The LIED is a song for solo voice and piano, with German words, which developed during the ROMANTIC era. Key composers were Schubert and Schumann, and later in the era Brahms and Wolf.
A common feature is that the piano has equal importance with the voice - it's not just an accompaniment, but adds to the drama and/or the meaning of the words. For example listen to the first song on this playlist, "Erlkonig", in which a father carries his sick child on horseback through a stormy night while the child is menaced by a an evil spirit, and note the way the piano portrays the galloping horse and the gusty wind. When the father arrives home, the child is dead, and the music portrays this too in its sudden lack of rhythmic movement.
Many LIED were published in collections, linked by a common theme or by the fact that all the words were written by the same poet. These larger scale works consisting of several LIED, are known as SONG CYCLEs. The last eight tracks on this playlist are an example, Schumann's Frauenliebe und Leben.
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