The music of Walter Braunfels went into decline twice: first, when the Nazis declared his music “degenerate art”; and again when post-war Germany had little use for the various schools of tonal music, when the arbiters of taste considered any form of romantic music – almost the whole pre-war aesthetic – to be tainted. Post-war Europe had experienced (or, rather, had been prescribed) an aesthetic paradigm shift.

Walter Braunfels had a flair for drama and his operas demonstrate how carefully he considered the texts. This is also apparent in his songs, which are early works, all but two of which he composed prior to his most popular opera, The Birds (1919). Marlis Petersen’s fascination with Braunfels’ “unique tonal language, totally transparent structure and expansive, late-romantic character” began with two songs she got to sing early in her career, and she considers the Federspiele to be “real jewels of the art of Lied: simple and deeply touching.”