lang: Lied (plural lang: Lieder), ( ; plural 1) is a German word, meaning literally "song"; among English speakers, however, the word is used primarily as a term for European romantic music songs, also known as art songs. More accurately, the term perhaps is best used to describe specifically songs composed to a German poem of reasonably high literary aspirations, most notably during the nineteenth century, beginning with Franz Schubert and culminating with Hugo Wolf. The poetry forming the basis for lang: Lieder often centers upon pastoral themes, or themes of romantic love. Typically, lang: Lieder are arranged for a single singer and piano. Some of the most famous examples of lang: Lieder are Schubert's Der Tod und Das Madchen (Death and the Maiden) and Gretchen am Spinnrade. Sometimes lang: Lieder are gathered in a lang: Liederkreis or "song cycle"—a series of songs (generally three or more) tied by a single narrative or theme, such as Schumann's Frauenliebe und Leben or Schumann's Dichterliebe. The composers Franz Schubert and Robert Schumann are most closely associated with this genre of romantic music.

History

For German speakers the term lang: Lied has a long history ranging from 12th century troubadour songs (lang: Minnesang) via folk songs (lang: Volkslieder) and church hymns (lang: Kirchenlieder) to 20th-century workers songs (lang: Arbeiterlieder) or protest songs (lang: Kabarettlieder, Protestlieder).

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 lang: 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 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 Reutter .

Other national traditions

The lang: Lied 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.

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