Page 156 - (DK) The Classical Music Book - Big Ideas Simply Explained

154 LIEDER AND SONG CYCLES

Lied and Song Cycles

Written for voice and piano for performance in homes or
concert halls, sometimes as a cycle of three or more songs
linked by a story or theme.

They appear in three major forms

Strophic: Modified strophic: Through-composed:
all verses are sung to the music varies each verse has different
the same music, as in in some verses, such as music to match the words.
Schubert’s “Der Fischer” “Der Lindenbaum” in Schubert’s “Erlkönig” is
and “Heidenröslein.” Schubert’s Winterreise. through-composed.

desire, in the face of rejection, cycle, push the genre even further Schubert would give with his
to find solace in nature. These and can be shocking in their friends, known as Schubertiads,
ideas would be explored with an expressionistic power. and they were not initially
even greater level of intensity in published together as a cycle.
Winterreise, in which the poems Private to public The first public performance
chart the progress of a lovelorn, The songs of Die schöne Müllerin of the cycle as a whole was not
solitary wanderer through a bleak were, like so much of the music by until 1856. As the 20th century
wintry landscape. The songs of Schubert that was disseminated approached, the Lied also became
Schwanengesang (“Swan song”), during his lifetime, originally an increasingly public form, even
published together after Schubert’s designed primarily for private if many composers continued
death but never conceived as a performances, such as those to use it for some of their most
personal works.

Romantic vehicle
Schubert’s influence, in terms of
the later development of the Lied, is
difficult to overestimate. What had
been a peripheral activity for earlier
composers became a major area of
activity for several composers who
came after him. The genre’s unique
mix of music and poetry proved
particularly attractive to the

Schubert set several of Goethe’s
poems to music, including his tragic
1778 work “An den Mond” (“To the
moon”). This handwritten manuscript
of Schubert’s dates from 1815.

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