(; plural , ) is a German and Dutch word meaning "
song"; among English speakers, however, the word is used primarily as a term for European
romantic songs, also known as
art songs. The term is usually used to describe songs composed to a German poem of reasonably high literary aspirations, especially during the nineteenth century, beginning with
Carl Loewe,
Heinrich Marschner, and
Franz Schubert and culminating with
Hugo Wolf. The poetry forming the basis for
often centers upon pastoral themes, or themes of romantic love.
Typically, are arranged for a single singer and piano. Some of the most famous examples of are Schubert's "Der Tod und das Mädchen" ("Death and the Maiden") and "Gretchen am Spinnrade". Sometimes are gathered in a or "song cycle"—a series of songs (generally three or more) tied by a single narrative or theme, such as Schubert's Die schöne Müllerin and Winterreise, or Schumann's Frauenliebe und -leben and Dichterliebe. Franz Schubert and Robert Schumann are most closely associated with this genre, mainly developed in the Romantic era.
History
For German speakers, the term
has a long history ranging from 12th century
troubadour songs (
) via
folk songs (
) and church hymns (
) to 20th-century workers songs (
) or
protest songs (
).
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 . 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—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, Mahler and Pfitzner. Austrian partisans of atonal music, Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern, composed lieder in their own style.
Other national traditions
The
tradition is closely linked with the German language. But there are parallels elsewhere, notably in France, with the
mélodies of such composers as
Berlioz,
Fauré,
Debussy and
Francis Poulenc, and in Russia, with the songs of
Mussorgsky and
Rachmaninoff in particular. England too had a flowering of song, more closely associated however with folk song than with the 19th-century art song, in the 20th century represented by
Vaughan Williams and
Benjamin Britten.
At the end of the 19th and during the 20th century classical lieder produced in the Netherlands were usually composed in several languages; Alphons Diepenbrock and Henk Badings composed Dutch, German, English and French songs and in Latin for choirs; together with a strong influenced from French impressionism and German romanticism which made the Dutch lieder tradition the only strong cosmopolitan one in Europe.
Bibliography
External links
The Lied and Art Song Texts Page
The Lieder Sound Archive
Category:German music history
Category:Romantic music
Category:Romanticism
Category:Song forms
Category:German loanwords
