Lied

Lied (plural lieder) is a German word, literally meaning "song", but among English speakers used primarily as a term for classical songs, sometimes gathered in song cycles, by composers such as Franz Schubert and Robert Schumann.

Amongst German speakers, the term Lied has a much older and longer 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 addition (an edit)

In Germany, the great age of song came in the 19th century. German and Austrian composers had written music for voice with accompaniment before then, but it was with the flowering of German literature in the Classical and Romantic eras that composers found high inspiration in poetry that created 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 cycles that relate a story - adventure of the soul rather than the body. The tradition was continued by Schumann, Brahms, and Wolf, and on into the last 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 elesewhere noticably in France, with the melodies of such composers as Faure, Debussy and Francis Poulenc, and in Russia, with the songs of Mussorgsky in particular. Engaln too had a flowering of song, in the early tentieth century (represented by Vaughan Williams and Britten).

External link

• At http://www.lieder.net/ you can find thousands of texts to classical art songs in many languages, with translations to English.

de:Kunstlied ko:가곡 ja:歌曲