Song Cycles
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Song Cycles
A song cycle () is a group, or cycle, of individually complete songs designed to be performed in sequence, as a unit.Susan Youens, ''Grove online'' The songs are either for solo voice or an ensemble, or rarely a combination of solo songs mingled with choral pieces. The number of songs in a song cycle may be as brief as two songs or as long as 30 or more songs. The term "song cycle" did not enter lexicography until 1865, in Arrey von Dommer's edition of ''Koch’s Musikalisches Lexikon'', but works definable in retrospect as song cycles existed long before then. One of the earliest examples may be the set of seven Cantigas de amigo by the 13th-century Galician jongleur Martin Codax. Jeffrey Mark identified the group of dialect songs 'Hodge und Malkyn' from Thomas Ravenscroft's ''The Briefe Discourse'' (1614) as the first of a number of early 17th-century examples in England. A song cycle is similar to a song collection, and the two can be difficult to distinguish. Some typ ...
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Cycle (music)
In music, a cycle can be several things. Acoustically, it is one complete vibration, the base unit of Hertz being one cycle per second. Theoretically, an interval cycle is a collection of pitch classes created by a sequence of identical intervals. Cycles are also individual pieces of larger works, like the movements in a suite, symphony sonata, or string quartet. This can range from settings of the Mass or a song cycle to an opera cycle. Another cycle is the complete performance of an individual composer's work in one genre. Harmonic cycles—repeated sequences of a harmonic progression—are at the root of many musical genres, such as the twelve-bar blues. In compositions of this genre, the chord progression may be repeated indefinitely, with melodic and lyrical variation forming the musical interest. The form theme and variations is essentially of this type, but generally on a larger scale. Composition using a tone row is another example of a cycle of pitch material, although ...
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Franz Schubert
Franz Peter Schubert (; ; 31 January 179719 November 1828) was an Austrian composer of the late Classical period (music), Classical and early Romantic music, Romantic eras. Despite his short life, Schubert left behind a List of compositions by Franz Schubert, vast ''oeuvre'', including more than 600 ''Lieder'' (art songs in German) and other vocal works, seven complete symphonies, sacred music, operas, incidental music, and a large body of piano and chamber music. His major works include "Erlkönig (Schubert), Erlkönig", "Gretchen am Spinnrade", and "Ave Maria (Schubert), Ave Maria"; the Trout Quintet, ''Trout'' Quintet; the Symphony No. 8 (Schubert), Symphony No. 8 in B minor (''Unfinished''); the Symphony No. 9 (Schubert), Symphony No. 9 in C major (''Great''); the String Quartet No. 14 (Schubert), String Quartet No. 14 in D minor (''Death and the Maiden''); the String Quintet (Schubert), String Quintet in C major; the Impromptus (Schubert), Impromptus for solo piano; the S ...
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Vier Ernste Gesänge
''Vier ernste Gesänge'' (''Four Serious Songs''), Op. 121, is a cycle of four songs for bass and piano by Johannes Brahms. As in his '' Ein deutsches Requiem'', the texts are compiled from the Luther Bible. Three songs deal with death and the transience of life, while the fourth has an outlook of faith, hope and charity. Brahms composed the work in Vienna in 1896 and dedicated it to Max Klinger. The songs were premiered there in the presence of the composer by baritone Anton Sistermans and pianist Coenraad V. Bos. They have been recorded often by both female and male singers. History Between 1865 and 1868, as a young man, Brahms had composed '' Ein deutsches Requiem'' (''A German Requiem''), dealing with death, based on a compilation of biblical quotations in Luther's translation. He wrote ''Vier ernste Gesänge'' late in life, again on words from the Bible. His friend Clara Schumann had suffered a stroke on 26March 1896. Brahms completed the composition of this set of ...
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Ludwig Tieck
Johann Ludwig Tieck (; ; 31 May 177328 April 1853) was a German poet, fiction writer, translator, and critic. He was one of the founding fathers of the Romanticism, Romantic movement in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Early life Tieck was born in Berlin, the son of a rope-maker. His siblings were the sculptor Christian Friedrich Tieck and the poet Sophie Tieck. He was educated at the , where he learned Greek and Latin, as required in most preparatory schools. He also began learning Italian at a very young age, from a grenadier with whom he became acquainted. Through this friendship, Tieck was given a first-hand look at the poor, which could be linked to his work as a Romanticist. He later attended the universities of University of Halle, Halle, University of Göttingen, Göttingen, and University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Erlangen. At Göttingen, he studied Shakespeare and Elizabethan era, Elizabethan drama. On returning to Berlin in 1794, Tieck attempted to make a living b ...
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Johannes Brahms
Johannes Brahms (; ; 7 May 1833 – 3 April 1897) was a German composer, virtuoso pianist, and conductor of the mid-Romantic period (music), Romantic period. His music is noted for its rhythmic vitality and freer treatment of dissonance, often set within studied yet expressive contrapuntal textures. He adapted the traditional structures and techniques of a wide historical range of earlier composers. His includes four symphony, symphonies, four concertos, a Requiem, much chamber music, and hundreds of folk-song arrangements and , among other works for symphony orchestra, piano, organ, and choir. Born to a musical family in Hamburg, Brahms began composing and concertizing locally in his youth. He toured Central Europe as a pianist in his adulthood, premiering many of his own works and meeting Franz Liszt in Weimar. Brahms worked with Ede Reményi and Joseph Joachim, seeking Robert Schumann's approval through the latter. He gained both Robert and Clara Schumann's strong support ...
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Joseph Freiherr Von Eichendorff
Joseph is a common male name, derived from the Hebrew (). "Joseph" is used, along with " Josef", mostly in English, French and partially German languages. This spelling is also found as a variant in the languages of the modern-day Nordic countries. In Portuguese and Spanish, the name is "José". In Arabic, including in the Quran, the name is spelled , . In Kurdish (''Kurdî''), the name is , Persian, the name is , and in Turkish it is . In Pashto the name is spelled ''Esaf'' (ايسپ) and in Malayalam it is spelled ''Ousep'' (ഔസേപ്പ്). In Tamil, it is spelled as ''Yosepu'' (யோசேப்பு). The name has enjoyed significant popularity in its many forms in numerous countries, and ''Joseph'' was one of the two names, along with ''Robert'', to have remained in the top 10 boys' names list in the US from 1925 to 1972. It is especially common in contemporary Israel, as either "Yossi" or "Yossef", and in Italy, where the name "Giuseppe" was the most commo ...
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Heinrich Heine
Christian Johann Heinrich Heine (; ; born Harry Heine; 13 December 1797 – 17 February 1856) was an outstanding poet, writer, and literary criticism, literary critic of 19th-century German Romanticism. He is best known outside Germany for his early lyric poetry, which was set to music in the form of ''Lieder'' (art songs) by composers such as Robert Schumann and Franz Schubert. Heine's later verse and prose are distinguished by their satirical wit and irony. He is considered a member of the Young Germany movement. His radical political views led to many of his works being Censorship in Germany, banned by German authorities—which, however, only added to his fame. He spent the last 25 years of his life as an expatriate in Paris. Heine's early works, such as ''Letters from Berlin'' (1826) and ''Germany. A Winter's Tale'' (1828), gained widespread attention for their poetic expression, profound exploration of love, and satirical commentary on social phenomena. As a member of the ...
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Frauenliebe Und -leben
''Frauen-Liebe und Leben'' (''A Woman's Love and Life'') is a cycle of poems by Adelbert von Chamisso, written in 1830. They describe the course of a woman's love for her man, from her point of view, from first meeting through marriage to his death, and after. Selections were set to music as a song-cycle by masters of German Lied, namely Carl Loewe (1836), Franz Lachner (c1839), and Robert Schumann (1840). The setting by Schumann (his opus number, opus 42) is now the most widely known. Chamisso's poems There are nine lyrics in the cycle, to which Chamisso gave the title ''Frauen-Liebe und Leben''. It was first published in 1830, and twice in 1831 in the first editions of his poetry, and of his complete works. Schumann in his cycle did not set the final stanza of No. 2 ('Er, der Herrlichste von allen') with its sudden change of mood. He also left out the last poem, No. 9 'Traum der eignen Tage', which is addressed to the now aged protagonist's granddaughter ("''Tochter meiner Toch ...
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Dichterliebe
''Dichterliebe'', ''A Poet's Love'' (composed 1840), is the best-known song cycle by Robert Schumann ( Op. 48). The texts for its 16 songs come from the ''Lyrisches Intermezzo'' by Heinrich Heine, written in 1822–23 and published as part of Heine's ''Das Buch der Lieder''. Along with the song cycles of Franz Schubert ('' Die schöne Müllerin'' and ''Winterreise''), Schumann's form the core of the genre in musical literature. Source: Heine's ''Lyrisches Intermezzo'' Author of the sarcastic ''Die Romantische Schule'', Heine was a vocal critic of German romanticism, though he is often described as a quintessentially Romantic writer. In some of his poetry, and notably in '' Deutschland. Ein Wintermärchen'' (1844), romantic lyrical conventions are used as vessels to deploy biting, satirical nature. ''Dichterliebe'' was composed before Heine's ''Deutschland'' and does not ''appear'' to portray this ironic dimension: scholarship is divided as to what extent Schumann intended to expr ...
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Robert Schumann
Robert Schumann (; ; 8 June 181029 July 1856) was a German composer, pianist, and music critic of the early Romantic music, Romantic era. He composed in all the main musical genres of the time, writing for solo piano, voice and piano, chamber music, chamber groups, orchestra, choir and the opera. His works typify the spirit of the Romantic era in German music. Schumann was born in Zwickau, Saxony, to an affluent middle-class family with no musical connections, and was initially unsure whether to pursue a career as a lawyer or to make a living as a pianist-composer. He studied law at the universities of Leipzig University, Leipzig and Heidelberg University, Heidelberg but his main interests were music and Romantic literature. From 1829 he was a student of the piano teacher Friedrich Wieck, but his hopes for a career as a virtuoso pianist were frustrated by a worsening problem with his right hand, and he concentrated on composition. His early works were mainly piano pieces, inclu ...
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Schwanengesang
''Schwanengesang'' (Swan Song), 957, is a collection of 14 songs written by Franz Schubert at the end of his life and published posthumously: # Liebesbotschaft (text: Ludwig Rellstab) # Kriegers Ahnung (Rellstab) # Frühlingssehnsucht (Rellstab) # Ständchen (Rellstab) # Aufenthalt (Rellstab) # In der Ferne (Rellstab) # Abschied (Rellstab) # Der Atlas (Heinrich Heine) # Ihr Bild (Heine) # Das Fischermädchen (Heine) # Die Stadt (Heine) # Am Meer (Heine) # Der Doppelgänger (Heine) # Die Taubenpost (alternative: D 965a) (Johann Gabriel Seidl) The autograph manuscript of the collection is preserved in the Morgan Library & Museum. Background Named by its first publisher, Tobias Haslinger, who presumably wished to present it as Schubert's last testament, ''Schwanengesang'' differs from the earlier ''Die schöne Müllerin'' and ''Winterreise'' song-cycles by including settings of more than one poet. Seven texts by Ludwig Rellstab (1799–1860) are followed by six by Heinrich Heine ...
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