Die Aufklärung der Aufklärung: Lessing und die Herausforderung des Christentums by Hannes Kerber (review)

Abstract

artistry, such as her voice and orchestral instrumentation. Even a chapter as illuminating and rigorous as de Miguel’s second chapter—a typology of what he calls the metacanción (metasong)—centres exclusively on the various ways this is done through lyrics—songs about songwriting, intertextual references—and does not discuss how this might also be achieved by other means. e question of musical performance is one which those of us working in language disciplines ought to embrace for a fuller comprehension of song, ideally in collaboration with those approaching popular music from other disciplinary perspectives, most obviously music studies and musicology. Such an approach might be used, for example, to challenge the foundations of this volume on the canción de autor and its characteristic literary quality in order to nuance some of its arguments. Meta-love songs abound in genres other than the canción de autor. Take at’s ‘A Million Love Songs’ quickly comes to mind, as does one of my guilty pleasures: Chas and Dave’s ‘If I Could Write a Love Song’. is powerful blend of lyrical and musical analysis is displayed to brilliant effect in the book in San José Lera’s exhaustive comparison of Lorca’s ‘Pequeño vals vienés’ and Leonard Cohen’s adaptation ‘Take is Waltz’. By considering features such as the rhythm and cadences of Lorca’s verse and Cohen’s melody, as well as the sonic quality of and generic references in the latter, San José Lera explores the implications of the reference to both literature and music in the title of the book. Principally on account of this chapter, Nogales and San José Lera’s book is a step in the right direction.