One of the most important achievement of Romanticism in the nineteenth century was the birth of the art song. The art song, as we know it, today was a product of the romantic era. It was created by the union of romantic poetry and music in the early n...
One of the most important achievement of Romanticism in the nineteenth century was the birth of the art song. The art song, as we know it, today was a product of the romantic era. It was created by the union of romantic poetry and music in the early nineteenth century. This union was consummated with such artistry by Schubert and his successors, notably Schumann and Brahms, that the new genre came to be known all over Europe by the German word for song - Lied.
The Lied was one of the most characteristic romantic forms of music. Late 18th - century and 19th - century romanticism gave great impetus to serious popular poetry, and many poems of such masters as Goethe and Heine were set by Lied composers. Schubert, who composed more than 600 Lider, Schumann, Brahms are famous among the 19th - centruy Lider composers, and Hugo Wolf succeeded them.
The Lied brought to flower the romantic desire for the union of music and poetry. The Lied ranged from ender sentiment to dramatic balladry. Its favorite themes were love and longing, the beauty of nature, and the transience of human happiness. Within a short time the Lied achieved immense popularity and made a durable contribution to world art.
This thesis aimed at studying on the musical characteristics of Hugo Wolf's Lider by examining the historical background of German Lied, his techniques and originality of composing Lider, and the relationships of music and poetry in Lied, and by analysing five Lider in his five representative songbooks.
"Morikelider" - more than fifty songs, composed within a few months, - it is above all this astonishing musical wealth that captivates us, together with the breath of nature, fields, woods and hills. The traditional, folksong- influenced style of earlier German song is clearly still one element in the Morike volume.
In the Eichendorff songs, Wolf laid emphasis on the more manly and humorous aspects of the poet, which Schumann had neglected. This volume is full of captivating things, but occupies a relatively modest place in Wolf' s greater song collections.
After Morike, Eichendorff and goethe Wolf found no further inspiration in German poetry. Wolf had had Morike, fortunately, almost to himself ; he could share Eichendorff with Schumann, but already, in the Goethe volume, he had been driven largely to repress the natural lylical side of his nature, to emphasize his intellecuual approach.
Wolf's Spanish Songbook is a wonderful series of portrait - sketches of men and women in every phase of love's troment and delight. In Spanish Song Book he lays less emphasis on felicities of verbal accentuation than
on rhythmic vitality and passionate expression. Wolf in his search for dramatic truth is seen at his most uncompromising in some of the religious songs with which the Spanish Songbook opens.
Wolf's Italian Songbook is full of the liveliest portraiture of the most varied types. Here Wolf allowed himself complete freedom in interpreting his poetic material and produced his most exquisite and original work. There is nothing Italian about these songs ; everything has been refined and transfigured in the composer's imagination. The musical. style is a marvel of simplicity and limpid beauty. In Wolf's Italian Songs the Lied attains its consummation.
Wolf's songs were very original, in the finest tradition of the German Lied ; they are unique in their poetic insight and in the richness of their evocative accompaniments. He placed emhpasis on the poem itself, so he was very faithful to his poets and treated their words scrupulously. He expressed much deeper ideal of art not only musically but also poetically on the basis of the balance of poetry, melody and barmony with the treatment of recitative voice melody and emphasizing the parts of contents of words. His style of piano accompaniment leads content of a poem showing dramatic dialogue forms with poetry through intimate interdependence of poetry, m lody and harmony. His harmony of songs shows a chromatic scale of R. Wagner, but has very original styles which differ from those of R. Wagner's music. In the Lied Hugo Wolf attained a new and intimate union between music and poetry. Wolf was the composer who brought the 19th-century German Lied to its highest point of development.