Pop music is a deeply transmedial art form, a hybrid of images, attitudes, performances and texts. This bilingual volume examines the diverse transmedial processes in which German-language pop music and other forms of art enrich each other. It aims to make an important contribution to the emerging field of German Pop Music Studies, which is currently enjoying an upsurge in interest. Consisting of chapters by a range of scholars from both the Anglophone world and Germany, it explores how German pop music interacts transnationally with political issues as well as art forms such as film, performance art and fine art. It has a particular focus on the manifold processes of mutual exchange and hybridization between German-language literature and German pop music. The artists examined include Kraftwerk, Einstürzende Neubauten, Tocotronic, Ja, Panik, Gerhard Richter and R. W. Fassbinder.

This book explores the relationship between words and music in contemporary texts, examining, in particular, the way that new technologies are changing the literature-music relationship. It brings an eclectic and novel range of interdisciplinary theories to the area of musico-literary studies, drawing from the fields of semiotics, disability studies, musicology, psychoanalysis, music psychology, emotion and affect theory, new media, cosmopolitanism, globalization, ethnicity and biraciality. Chapters range from critical analyses of the representation of music and the musical profession in contemporary novels to examination of the forms and cultural meanings of contemporary intermedia and multimedia works.

Bringing together seventy-one newly commissioned original chapters by literary specialists and musicologists, this book presents the most recent interdisciplinary research into literature and music. In five parts, the chapters cover the Middle Ages to the present.

The volume introduction and methodology chapters define key concepts for investigating the interdependence of these two art forms and a concluding chapter looks to the future of this interdisciplinary field. An editorial introduction to each historical part explains the main features of the relationships between literature and music in the period and outlines recent developments in scholarship. Contributions represent a multiplicity of approaches: theoretical, contextual and close reading. Case studies reach beyond literature and music to engage with related fields including philosophy, history of science, theatre, broadcast media and popular culture.