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Poetry in Melody: A History of the Art Song
March 23 at 3:00 pm – 4:00 pm
$10
RSVP in Advance
Recent graduates of Towson University, baritone Kellen Johnson and pianist Joel Lingg will present a recital in celebration of both this legacy and of springtime: a season of love, loss, and nature.
In the world of Western classical music, there is a category of vocal compositions known as art songs. An art song is a piece most often written for solo voice and piano, then later for chamber ensembles or full orchestra. The lyrics for these songs are often taken from poetry, written either by a poet or the composers themselves.
The art song has a long, widespread history in the Western classical music tradition, going by different names from one country to the next: from the Italian canzone; the Spanish canción or the older tonadilla; the French mélodie and the more recent chanson; to the German lied. Many of the most famous Euro-American classical instrumental composers occasionally wrote art songs, including Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Liszt, Brahms, Mahler, Berg, Berlioz, Fauré, Debussy, Saint-Saëns, Ravel, Satie, de Falla, Granados, Vaughan Williams, Britten, Copland, Barber, and Bernstein. Operatic composers such as Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, Verdi, Bizet, Massenet, Wagner, Leoncavallo, Mascagni, and Puccini also wrote art songs as preparatory pieces for the operas they composed; the melodies from these smaller songs are often quoted in their stage works. Among the poets with their texts set to art songs range from Shakespeare and Goethe, to Victor Hugo and Emily Dickinson, to Paul Laurence Dunbar and Langston Hughes.
Modern art songs were first developed in the late eighteenth century. These early songs acted as music for leisure and entertainment in the private parlors and salons of the European middle and upper classes. With time, the art song became a more serious genre of the classical vocal tradition, especially after the contributions of Franz Schubert, who left an output of approximately six hundred lieder to his credit! Art songs became so fixed in the classical music world, eventually becoming the staple of an opera singer’s recital repertoire alongside more familiar opera arias. Since its inception, women composers also became famous for their art songs; several of these ladies, notably Francesca Caccini, Isabella Colbran, Maria Malibran, Pauline Viardot, Lili Boulanger, Fanny Mendelssohn, Clara Schumann, and Alma Mahler, were the daughters, sisters, and wives of more famous male composers. Beginning in the late nineteenth century, African-American composers began to add on to the art song tradition with religious songs from the antebellum South, or spirituals.
Originally sung by the enslaved, traditional spirituals combined Euro-American hymns with African diasporic rhythms; sometimes these spirituals even acted as codes dictating instructions for escape from captivity via the Underground Railroad! Harry T. Burleigh, Roland Hayes, Florence Price, Hall Johnson, and Margaret Bonds were among the first Black composers to write spiritual arrangements and art songs for concert and recital platforms; Paul Robeson, Marian Anderson, and Leontyne Price were among the first Black recitalists and opera singers to receive international acclaim.
