What is Lied?
'''Lied''' (pronounced “leet”) is the [[German language|German]] word for “song” (the [[plural]] is '''Lieder''' – pronounced “leader”). The word Lied is used in [[music]] to describe the songs that were written by German-speaking [[composer|composers]] of [[classical music]]. Songs composed by classical composers are sometimes called “[[art song|art songs]]”. Lieder are normally songs for a singer with [[piano]] [[accompaniment (music)|accompaniment]]. They were mostly composed in the [[19th century]] which was the period known as the [[Romantic music|Romantic period]]. The most famous composers of Lieder were [[Franz Schubert]], [[Robert Schumann]], [[Johannes Brahms]], [[Hugo Wolf]] and [[Richard Strauss]]. In German [[culture]] the Lied as an art song goes back to the [[Middle Ages]]. [[Walther von der Vogelweide]] was a 12th-13th century [[minnesinger]] who composed and sang songs for important people at the [[royal court]]. Like most minnesinger, he was a [[poet]] as well as a composer, writing words for his own songs. The Lied in the Romantic period was usually written by two different people: the poet wrote the words and then the composer “set the words” to music. 19th century composers mostly took great care to choose good poetry for their songs. The poetry was often by famous poets such as [[Goethe]] and [[Schiller]]. Although most Lieder were composed in the Romantic period, the beginnings were there in the [[Classical music period]]. [[Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart|Mozart]] wrote a song called ''Das Veilchen'' (''The Violet'') and [[Beethoven]] wrote several songs. It was Schubert who was to be the greatest of all Lieder composers. Schubert wrote over 600 songs. Very often he wrote in a form which had been used by Walther von der Vogelweide: three verses of which the first two have the same music (A-A-B, or as von der Vogelweide called them: “Stollen, Stollen, Abgesang”). Other songs of his are what is known as “durchkomponiert” (“through composed”). Here each verse is different, so that t