Had Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) written a book on music, it would have been Song Loves the Masses. One of the great polymaths of modern intellectual history, Herder wrote influential contributions to philosophy, theology, anthropology, aesthetics, history—and music. His writings on musical subjects are among his most comprehensive, ranging from studies of music in the origins of human speech to the song practices underlying a universal humanity. Herder’s collections of these practices, to which he referred collectively as “folk songs” sounded world music in its complex diversity and pr ... More

Had Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) written a book on music, it would have been Song Loves the Masses. One of the great polymaths of modern intellectual history, Herder wrote influential contributions to philosophy, theology, anthropology, aesthetics, history—and music. His writings on musical subjects are among his most comprehensive, ranging from studies of music in the origins of human speech to the song practices underlying a universal humanity. Herder’s collections of these practices, to which he referred collectively as “folk songs” sounded world music in its complex diversity and provided the modern foundations for the fields of anthropology, folklore, and ethnomusicology. Many of the folk songs themselves entered the classical music of Europe, significantly transforming its aesthetics and history. The first-ever translations of Herder’s nine most sweeping works on music unfold across the chapters of this book. From the first attempts to forge theories of folk song and publish anthologies in the 1770s through the translations of the Spanish epic, El Cid, and the biblical Song of Songs to the aesthetics of transcendence that imbued his final essays, the chapters in Song Loves the Masses together transform our modern understanding of music and history.