Lieder began with words, with the composer's discovery of a poet and a poetic work, but the scholarly study of lieder has tended to bypass those origins. Schubert's choice of poets has traditionally come under fire for the preponderance of mediocre talent, and yet many of these writers were highly esteemed in their day.

In this book, the author has chosen four such poets - Gabriele von Baumberg ("the Sappho of Vienna"), the young war-martyr Theodor Korner, Schubert's friend Johann Mayrhofer, and Ernst Schulze - in order to re-examine their live, works, and Schubert's music to their verse. Schubert gravitated to different poetic repertoires at different times in his life and for different musical purposes, such as the anticipation of Winterreise one hears in the Schulze songs or the radical tonal experimentation of the Mayrhofer songs.

All four poets were vivid inhabitants of a vivid era, and their tribulations - from Gabriele von Baumberg's embroilment in Napoleonic politics to Schulze's mental illness - afford us added insight into the upheavals, the manners and mores, of their day.