Volkslied

The lied (/liːd/ or /liːt/, plural lieder /liːdər/;German pronunciation: [liːt], plural [ˈliːdɐ], German for "song") is a setting of a German poem to classical music. The term is used for songs beginning in the late-fourteenth or early fifteenth centuries or even to refer to Minnesang already from the 12th and 13th century. It later came especially to refer to settings of Romantic poetry during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and into the early twentieth century. Examples include settings by Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Schubert, Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms, Hugo Wolf or Richard Strauss. Among English speakers, however, "lied" is often used interchangeably with "art song" to encompass works that the tradition has inspired in other languages. The poems that have been made into lieder often center on pastoral themes or themes of romantic love.

Typically, lieder are arranged for a single singer and piano, lieder with orchestral accompaniment being a later development. Some of the most famous examples of lieder are Schubert's "Der Tod und das Mädchen" ("Death and the Maiden"), "Gretchen am Spinnrade", and "Der Doppelgänger". Sometimes lieder are composed in a song cycle (German Liederzyklus or Liederkreis), a series of songs (generally three or more) tied by a single narrative or theme, such as Schubert's Die schöne Müllerin and Winterreise, or Robert Schumann's Frauenliebe und -leben and Dichterliebe. Schubert and Schumann are most closely associated with this genre, mainly developed in the Romantic era (Deaville 2004, 143).

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