Theorchestral song (GermanOrchesterlied) is alate romantic genre ofclassical music for solo voices and orchestra.
What was effectively song with instrumental accompaniment – thecantata and the aria – had been part of music since the early baroque.Beethoven andSchumann too had occasionally provided instrumental accompaniment to some songs. Full orchestration, to enable a song to "hold its own" in a 19th-century concert environment, developed from the 1840s.[1] Among the earliest experiments with orchestral song are those ofLiszt who orchestrated several of his songs in the 1840s but did not publish them. Liszt also had the operetta composerAugust Conradi orchestrate hisLe juif errant andJeanne d'Arc around 1848, but these too were neither published nor performed. Long after Berlioz' publication of his orchestrations ofLes nuits d'été in 1856, Liszt finally published his own orchestration ofJeanne d'Arc au bûcher, as a dramatic scene for voice and orchestra in 1874.[2][3] The form was brought to fruition byMahler, to the extent that it is difficult to say where Mahler's symphonies end and where his symphonic songs begin.[4]
The genre of orchestral song tends to longer programmed pieces than songs accompanied by piano. For this reason the orchestral song may be either a longer single song or, more commonly, acycle. An example of a single long song text is found inSibelius'tone poemLuonnotar.[5] Other examples includeGrieg'sDen Bergtekne, op. 32.Hugo Wolf scored twenty-four of his songs for voice and orchestra, includingPrometheus.Max Reger wrote many songs but only one orchestral song,An die Hoffnung (To Hope) on a poem byHölderlin. The genre of the story-telling cantata continues alongside the orchestral song, asPoulenc'scantataLe bal masqué andLa voix humaine, a one-actopera for one character.
Berlioz' ownorchestrations of hisLes nuits d'étésong cycle (1841) into orchestral songs (1856) are often regarded as the "first orchestral song cycle," though others consider it the first well known progenitor of the orchestral song.[6][7] Later examples in France includeRavel's second work entitledShéhérazade, a song cycle after three poems by Tristan Klingsor: Asie, La flûte enchantée, and L'indifférent (1903) and his cycleDon Quichotte à Dulcinée, andChausson'sPoème de l'amour et de la mer. Later examples include orchestral songs byJean Cras andJacques Ibert's4 Chansons de Don Quichotte.
Notable examples of the orchestral song cycle in Germany and Austria includeRichard Strauss'Vier letzte Lieder and several cycles byGustav Mahler:Das Lied von der Erde,Des Knaben Wundernhorn;Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen; andKindertotenlieder. These models were influential onAlma Mahler-Werfel,Zemlinsky,Joseph Marx,Arnold Schoenberg,Max Reger,Othmar Schoeck,Pfitzner, andFrank Martin:6 Monologe aus Jedermann.Paul von Klenau'sDie Weise von Liebe und Tod des Kornetts Christoph Rilke (1918) andGespräche mit dem Tod.
Aside fromGrieg, Scandinavian examples includeTure Rangström's Swedish cycleHäxorna ("The Witches") (1938)Den Utvalda ("The Chosen"),Madetoja'sSyksy-sarja (Autumn Song Cycle),Selim Palmgren'sEn sällsam fågel (a lonely bird) andAamun autereessa (in the morning mist), Danish composerPeter Lange-Müller's orchestrations of his songs, andErik Norby'sRilke-Lieder for mezzo-soprano and orchestra.
In Slavic lands examples include Glazunov and Rimsky-Korsakov's orchestrations of Musorgsky's fourSongs and Dances of Death,Shostakovich's orchestral song cycles, such asFrom Jewish Folk Poetry, Romances on words by Japanese poets,Suite on Verses of Michelangelo Buonarroti (1974), also – to an extent – hisThirteenth "Babi Yar" (1962) andFourteenth Symphonies.[8]Władysław Żeleński andKarol Szymanowski in Polish, and in CzechMartinů'sMagic Nights andNipponari.[9]
In British and American music examples of orchestral song cycles includeBritten's cyclesNocturne (1958)Les Illuminations andOur Hunting Fathers.Ralph Vaughan Williams contributed the orchestration of hisOn Wenlock Edge, originally for voice, piano and optional string quartet. Other English orchestral songs include those byDelius,Hubert Parry,Charles Villiers Stanford,Finzi,John Ireland,Nimrod Borenstein, as well as posthumous orchestrations ofIvor Gurney's songs in arrangements by Gerald Finzi and Herbert Howells.
