brighter and sweeter. When the three stops, 16, 8, and 4 feet are grouped together on the same manual their effect is very beautiful. The late Edmund Schulze combined them in this manner in the choir organ at the Temple Church in 1860, also in his fine organ at Doncaster (1862). Lewis adopted the same plan at Ripon Cathedral, ami it has been still more recently followed by Willis at Salisbury Cathedral.
LIED, a German poem intended for singing; by no means identical with the French chanson, or the Italian canzone. All three terms are in fact untranslateable, from the essentially national character of the ideas embodied in each form; the German Lied being perhaps the most faithful reflection of the national sentiment. A German looking at nature in her infinite variety of moods is almost irresistibly impelled to utter his thoughts in song. Certain aspects of nature appeal with peculiar force to the German mind—such, for instance, as the forest, the waste, the fall of rain, the murmur of the brook, the raging of the tempest; and connected with these certain other objective ideas, such as the hunter in the forest, the lonely bird, or the clouds stretching over the landscape, the house sheltering from wind and rain, the mill-wheels turned by the brook, etc. Such are the topics of the secular Lied, which have been embodied by Goethe, Schiller, Heine, and a hundred smaller poets, in imperishable lyrics, perfectly suited for music. Those of the sacred Lied are, trust in God, the hope of future blessedness and union, and other religious sentiments, etc. There are Volkslieder,[1] that is to say, Lieder whose origin is lost in obscurity, of both kinds. The development of instrumental music during the earlier half of the last century having provided other means of expression for such feelings besides song, the Volkslied has gradually disappeared, giving place to the Kunstlied, of which the accompaniment is an important feature. This new form, naturalised by Haydn, Mozart, Reichardt, Schultz, Himmel, Beethoven, Conradin Kreutzer, and C. M. von Weber, attained in the hands of Franz Schubert to that extension and perfection of expression which makes it so dear to the German nation. Since his time the accompaniment has constantly assumed greater prominence, so that the original form has nearly disappeared, the musical treatment being everything, and the poetry comparatively of less moment. Schumann may be considered the pioneer in this direction, and after him follow Brahms and Robert Franz. With the two last composers the accompaniment, as rich in melody as it is in harmony and modulation, more than divides attention with the words.
The best works on the subject are Dr. Schneider's 'Geschichte des Liedes,' 3 vols. (Leipzig, 1853–65,), full of detail; Lindner's 'Geschichte des Deutschen Liedes im XVIII Jahrhundert' (Leipzig. 1871); and Schuré's 'Histoire du Lied.' [See Song.]
LIED-FORM. The term Lied-form has unfortunately been used by different writers with different significations; and the vagueness which results, conjoined with the fact that the term is not happily chosen, renders it doubtful whether it had not better be entirely abandoned.
Some people use it merely to define any slight piece which consists mainly of a simple melody simply accompanied, in which sense it would be perfectly adapted to many of Mendelssohn's Lieder ohne Worte, and innumerable other pieces of that class of small compositions for the pianoforte by various authors, as well as to songs. On the other hand, some writers have endeavoured to indicate by the term a form of construction, in the same sense as they would speak of the forms of the movements of Sonatas. For the diffusion of this view Herr Bernhard Marx appears to be responsible, and his definition will be best given in his own terms.
In the fourth section of the fifth division of his 'Allgemeine Musiklehre' he writes as follows: 'Under this name of Lied-form we group all such pieces of music as have one single main idea, which is presented either in one developed section, or as a period (with first and second phrase), or even as a period divided into first and second similar parts, or into first, second, and third parts (in which case the last is generally a repetition of the first). It is possible in Lied-form to have even two such complete forms aggregated into one piece; but then they occur without close connection or interweaving with one another, perhaps with the two parts twice or three times repeated; in which case the second group will be called a Trio, and the third the second Trio, and be treated as a second independent piece. For the sake of contrast, such Trios will often be in another key, or in other key relationship, such as minor corresponding to major, and major to minor, of the same key, etc., return being afterwards made to the first portion and the original key to make the piece complete. 'In this Lied-form are cast most of the Lieder which are intended to be sung, dances, marches, many études, introductions,' etc.
In the third section of the fourth division of his 'Lehre von des Musikalischen Komposition,' Marx further gives formulas, or types, of the harmonic distribution of this kind of composition; and in the earlier part of the second volume (Bk. 3) of the same work he discusses the details of the structure at length.
To this classification there appear to be two main objections. The first is the choice of the distinctive name 'Lied' for a form which comprises dances, marches, and other alien forms of music. Were there nothing else to say against it, it would certainly jar against our sense of fitness to have to speak of the funeral march in the Eroica Symphony, or the Scherzo of the 9th Symphony, or even of far less conspicuously alien examples, such as the Waltz in the Freyschütz, or a Minuet of Haydn or Mozart, as in 'Lied-form.'
- ↑ The English have unfortunately no equivalent word for Volkslied. We have the thing, though of a very different kind from that of Germany, but bare no term to express the whole kind. Mr. Chappell's great work on English Volkslieder is entitled 'The Ballad Literature and Popular Music of the Olden Time.' 'Popular,' however, has now acquired a distinct meaning of its own.
