Mozart revealed himself to him late, Beethoven remained foreign to him, and he did not take notice of Schubert - yet music was for Goethe a defining force in life. His early poems are songs, and he set the folk songs collected by Herder from Alsace to melodies, while the poet sang his Sturm und Drang hymns against the wind and weather. Together with his childhood friend Philipp Kayser, and later with composers Johann F. Reichardt and Carl F. Zelter, Goethe pursued the vision of a poetry that is perfected in music. Norbert Miller tells the unusual story of this utopia: a panorama of musical lyricism in the golden age of poetry in Germany.