Lied
A chamber dialogue of poem and piano — the German art song
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A Lied is the German tradition's short song for voice and piano: the poem is the frame, and the piano is not accompaniment but an interlocutor — it supplies atmosphere, image and subtext. Schubert, Schumann, Brahms and Wolf brought the tradition to its height.
It differs from opera in scale and intimacy: opera lives in the theatre, the Lied in the drawing room; opera works through characters and plot, the Lied through one poem and one moment. The usual mistake is to treat it as a "classical pop song" — the piano part is often equal to the voice, and may say the sentence the poem leaves unsaid.
Read deeper → Song Form
Sources
- 艺术歌曲的体裁定义与舒伯特以来的传统，参 The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, "Lied"；本文为原创表述
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