listener. This book combines many of Lewin's classic articles on song and opera with newly drafted chapters on songs of Brahms, Robert Schumann, Clara Schumann, and Milton Babbitt. Bound together by Lewin's cogent insight, the resulting collection constitutes a major statement concerning the methodological problems associated with interpretation of texted music.

David Lewin taught composition at UC Berkeley and at SUNY Stony Brook, and later taught music theory at Yale and Harvard Universities. His music-theoretic writings include many articles and two previous books: Generalized Musical Intervals and Transformations (1987), and Musical Form and Transformation (1993). He was the recipient of honorary degrees from the University of Chicago and from the New England Conservatory of Music for his work in music theory.