Page 154 - (DK) The Classical Music Book - Big Ideas Simply Explained
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152 LIEDER AND SONG CYCLES
he composer Franz Beethoven were introduced to the
IN CONTEXT Schubert is most often medium when commissioned to
T linked to the German art produce arrangements of folk songs,
FOCUS song (or Lied; plural, Lieder). He did while the songs of Mozart, who
Lieder and song cycles
not invent the genre. Several major reserved his most sophisticated
BEFORE composers had written songs word setting for opera, are small-
1816 Beethoven composes before him, such as Beethoven, scale and modest in their scope.
An die ferne Geliebte (“To the Mozart, and Haydn, as well as Writing songs was a sideline rather
distant beloved”), considered lesser-known figures. It is not than a central part of any of these
to be the first song cycle. even true to say that Schubert composers’ activities.
produced the first “song cycle,”
1821 Wilhelm Müller the term used later for a set of Piano and song
publishes his poems of Die songs with an overarching Schubert came of age in a world
schöne Müllerin (including narrative or theme. Beethoven’s of increased poetic sensibility, of
six not set by Schubert) as An die ferne Geliebte, composed emphasis on subjective experience.
part of an anthology. in 1816, was the first important The piano, still a relatively recent
work to fit such a description. invention, had grown both in
AFTER Schubert, however, transformed technical capacity and availability.
1840 Robert Schumann the genre. Before Schubert, Lieder Domestic performances were on
composes several major song were predominantly naïve or the rise, especially in Vienna,
cycles, including Frauenliebe straightforwardly lyrical. The form whose middle class, held back in
und Leben and Dichterliebe. tended to be strophic, the same many ways by a strictly controlled
melody repeated for each verse society, sought private outlets
1856 Baritone Julius of the poem; the music engaged
Stockhausen gives the first with the text only as far as
complete public performance capturing its general mood, and Schubert’s art songs, or Lieder, were
of Die schöne Müllerin the keyboard accompaniment usually played in the private homes of
in Vienna. was often formulaic, functional, his friends. Large-scale public concerts
were typically reserved for more
and without expression. Haydn and sweeping orchestral works.
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