This is a new and exciting interdisciplinary resource which integrates the worlds of music and literature. This is the first primary and secondary source collection of its kind to focus on the relationship between words and music and between musical and literary forms. It examines music and its verbal content form a variety of academic perspectives and a historically diverse selection of genres. It explores the functions of terminology, language, musical form, performance, narrative, sound and action, as well as issues of identity. It enables readers to connect with different histories, cultures and technologies via the linkages between musical and literary texts.