Talk:Adelaide (Beethoven)

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Classical music

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as to the text itself

Schubert wrote his own setting, D.95, in 1814 (published in 1848). ELSchissel (talk) 14:57, 29 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Draft: Genre

As with other genres of Western art music, the label attached to "Adelaide" has not always been the same. For instance, on the title page, the work is called a cantata (German Kantate). The work was also included in Deutsche Grammophon's collection of Beethoven's solo music in the volume labeled Lieder, implying that its genre is described by the singular of this work, namely "Lied". The latter word basically means just "song," but over time it acquired a specialist meaning, "German art song performed by a vocal soloist with (usually) piano accompaniment". The latter meaning became more prominent after Beethoven's lifetime, as what we now call the "lieder canon" expanded with the work of Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Wolf, Mahler, and other composers. But in Beethoven's day, the lied genre was not a firm concept yet, and so his songs could appear under different labels. Whojee Whatsee explains as follows:

While today Adelaide is found in the Lieder und Gesänge volume of Beethoven's complete works and is colloquially considered to be a German lied, across the nineteenth century its generic identity was far less clear. Beethoven referred to the work as a 'cantata'; other labels soon emerged in editions and reviews, including Gesang, ballade, romance, elegy, and lied, and often the work was published with no generic designation whatsoever.

The genre "cantata," given by Beethoven (or perhaps, his publisher) has also evolved in usage: the rediscovery of Bach's extraordinary series of cantatas, which took place after Beethoven's time, led to a widespread sense that the canonical sense of "cantata" denotes a work, usually with orchestra, chorus, and vocal soloists; and written in several movements. The Italian word says little in itself, meaning simply "work that is sung".