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This guide will cover the process of learning and performing an art song. Unlike an opera aria, or a traditional musical theatre song, an art song is a stand alone piece of music, usually based on a piece of poetry. Art song presents its own challenges in performance, but can also offer performers great scope for creating character and for telling stories that are important to them. Art songs are often required for auditions at college or university level, particularly for classical voice courses. They can also provide excellent repertoire for solo performance opportunities, are standard material for competitions, and offer a wide range of beautifully expressive music for every different taste.

While this performance guide focuses primarily on art songs in opera, there are musical theatre applications. In contemporary musical theatre, Jason Robert Brown and William Finn are two composers that regularly create song cycles.

Terminology

• Art Song: An art song is a piece of classical music which involves a solo singer and, normally, a pianist. An art song usually stands alone, or is part of a song cycle. Art songs appear in many different languages, including English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Portugese, Russian, Czech, Hungarian, Polish, Latvian, Romanian, Icelandic, Arabic, Afrikaans, Malay, and Tagalog, amongst others.
• Coach / Repetiteur: A coach or repetiteur is not a voice teacher. Where your voice teacher will focus on your vocal technique, a coach or repetiteur will help you to understand the different musical elements that go into a particular piece. They will also help with correct pronunciation of any foreign languages, and work with you on musical style. You may work with more than one coach or repetiteur on the same material and have several different approaches. A coach or repetiteur will work from the piano, playing the orchestral reduction in your vocal score, to imitate the sound of the orchestra that you would hear in the opera.
• Collaborative Pianist / Accompanist: A collaborative pianist may also be a coach or repetiteur, but the role of collaborative pianist is more specialised to this repertoire. Although they are often referred to as an ‘accompanistâ€� this is actually a misnomer, particularly in art song repertoire. The pianist is as important in an art song as the singer, and the pieces are actually written to be a duet between the two performers; or a ‘collaborationâ€�.
• Composizioni da Camera: In Italian there are many names for art songs, including ‘ballataâ€�, ‘romanzaâ€�, ‘ariettaâ€�, ‘ariosoâ€�, and often even ‘ariaâ€�. To differentiate their art songs from their operatic compositions, Italian composers such as Bellini and Verdi often created song cycles or collections called ‘Composizioni da Cameraâ€� or ‘chamber compositionsâ€�.
• Lieder: Lieder is the German word for ‘songsâ€�. German Lieder are a branch of art song, and while they can include any compositions in German, the term usually refers to songs from the Romantic Period by composers such as Franz Schubert, Robert Schumann, Clara Schumann, Johannes Brahms, Gustav Mahler, and Hugo Wolf. The word ‘liederâ€� is plural, one song would be called a ‘liedâ€�. German Lieder are thought to be the original art songs, and many of them were written to poems by Goethe.
• ²Ñé±ô´Ç»å¾±±ð: A ‘mélodieâ€� is a French art song which, like German Lieder, became popular during the 19th century, with composers such as Gabriel Faure, Hector Berlioz, Claude Debussy, Henri Duparc, Pauline Viardot, and Reynaldo Hahn. Even in the 20th century, Francis Poulenc was still composing mélodie.
• Song Cycle: A song cycle is a collection of art songs which are grouped together, either because they tell a particular story, or because they are written on the same theme, or because they were all composed at the same time as a series. Song cycles can offer performers an extended exploration of a particular character, such as Schubert’s Frauenliebe und Leben (‘A woman’s love and lifeâ€�) which follows one character through different periods in her life. Song cycles can vary in length from a few minutes, to an hour or more. Occasionally, song cycles are written with particular songs intended for different voices, such as Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde. The different voices play different roles within the work.
• Score: The word ‘scoreâ€� is often used as shorthand for any printed sheet music with several parts on. For art songs, the score will include lines for the singer and the piano accompaniment.
• Transposition: The process of transposition involves moving a piece of music out of the key it was written in, to another key.