Introduction
The lied or the Baroque continuo song is a genre of secular song that emerged in German music around 1630 and remained very popular until ca. 1680 (Frandsen, p. 264). These songs were mainly strophic settings of stanzaic poetry in which the voice or voices are accompanied by an instrumental bass part, normally played on a keyboard instrument (the basso continuo part). Most typically the settings display syllabic declamation of the poetry. Most of the poetry came from contemporary poets, such as Martin Opitz, August Buchner, Johann Rist, Philipp von Zen, and several others including a few composers (Frandsen, p. 264).
Popularity of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) is one of the most popular composers belonging to the Baroque period. His memorable melodies were excellent in their expressiveness and belonged to the Italian Opera genre. His orchestrations, however, were more Austrian in nature, rich in texture and harmony (Stein and Spillman, p. 250). Mozart displayed a sense of humor and a sense of drama in most of his masterpieces – from the very elaborate compositions to the smaller ones. Both of these features are present in a simple lied titled Das Veilchen. In this composition, Mozart took Goethe’s poem about the shy little violet and tells the story as if it were an opera in and of itself. The melody and accompaniment follow the tumult the Veilchen feels upon seeing the lovely young shepherdess to the moment she steps on him (Stein and Spillman, p. 250).
In the lieder, the vocal line and the piano accompaniment are of equal musical significance and these songs are considered to be among the finest of all art songs. The lied style was articulated by Schubert and developed further by Schumann, Brahms, and Hugo Wolf. Mozart’s lieder were not much recognized as they were not very different from his arias. The poets whose works were widely used in the lieder are Goethe, Chamisso, Eichendorff, Rückert, Wilhelm Müller, Heine, and Mörike (Stein and Spillman, p. 253). Among modern composers, the German songs of Hindemith and Schoenberg are outstanding.
The Romantic period
Most of Mozart’s lieder are not art songs by the strict definition of the Romantic period. Art songs were defined as poetry set to through-composed music. However, this definition did not exist during the times of Mozart. This definition was formalized in 1798, seven years after Mozart’s death (Keefe, p. 275). Mozart’s had been a composer of songs, albeit casually and at intervals, from boyhood onwards and his early songs are youthful essays in the current styles: minute songs like “‘Daphne, Deine Rosenwangen’” ( 1768) and “‘An die Freundschaft’” ( 1772), studies in the north German manner such as “‘Geheime Liebe’” and “‘Die grossmütige Gelassenheit’” ( 1772), and the two French ariettes, “‘Oiseaux, si tous les ans’” and “‘Dans un bois solitaire’”, written on his way to Paris in 1777-8. A further batch of three songs, composed in 1780 to texts from a sentimental novel of the day indicates North German influence, especially of Emanuel Bach. However, he published only four of his songs; these appeared in 1789 in two books, the first containing ‘Abendempfindung’ and ‘An Chloe’, the second ‘Das Veilchen’ and ‘Das Lied der Trennung’. Mozart’s most famous song, ‘Das Veilchen’, K. 476, sets a ballad from Goethe’s first Singspiel, Erwin und Elmire.
Influence on Future Composers
When Mozart returned to songwriting, in 1785, he had become completely Viennese in the richness and variety of his accompaniments using three staves. He was completely personal in his rhythmic freedom and the range of his modulations, and inveterately operatic in his approach. As a result, his songs had a compressed explosive quality that demanded a larger space to unfold. If this applies even to the lighter songs, ‘Der Zauberer’, ‘Die betrogene Welt’ and the canzonetta-like ‘An Chloe’, it is still more strongly felt in the two tragic love-songs of 1787, ‘Das Lied der Trennung’ and ‘Als Luise die Briefe ihres ungetreuen Liebhabers verbrannte’, which are so dramatic that they appear to be striving to convey a whole operatic scena within the compass of a song (Wellesz and Sternfeld, p. 359); ‘Das Lied der Trennung’ opens as a strophic song, but breaks away, in the last three verses, into what is in effect the middle section and free repetition of a da capo aria (Wellesz and Sternfeld, p. 359). Paradoxically, it is the smaller and less powerful songs that are most truly song-like: such songs as the graceful ‘Die Verschweigung’ and the two ‘naïve’ songs, ‘Das Kinderspiel’ and ‘Sehnsucht nach dem Frühling’, written on the same January day in 1791. In his bigger compositions such as ‘Abendempfindung’ and ‘Das Veilchen’ (Wellesz and Sternfeld, p. 149). ‘Abendempfindung’, in Mozart, transcends the sentimentality of the text, creates at the outset an atmosphere of serene tranquility, intensified by the recurring echoes in the accompaniment, throughout the song, of a vocal cadence in the opening verse. In ‘Das Veilchen’. by contrast, Mozart is at grips with a true poem, and, with unerring perception, subordinates everything, verse-structure, declamation, descriptive and dramatic expression, to the unity of the narrative, to which he molds his music with the sensitive economy. The result is, in its delicate and reticent way, a model of what the durchkomponiertes Lied can achieve.
Mozart’s lieder inspired many composers to compose songs. Beethoven created the Romantic lied and Schubert’s setting of Goethe’s Gretchen am Spinnrade (1814) and Erlkönig (1815) was the finest 19th-century lieder. Loewe composed 375 songs in which his best settings are of narrative ballads such as Edward and Erlkönig. Mendelssohn aimed at formal perfection, in strophic songs with a varied last verse or coda (Sadie, p. 1). Schumann was another composer who elevated the role of the piano in his 260 lieder Franz, Wagner, Liszt, Cornelius, and others who followed Schumann’s style. Two composers who represented opposite ends of the spectrum of lied composition were Brahms and Wolf. Brahms was a traditionalist and most of his 200 songs are carefully unified strophic or ternary structures, with often complex but rarely independent accompaniments. They reach heights of nostalgia and longing scaled by no other songwriter. Wolf’s lieder, in contrast, were poetry-orientated; he published songbooks devoted to particular poets (Sadie, p. 1). However, Wolf’s 300 songs encompass a wider emotional range than any other composer’s since Schubert (Sadie, p. 1). Others who wrote lieder included Beethoven, Cornelius, Franz, Jensen, Liszt, Loewe, Mendelssohn, and Weber (Morgan and Stein, p. 344). Schubert’s U¨ber allen Gipfeln ist Ruh, is a classic lied (Parsons, p. 3). The lieder also became the inspiration for Richard Wagner. On the eve of World War I, song settings of German poetry were to be encountered almost everywhere. In Berlin alone, between 1900 and 1914, according to a recent tally, public song recitals, or Liederabende, averaged some twenty a weekend invariably were sold out (Parsons, p. 3). The Lied was also used in social and private gatherings. In 1948, the eighty-four-year-old Richard Strauss completed his Vier letzte Lieder (Parsons, p. 3). The lied is today looked upon as a cultural symbol that represents Germany.
References
- Frandsen, D. Mary (2004). Reviews: Braun, Werner: Thöne und Melodeyen, Arien und Canzonetten. Zur Musik des deutschen Barockliedes. Renaissance Quarterly. Volume 60. Issue 1. 2004. Web.
- Keefe, P. Simon. The Cambridge Companion to Mozart. Contributors. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge, England. 2003.
- Morgan, Quincy Bayard and Stein, M. Jack (1964). The Lied Sings Its Defense. PMLA, Vol. 79, No. 3. 1964. pp. 344-347
- Parsons, James (2004). The Cambridge Companion to the Lied. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge. Web.
- Sadie, Stanley (1988). The New Grove Concise Dictionary of Music. McMillan Publishers. Hampshire, UK. 1988
- Stein, Deborah, and Spillman, Robert (1996). Poetry into Song: Performance and Analysis of Lieder. Oxford University Press. New York. 1996.
- Wellesz, Egon and Sternfeld, Frederick (1973). The Age of Enlightenment, 1745-1790. Oxford University Press. Oxford. 1973.