A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Liederspiel

by George Grove

LIEDERSPIEL, a play with songs introduced into it, such songs being either well-known and favourite airs—Lieder—or, if original, cast in that form. It is the German equivalent of the French Vaudeville, and of such English pieces as the 'Beggar's Opera,' the 'Waterman,' etc. The thing and the name are both due to J. F. Reichardt, whose 'Lieb' und Treue' was the first Liederspiel. It was an attempt to bring back the musical stage of Germany from artifice to natural sentiment. Reichardt's interesting account of his experiment and the reasons which led to it, will be found in the Allg. mus. Zeitung, 1801 (79–717). Strange and anomalous as such a thrusting of music into the midst of declamation may seem, the attempt was successful in Germany, as it had been in England fifty years before. The tunes could be recognised and enjoyed without effort, and the Liederspiel had a long popularity. After Reichardt, Himmel, Lortzing, Eberwein, and a number of other second-class writers composed Liederspiel which were very popular, and they even still are to be heard.—Mendelssohn often speaks of his 'Heimkehr' ('Son and Stranger') as a Liederspiel, but that can only be by an extension of the phrase beyond its original meaning.

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