‘Once again … speaking of’ Heine, in Song

This chapter explores songs that move across temporal rather than geographical borders. Theodore Adorno’s two lectures on Heine, the lesser-known ‘Towards a Reappraisal of Heine’ (1949) and ‘Heine the Wound’ (1956) provide a way of thinking about the poet’s anti-sentimentality in relationship to notions of his inner exile and about how history can alter the course of an artist’s reception. The chapter focuses on the echoic effects of Heine settings by Wilhelm Killmayer (1927-2017) and Wolfgang Rihm (b. 1952). Both composers allude to aspects of nineteenth-century musical heritage, from the tradition of lieder composition in general to intertextual references. Comparison with Heine settings by Robert Schumann (1810-1856) demonstrate how the anti-sentimentalism of the poetry spoke not only to Romantic but also to post-modern generations.