[AnAmericanMother]

I see (or hear) what you mean (does that mean that Wagner was crazy? I've often suspected it.)

I'm curious as to where and how the Lied as a form started. In form, and structure, and execution, it is so different from the chanson and madrigal with which I am more familiar (I am firmly backward-looking. Mahler is an anomaly.)

[Publius]

It started with Mozart. After him, a host of minor composers from northern German lands set poetry to music, but they were second raters. It was Schubert, under the tutelage of Salieri, who added an Italian style to the German lied.