Alan Berg's two musical settings of Theodor Storm's poem"Schliesse mir die Augen beide" have received little in the way of scholarly analytical attention. The three major chapters of this thesis deal with the two settings on three different levels. Chapter II surveys the political and cultural milieu in which Berg functioned as a young composer of Lieder in the years 1900-1910. Chapter III examines the special quality of lyricism which is often attributed to Berg and his works. Chapter IV provides more definitive and complete musical analyses of the two settings than have heretofore been available. The question of what role songwriting played in the development of Berg's compositional process is addressed in the conclusion.

Seventeenth-century England witnessed profound historical, theological, and musical changes. A king was overthrown and executed; religion was practiced fervently and disputed hotly; and English musicians fell under the influence of the Italian stile nuovo. Many devotional songs were printed, among them those which reveal influences of this style. These English-texted sacred songs for one to three solo voices with continuo--not based upon a previously- composed hymn or psalm tune—are emphasized in this dissertation. Chapter One treats definitions, past neglect of the genre by scholars, and the problem of ambiguous terminology. Chapter Two is an examination of how religion and politics affected musical life, the hiatus from liturgical music from 1644 to 1660 causing composers to contribute to the flourishing of devotional music for home worship and recreation. Different modes of seventeenth-century devotional life are discussed in Chapter Three. Chapter Four provides documentation for use of devotional music, diaries and memoirs of the period revealing the use of several publications considered in this study. Baroque musical aesthetics applied to devotional song and its raising of the affections towards God are discussed in Chapter Five. Chapter Six traces the influence of Italian monody and sacred concerto on English devotional song. The earliest …