In the Western classical music tradition,Lied (/liːd,liːt/LEED,LEET,German:[liːt]ⓘ;pl. Lieder/ˈliːdər/LEE-dər,German:[ˈliːdɐ]ⓘ;lit. 'song')[1][2][3] is a term for setting poetry to music.[4] The term is used for any kind of song in German, but among English speakers,lied is 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 earliestLieder date from the late fourteenth or early fifteenth centuries, and can even refer toMinnesang from as early as the 12th and 13th centuries.[6] It later came especially to refer to settings ofRomantic poetry during 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 Mahler orRichard Strauss.
For German speakers, the term "Lied" has a long history ranging from twelfth-centurytroubadour songs (Minnesang) viafolk songs (Volkslieder) and church hymns (Kirchenlieder) to twentieth-century workers' songs (Arbeiterlieder) orprotest songs (Kabarettlieder, Protestlieder).[citation needed]
The German wordLied for "song" (cognate with the English dialectalleed) first came into general use in German during the early fifteenth century, largely displacing the earlier wordgesang.
The poet and composerOswald von Wolkenstein is 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 Salzburg wrote 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]
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]
With the late 18th century, the term "lied" comes to be used with its primary meaning, "art song in the classical music tradition." For information on this tradition in general, seeart song.
The musical forces for lieder were standardized as a single singer, accompanied by a piano. The piano had only recently achieved widespread use; and its greater expressive possibilities relative to the earlierharpsichord may have played a role in advancing the composition of lieder. Usually the intended singing voice is a "high voice", in the sense that it is comfortably within the range of asoprano or atenor. For both, the music as printed is the same; the soprano sings the notes as written, the tenor an octave lower. Lieder were also written for the lower voices:baritone/bass for men,mezzo/alto for women. Lieder are often sung intransposition, either carried out on the spot by a skilled pianist, or through published transposed editions of the music. Transposition is a fully-accepted practice; for instance, the celebrated lieder singerDietrich Fischer-Dieskau sang a great number of songs transposed downward, to match his baritone voice.
Theclassical-era mastersHaydn,Mozart andBeethoven all wrote lieder that are performed today, though for each of them the lied was something of a minor genre. It is in the songs ofFranz Schubert that the genre came into its own. Schubert found a new balance between words and music, a new expression of the sense of the words in and through the music. In his short life (1797-1828) he wrote over 600 songs. Some examples of widely-sung lieder by Schubert areErlkönig,Der Tod und das Mädchen ("Death and the Maiden"),Gretchen am Spinnrade, andDer Doppelgänger.
Schubert's work proved an inspiration to other composers, and songwriting in the tradition he established was continued through the 19th century, notably byRobert Schumann,Johannes Brahms, andHugo Wolf. In the 20th century, the tradition was continued, most notably byGustav Mahler, who often issued his lieder in two versions, one with the traditional piano accompaniment and one for full orchestra. Other 20th century lieder composers includeHans Pfitzner,Max Reger,Richard Strauss,Alexander Zemlinsky.Arnold Schoenberg,[10]Alban Berg,Anton Webern, andErnst Krenek wrote tonal,atonal, andtwelve-toneLieder.
Recordings of lieder typically come with booklets or other material giving the original text, so that non-German-speaking listeners can follow the meaning of the verse as they listen; the same is true of concert programs.
The poetry that the classical composers used to write lieder had a variety of sources. Sometime, the lieder composers were personally acquainted with the poets whose verse they set. Several of Haydn's finest songs are to English-language poetry by his friend Anne Hunter, whom he met during his journeys (1791-1793, 1794-1795) to London. Schubert's active circle of friends included poets (mostly not famous today) who provided poems for him to set. At the same time, the lieder composers also read published poetry, seeking verse to set. For this purpose, it was felicitous that the late 18th and the 19th centuries were a golden age for German versification, in which the most celebrated poets were active. For instance:Goethe,Schiller, andHeine all wrote poems that were set by members of the classical-music pantheon. Yet the most successful lieder did not necessarily come from the greatest poets:Friedrich Rückert is not considered among the very best poets of German literature, yet his poetry proved deeply inspirational to Schubert, Brahms, and Mahler.
Concerning the role of the poem in a Lied, the noted Lieder pianistGraham Johnson has written:
All songs have lyrics, but in many cases the tune comes first. With Lieder the opposite is true: the poet is often more than the composer’s equal and the poem is often a great work of art in its own right, known and loved without music.
The composer’s task is to give this poem a heightened existence through their own vision and imaginative skill. The song’s melody and text are the singer’s responsibility, but it is the addition of a piano accompaniment, subtle and sometimes highly complex, that adds harmony and character to the whole. The greatest Lieder composers conjure an astonishing variety of narratives, moods and atmospheres, a synthesis of word and tone employing almost minimalist means that can take the listener’s breath away.
Performers have to be very word-aware when presenting a poem through this musical prism – a great Lied may be first and foremost an unforgettable piece of music, but the poem that breathes within the structure is its life-force.[11]
On rare occasions the lieder composers would write a song not to poetry but to prose. A notable case is Brahms'sFour Last Songs (1896), which sets prose passages from Lutheran Bible.
Song cycles (German:Liederzyklus orLiederkreis) are series ofLieder, usually at least half a dozen, tied by a single narrative or theme. The first was Beethoven'sAn die ferne Geliebte. Schubert's two cyclesDie schöne Müllerin andWinterreise are among his most famous works and are performed quite frequently in modern times.Robert Schumann also wrote distinguished song cycles:Frauen-Liebe und Leben andDichterliebe; Mahler is noted for the bleak but powerfulKindertotenlieder, "Songs on the death of children".[12][13]
The art-song tradition established by Schubert was pursued by composers outside the German-speaking lands, where the genre naturally would be referred to by a different name (other than in Dutch, where the word for song is also "lied"). Themélodies ofHector Berlioz,Gabriel Fauré,Claude Debussy, andFrancis Poulenc are 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]
A key aspect of most lieder (and other art songs) is a relative equality of the two parts: the pianist is not an "accompanist" to the singer, but tackles a part that usually is equally expressive and musically important. This is in a sense natural, since most of the great composers of lieder (e.g. Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Mahler) were outstanding pianists but at best indifferent singers. Some lieder composers developed a special relationship with a singer who habitually first sang their songs: Schubert withJohann Michael Vogl and Benjamin Britten withPeter Pears. Leading singers of lieder today often collaborate with pianists who have strong independent reputations, e.g.Peter Schreier withAndras Schiff, orIan Bostridge withLeif Ove Andsnes. Yet there are also pianists whose reputation has come primarily from being outstanding collaborators with lieder singers, notablyGerald Moore and Graham Johnson.
The singers themselves form an artistic population that is at least somewhat separated from the singers ofopera (which forms a larger venue for classical singing). Thus, for example,Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau andElly Ameling became celebrated for their lieder singing, though they also ventured into opera from time to time. In the other direction, singers whose reputation arose in opera will sometimes venture into lieder recitals and recordings. Generally, lieder singing does not require the great volume needed to fill an opera house, but audiences expect great musical sensitivity, including close attention to the meaning of the lyrics.
The pianistArtur Schnabel, who for decades performed lieder with his wifeTherese Behr, opined (in 1945) on the difference in musical culture between opera and lieder:
In public performancesLieder should be presented in intimate halls. Which successful musical performer would relinquish the biggest halls if he can fill them, and obey artistic demands if they involve sacrifices? Opera singers are rarely able to do justice to theLied. The 'real'Lieder singer is, vice versa, not suitable for opera.[14]
