Song

At the outset it is necessary to distinguish between that more distinctly popular type of song, known as the V olksthumliches Lied, in which the same melody served for all the stanzas of a poem (as in the Volkslied itself, on which the V olksthiimliches Lied was modelled), and the durchcomponiertes Lied, or song "composed through," in which the music forms a running com mentary on a poem, without respect to its form, or, if stanza form is preserved, varying the music in some stanzas or in all in accord ance with their poetical significance. Generally speaking, the former aims at a wider audience than the latter, the appreciation of which involves some degree of culture and intelligence, inas much as it aims at interpreting more complex and difficult kinds of poetry. In the 18th century the simple V olksthiimliches Lied in strophic form was most in favour, and those who care to trace its history in the hands of popular composers like J. A. Hiller, J. A. P. Schulz, Reichardt, and Zelter, can easily do so by con sulting Hartel's Liederlexicon (Leipzig, 1867), one of a number of similar publications. Side by side with the outpouring of some what obvious and sentimental melodiousness which such volumes reveal, it must be remembered that the attention of greater men to instrumental composition, the growing power to compose for keyed instruments (which began to replace the lute in the middle of the 57th century) and the mechanical improvements through which spinet, clavichord and harpsichord were advancing towards the modern pianoforte, were preparing the way for the modern Lied, in which the pianoforte accompaniment was to play an in creasingly important part. C. P. E. Bach (d. 1788) alone of his contemporaries gave serious attention to lyrical song, selecting the best poetry he could get hold of, and aspiring to something beyond merely tuneful melody. The real outburst of song had to wait for the inspiration, which came with the poetry of Goethe and Schiller.

Haydn and Mozart.

It is unfortunate that Haydn and Mozart, endowed with all the gifts that make for beautiful song except that of literary discrimination, should have left so little of real value. There is, indeed, much to admire in some of Haydn's canzonets, of which "My mother bids me bind my hair" fully deserves its popularity, while Mozart's "Trennung," "Ungliickliche Liebe," and "Komm' Heber Mai," are small treasures which we could not afford to lose. But in only two songs by Mozart, "Abendempfindung" and "Das Veilchen," is the goal to which the art was to advance clearly discerned and in the latter case per fectly attained. Both are durchcomponiert, in both the general spirit, as well as each isolated point of beauty in the verses is seized and portrayed with unerring insight. "Abendempfindung" is seriously marred by carelessness in accentuation (still worse examples may be seen in "An Chloe") and by annoying repetition of words, due to the development of the melody into a formal and effective climax, on instrumental, not vocal, lines.

In "Das Veilchen," however, where Mozart touched a poem that was worthy of his genius, he produced a masterpiece— rightly regarded as the first perfect specimen of the durchcom poniertes Lied. Every incident in the flower's story is minutely

followed, with a detailed pictorial and dramatic treatment (in volving several changes of key, contrasts between major and minor, variations of rhythm and melody, declamatory or recita tive passages), which was quite new to the art.

Beethoven.

With Beethoven, song was suddenly exalted to a place among the highest branches of composition. Taken in hand with the utmost seriousness by the greatest musician of the age and associated by him, for the most part, with lyrical poetry of a high order, it could at last raise its head and, freed from the conventional puerilities of the salon, look a larger world confi dently in the face.

It cannot, however, be admitted that Beethoven was an ideal song composer. His genius moved more easily in the field of ab stract music. The forms of poetry were to him rather a hindrance than a help. His tendency is to press into his melodies more mean ing than the words will bear. The very qualities, in fact, which make his instrumental melodies so inspiring, tell against his songs. Though his stronger critical instinct kept him, as a rule, from the false accentuation which marred some of the work of Haydn and Mozart, yet, like them, he could not free himself from the instrumentalist's point of view, at any rate in the larger song-forms. The concluding melody of "Busslied" would be equally effective played as a violin solo; the same is true of the final movements of "Adelaide" and of the otherwise noble cycle "An die ferne Geliebte"—movements in which the words have to adapt themselves as well as they can to the exigencies of thematic development and to submit to serious displacements and tiresome repetitions.

In songs of a solemn or deeply emotional nature, Beethoven is at his best, as in that cycle, to sacred words of Gellert, of which "Die Ehre Gottes aus der Natur" stands as a lasting monument of simple but expressive grandeur, in "Trocknet nicht," "In questa tomba," "Partenza," in the first of four settings to Goethe's "Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt," and more than all, in the cycle men tioned above, "An die ferne Geliebte." We have left behind the pretty artificialities so dear to the i8th century, that play around fictitious shepherds and shepherdesses, and enter the field of deeper human feeling, with the surrounding influences upon it of nature and romance.

The new spirit of the age, represented in German poetry by the lyrics of Burger, Voss, Claudius and 'lofty, members of the famous Gottinger Hainbund, and more notably by those of Goethe and Schiller, communicates itself in Beethoven to song. It needs no large study of his songs to perceive that the accompaniment has assumed, especially in the "Liederkreis," an importance im measurably greater than in the songs of any previous composer. It begins to take a real, not a perfunctory, part in interpretation, providing both a background and a commentary to the poet's verses.