Lied

In Western classical music, a *Lied* (plural *Lieder*) is a poem set to music. While the German word simply means "song," English speakers often use it to mean "art song," including works in other languages inspired by this tradition. The poetry chosen for Lieder frequently deals with pastoral scenes or romantic love.

The earliest examples of the form date from the late 1300s or early 1400s, though it can also refer to the *Minnesang* tradition of the 1100s and 1200s. The term later became especially associated with settings of Romantic poetry from the late 1700s through the early 1900s. Notable composers include Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Schubert, Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms, Hugo Wolf, Gustav Mahler, and Richard Strauss.

For German speakers, "Lied" has a much longer history, covering everything from 12th-century troubadour songs (*Minnesang*) to folk songs (*Volkslieder*), church hymns (*Kirchenlieder*), and 20th-century workers' songs (*Arbeiterlieder*) or protest songs (*Kabarettlieder*, *Protestlieder*). The word itself came into general use in German during the early 1400s, largely replacing the older term *gesang*.

The poet-composer Oswald von Wolkenstein is sometimes credited as the creator of the Lied for his innovations in combining words and music. However, the Monk of Salzburg wrote six two-part Lieder earlier, in the late 1300s. Oswald’s songs—about half of which borrow music from others—number around 120 and are considered superior in quality. From the 1400s come three major German song collections: the *Lochamer Liederbuch*, the *Schedelsches Liederbuch*, and the *Glogauer Liederbuch*.

During the Renaissance, scholar Konrad Celtis taught his students to write Latin poems in the meter of Horatian odes. These were set to simple four-part music with shifting accents, a style used by composers like Heinrich Finck, Paul Hofhaimer, and Ludwig Senfl. This approach also influenced German humanist dramas and Protestant hymnody. It appears in early German secular polyphony collections such as Johann Ott’s *Mehrstimmiges Deutsches Liederbuch* (1534) and Georg Forster’s *Frische teutsche Liedlein* (from about 1540). Heinrich Isaac’s song *Innsbruck, ich muss dich lassen* became the gold standard of the genre.

From the late 1700s, "Lied" primarily means an art song in the classical tradition. The standard forces are a single singer accompanied by a piano, which had recently become widespread and offered greater expressive range than the harpsichord. The music is usually written for a high voice—soprano or tenor—with the tenor singing an octave lower. Lieder also exist for lower voices: baritone/bass for men, mezzo/alto for women. They are often transposed, either by a skilled pianist on the spot or through published editions. This is fully accepted; for example, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau sang many songs transposed down for his baritone voice.

Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven all wrote Lieder, though for them it was a minor genre. It was Franz Schubert who made the form his own, finding a new balance between words and music. In his short life (1797–1828), he wrote over 600 songs, including *Erlkönig*, *Der Tod und das Mädchen*, *Gretchen am Spinnrade*, and *Der Doppelgänger*. His work inspired later composers: Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms, and Hugo Wolf continued the tradition through the 1800s. In the 1900s, Gustav Mahler often issued his Lieder in two versions—one with piano, one for full orchestra. Other 20th-century composers include Hans Pfitzner, Max Reger, Richard Strauss, Alexander Zemlinsky, Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg, Anton Webern, and Ernst Krenek, who wrote tonal, atonal, and twelve-tone Lieder.

Recordings and concert programs of Lieder typically include the original text so non-German-speaking listeners can follow the verse. In the vast majority of cases, the composer chose an existing poem and set it to music, rather than a poet writing new lyrics to existing music. The poetry came from various sources; sometimes the composers knew the poets personally.