Lied
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In the Western classical music tradition,Lied(/liːd,liːt/,pl.Lieder/ˈliːdər/;[1][2][3]German pronunciation:[liːt],pl.[ˈliːdɐ],lit. 'song') is a term for setting poetry to classical music to create a piece ofpolyphonicmusic.[4]The term is used for any kind of song in contemporary German and Dutch, but among English and French speakers,liedis often used interchangeably with "art song"to encompass works that the tradition has inspired in other languages as well. The poems that have been made into lieder often center on pastoral themes or themes of romantic love.[5]
The earliestLiederdate from the late fourteenth or early fifteenth centuries, and can even refer toMinnesangfrom as early as the 12th and 13th centuries.[6]It later came especially to refer to settings ofRomantic poetryduring the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and into the early twentieth century. Examples include settings byJoseph Haydn,Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart,Ludwig van Beethoven,Franz Schubert,Robert Schumann,Johannes Brahms,Hugo Wolf,Gustav MahlerorRichard Strauss.
History
[edit]Terminology
[edit]For German speakers, the term "Lied" has a long history ranging from twelfth-centurytroubadoursongs (Minnesang) viafolk songs(Volkslieder) and church hymns (Kirchenlieder) to twentieth-century workers' songs (Arbeiterlieder) orprotest songs(Kabarettlieder, Protestlieder).[citation needed]
The German wordLiedfor "song" (cognate with the English dialectalleed) first came into general use in German during the early fifteenth century, largely displacing the earlier wordgesang.
Late Middle Ages or Early Renaissance
[edit]The poet and composerOswald von Wolkensteinis sometimes claimed to be the creator of the lied because of his innovations in combining words and music.[7]The late-fourteenth-century composer known as theMonk of Salzburgwrote six two-part lieder which are older still, but Oswald's songs (about half of which actually borrow their music from other composers) far surpass the Monk of Salzburg in both number (about 120 lieder) and quality.[4]
From the 15th century come three large song collections compiled in Germany: theLochamer Liederbuch,theSchedelsches Liederbuch,and theGlogauer Liederbuch.[8]
Renaissance
[edit]The scholarKonrad Celtis(1459–1508), the Arch-Humanist of German Renaissance, taught his students to compose Latin poems using the metric patterns following the model of the Horatian odes. These poems were subsequently "set to simple, four-part music, incorporate the shifting accenmal patterns of the Frenchvers mesurée".The composers of this style includedHeinrich Finck,Paul Hofhaimer,andLudwig Senfl.The style also became imbued into the new German humanist dramas, thus contributing to the development of Protestant hymnody. The style is present in the earliest German secular polyphony collections such as Johann Ott'sMehrstimmiges Deutsches Liederbuch(1534) andGeorg Forster'sFrische teutsche Liedlein(about 1540 onwards). According to Chester Lee Alwes,Heinrich Isaac's popular songInnsbruck, ich muss dich lassen"became the gold standard of the Lied genre".[9]
Common practice
[edit]German-speaking composersJoseph Haydn,Wolfgang Amadeus MozartandLudwig van BeethovenwroteLiederfor voice and keyboard.
The great age of German song came in the nineteenth century. With the flowering ofGerman literature,German-speaking composers found more inspiration in poetry.[citation needed]
Schubert found a new balance between words and music, a new expression of the sense of the words in and through the music. He wrote over 600 songs, some of them in sequences orsong cyclesthat convey a journey of the soul, not the body.
Song cycles(German:LiederzyklusorLiederkreis) are series ofLieder(generally three or more) tied by a single narrative or theme, such as Schubert'sDie schöne MüllerinandWinterreise,orRobert Schumann'sFrauen-Liebe und LebenandDichterliebe.Schubert and Schumann are most closely associated with this genre, mainly developed in the Romantic era.[10][11]
Typically,Liederwere for a single singer and piano, with orchestral accompaniment being a later development.
The tradition was continued byRobert Schumann,Johannes Brahms,andHugo Wolfin the latter half of the 19th century.
20th century
[edit]Gustav Mahler,Hans Pfitzner,Max Reger,Richard Strauss,Alexander Zemlinskycarried the tradition of theLiedinto the 20th century.Arnold Schoenberg,[12]Alban Berg,Anton Webern,andErnst Krenekwrote tonal,atonal,andtwelve-toneLieder.Somewhat later,Paul DessauandHanns EislerwroteLiederof a sometimes overtly political nature.
Examples
[edit]Some of the most famous examples ofLiederare Schubert'sErlkönig,Der Tod und das Mädchen( "Death and the Maiden" ),Gretchen am Spinnrade,andDer Doppelgänger.
Other national traditions
[edit]ThemélodiesofHector Berlioz,Gabriel Fauré,Claude Debussy,andFrancis Poulencare French parallels to the GermanLied.Modest Mussorgsky's andSergei Rachmaninoff's Russian songs are also analogous. 20th-century English examples, as represented byRalph Vaughan Williams,Benjamin Britten,Ivor Gurney,andGerald Finzi,were often folk-like in idiom.[citation needed]
References
[edit]- ^"lied".CollinsDictionary.HarperCollins.Retrieved17 November2020.
- ^"Lied".Random House Unabridged Dictionary.New York: Random House, Inc. 1997.Retrieved17 November2020– via Infoplease.
- ^"lied".The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language(5th ed.). HarperCollins.
- ^abBöker-Heil, Norbert; Fallows, David; Baron, John H.; Parsons, James; Sams, Eric; Johnson, Graham; Griffiths, Paul (2001). "Lied".Grove Music Online(8th ed.).Oxford University Press.doi:10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.16611.ISBN978-1-56159-263-0.
- ^"Lieder".GCSE Bitesize.BBC Schools. Archived fromthe originalon 4 March 2015.
- ^Liedat theEncyclopædia Britannica
- ^Orrey, Leslie;Warrack, John(2002). "Lied". In Latham, Alison (ed.).The Oxford Companion to Music.Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.ISBN978-0-19-866212-9.
- ^Arnold, Devis (1984).The New Oxford Companion to Music.Oxford University Press. p. 1065.ISBN0-19-311316-3.
- ^Alwes, Chester Lee (2015).A History of Western Choral Music.Oxford University Press. p. 66.ISBN978-0-19-936193-9.Retrieved10 December2022.
- ^Deaville, James (2004). "A Multitude of Voices: The Lied at Mid Century". In Parsons, James (ed.).The Cambridge Companion to the Lied.Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. p. 143.ISBN978-0-521-80471-4.
- ^Thyme, Jürgen (2005). "Schubert's Strategies in Setting Free Verse". In Lodato, Suzanne M.; Urrows, David Francis (eds.).Word and Music Studies: Essays on Music and the Spoken Word and on Surveying the Field: Essays from the Fourth International Conference in Word and Music Studies, Berlin, 2003.Amsterdam and New York: Editions Rodopi. p. 90.ISBN978-90-420-1897-6.
- ^Gramit, David (2004). "The Circulation of the Lied: The Double Life of an Art Form". In Parsons, James (ed.).The Cambridge Companion to the Lied.Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. p. 311.ISBN978-0-521-80471-4.
Further reading
[edit]- Hallmark, Rufus, ed. (1996).German Lieder in the Nineteenth Century.New York:Schirmer Books.ISBN978-0-02-870845-4.
- Parsons, James (2004).The Cambridge Companion to the Lied.Cambridge Companions to Music.Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.ISBN978-0-521-80027-3.
- Lieder line by line
External links
[edit]![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/4a/Commons-logo.svg/30px-Commons-logo.svg.png)
![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/99/Wiktionary-logo-en-v2.svg/40px-Wiktionary-logo-en-v2.svg.png)
- The LiederNet Archive,texts and translations
- The Lieder Sound Archive
- The OpenScore Lieder Corpus,public domain transcriptions to play or download
- The Art Song Project
- "Life On the Other Side – 1971 Darüber...",Aubrey Pankey,an African-American lieder singer