Following the development of the German Lied after the nineteenth century - when it was widely known as the setting of Romantic poetry to music - this book explores the changing artistic scene in the early twentieth century, as rapid social, economic and environmental changes affected German cultural production. The Lied then faced not only a crisis of identity, but also a threat to its survival. This book considers the literary and musical ideas that both challenged and complemented each other as new directions in songwriting were developed across the modern period. The composers selected for their relevance in Lieder composition during this time illustrate not only the diversity of their musical thought but also a changing approach to the relationship between the poetic text and its musical counterpart. Hans Pfitzner represents the determination to maintain established tradition; subsequently, a chronological progression through the individuality of Paul Hindemith and social integrity of Hanns Eisler leads to the point where transformation of the genre can be said to have begun, with Arnold Schoenberg. With the Lieder of Alban Berg and Anton Webern, the genre arrived at a point of convergence with the ideals of German modernism. This study offers new insights into the cultural significance of German songwriting in the first part of the twentieth century.

In Decolonial Daughter: Letters from a Black Woman to her European Son, Trinidadian-American writer & activist Lesley-Ann Brown explores, through the lens of motherhood, issues such as migration, identity and nationhood, and how they relate to land, forced migrations, and imprisonment and genocide for Black and Indigenous people. Having moved to Copenhagen, Denmark from Brooklyn over eighteen years ago, Brown attempts to contextualise her and her son's existence in a post-colonial and supposedly post-racial world in where the very machine of so-called progress has been premised upon the demise of her lineage. Through these letters, Brown writes the past into the present - from the country that has been declared "The Happiest Place in the World" - creating a vision that is a necessary alternative to the dystopian one currently being bought and sold.

As she travels across the US during the Black Lives Matter protests and Covid-19 pandemic and then to Trinidad and Tobago to attend the funeral of her grandmother, Brown tells her own life-story, as well as writing about race, gender, sexuality, and education, and ideas of home, family and healing. Both a radical political manifesto and a moving memoir about finding your place in the world, Blackgirl on Mars is about what it means to be a Black and Indigenous woman in Europe and the Americas in the twenty-first century.