From the time of the Second Berlin School onward, the Lied was one of the most subtle and sophisticated genres in Romantic music. It reached an early peak with Schubert, but was subsequently exploited by most major nineteenth-century composers. This course will study representative German Lieder and ballads by Zelter and his contemporaries, Schubert, Schumann, Loewe, Mendelssohn, Hensel, Brahms, Liszt, Wolf, Mahler, and Strauss, as well as selected French songs, focusing on the social and cultural contexts of the works, their formal structure, and the complex relationship of words to music. It will also discuss developments in the genre in respect of performance context and overall scope, particularly in association with the Orchesterlied, which reached its zenith towards the end of the century.