Lied

Lied (plural Lieder) is the German art song genre — a setting for solo voice and piano of a poem in German, in which voice and piano operate as equal partners rather than soloist-plus-accompaniment. The piano is illustrative as well as supportive: a galloping rhythm depicts a horse in Schubert's 'Erlkönig,' a halting figure depicts winter steps in 'Winterreise,' a single repeated chord depicts a spinning wheel in 'Gretchen am Spinnrade.' Songs are typically three to six minutes long and often grouped into cycles (Liederkreise) that trace a narrative or emotional arc across thirty minutes to over an hour. The vocal style favors clarity of text over operatic projection; consonants must register, vowels must color the words.

The Lied as art-song genre crystallized with Franz Schubert (1797-1828), who composed more than six hundred songs across his short life, including the cycles 'Die schöne Müllerin' (1823), 'Winterreise' (1827) and 'Schwanengesang' (1828). Robert Schumann's song-year of 1840 added 'Dichterliebe' and 'Frauenliebe und -leben.' Brahms, Hugo Wolf (whose songs treat single poems with almost speech-like detail), Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss extended the tradition through the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The form depended on the parallel rise of the bourgeois home piano and the publishing industry — Lieder were domestic music as well as concert repertoire.

Treat the piano part as a co-narrator. The opening of 'Erlkönig' establishes the galloping horse before the singer enters; in 'Der Lindenbaum' (from 'Winterreise'), the piano's gentle figures depict the rustling leaves of the linden tree the traveler remembers. Voice and piano often disagree — singer may be calm while piano grows agitated, or singer despondent while piano holds onto a major-key memory. Different singers can deliver dramatically different characterizations of the same song.

Schubert's 'Erlkönig,' D. 328 (1815), is the most-played single Lied — three minutes that pack four characters and a narrative outcome. For a cycle, Schubert's 'Winterreise,' D. 911 (1827), in Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Gerald Moore's 1972 recording or Matthias Goerne and Alfred Brendel's later one.

Schubert composed 'Erlkönig' at age eighteen and reportedly wrote the entire setting in a single sitting after reading Goethe's poem. Goethe himself, when sent the manuscript, returned it unopened — he preferred a more straightforward strophic setting by an older composer.