Schoenberg's string sextet 'Verklärte Nacht', Mahler's 'Das Lied von der Erde' and Debussy's prelude to the reading of Stéphane Mallarmé's 'L'après-midi d'un faune' are more than just 'composities based on poetry'. In the literature they selected, Mahler, Schoenberg and Debussy found the stimulus to rethink their own stylistic techniques. Chinese poems from the eighth century, adapted by Hans Betghe, inspired Mahler to purify his tonal idiom. In his song symphony, filled with the intimacy of chamber music, everything radiates austerity and simplicity: a preparation for the hereafter... A late-Romantic Schoenberg reconciles programme music and chamber music using a passionate poem by Richard Dehmel as his guideline. 'Verklärte Nacht' has the emotional pregnancy of a Wagnerian musical drama and provides a powerful synthesis of romantic tendencies. In Debussy's formally idiosyncratic evocation of two nymphs pursued by a lustful faun, instrumental transparency and the dosing of elements are trumps: a new breath of life in the music of a fin de siècle.