All the world’s a song
A MAN should hear a little music, read a little poetry and see a fine picture every day of his life,’ recommended Goethe. Classical song encompasses two out of three, often taking in the German writer’s own words, which were widely used by Schubert and contemporaries.
Lieder—literally ‘songs’—grew in popularity in the Romantic era and spread from Germany across Europe, usually performed in cosy settings, as chamber music was. As using the words of Charles Baudelaire, Victor Hugo and Paul Verlaine. In England, John Ireland and Gerald Finzi based music on poems by Thomas Hardy and Roger Quilter set Shakespeare to song. became a catch-all term, describing everything from Britten’s to Poulenc’s .
