Lied
Lied (plural
Lieder) is a German word, literally meaning "
song"; among English speakers, however, it is used primarily as a term for
European
classical music songs, also known as
art songs. Typically,
Lieder are arranged for a single singer and
piano. Sometimes
Lieder are gathered in a
Liederkreis or "
song cycle" â€" a series of songs tied by a single narrative or theme. The composers
Franz Schubert and
Robert Schumann are most closely associated with this genre of classical music. Since the German word
Lied simply means "song," Germans use the more specific term
Kunstlied to refer to this.
For
German speakers the term
Lied has a long history ranging from
12th century troubadour songs (
Minnesang) via folk songs (
Volkslieder) and church hymns (
Kirchenlieder) to 20th-century
satirical or
protest songs (
Kabarettlieder, Protestlieder).
In
Germany, the great age of song came in the
19th century. German and
Austrian composers had written music for voice with keyboard before this time, but it was with the flowering of
German literature in the
Classical and
Romantic eras that composers found high inspiration in
poetry that sparked the genre known as the
Lied. The beginnings of this tradition are seen in the songs of
Mozart and
Beethoven, but it is with
Schubert that a new balance is found between words and music, a new absorption into the music of the sense of the words.
Schubert wrote over 600 songs, some of them in sequences or
song cycles that relate a story â€" adventure of the soul rather than the body. The tradition was continued by
Schumann,
Brahms, and
Hugo Wolf, and on into the
20th century by
Strauss and
Mahler. The body of song created in the
Lied tradition, like that of the
Italian madrigal three centuries before, represents one of the richest products of human sensibility.
The
Lied tradition is closely linked with the actual sound of the
German language. But there are parallels elsewhere noticeably in
France, with the melodies of such composers as
Fauré,
Debussy and
Francis Poulenc, and in
Russia, with the songs of
Mussorgsky in particular.
England too had a flowering of song in the
20th century represented by
Vaughan Williams and
Benjamin Britten.
Hallmark, Rufus, ed.
German Lieder in the Nineteenth Century. New York: Schirmer, 1996.Parsons, James, ed.
The Cambridge Companion to the Lied. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. [
1]
link title*
The Lied and Art Song Texts Page
