Dictionary of Music - Birding America

lied 215bered chiefly for a single opera, I Pagliacci (“TheClowns”). First performed in 1892, it was the onlyone of his numerous compositions to achieve greatsuccess. I Pagliacci is an example of late nineteenthcenturyverismo style, which aimed at presenting arealistic portrayal of life.Leonin (le ô naN′), fl. c. 1163–1190. Also, Latin,Leoninus (lē on′i nəs). A French composer of thelate twelfth century who worked at the Cathedral ofNotre Dame, in Paris. Leonin and his successor, Perotin,were the two greatest composers of the NotreDame school, Leonin being especially renowned forhis organa, compositions with two voice-parts infree rhythm. See also ORGANUM.LeoninusSee LEONIN.letter notation Any system of writing music inwhich letters (or numbers) stand for the differentpitches. Today letters are used only to refer topitches in speech or in writing about music, whereasnotes and other symbols are used in the actual notationof music. See also TABLATURE.l.h. An abbreviation for “left hand” or the German,linke Hand, used in keyboard music as a directionto play a note or passage with the left hand.L’Homme armé (lôm Ar mā′).ARMÉ, L’.See HOMMElibretto (lē bret′tô) Italian. The text to which anopera or oratorio is set. Until the late nineteenth century,opera librettos were nearly always written bysomeone other than the composer, and often thelibrettist was considered as important as the composer.Among the most famous librettists are OttavioRinuccini (1562–1621), who wrote the texts of someof the earliest operas, by Peri, Caccini, and Monteverdi;Pietro Metastasio (1698–1782), who wrotelibrettos for Alessandro Scarlatti, Handel, andMozart; Lorenzo da Ponte (1749–1838), who wrotethe librettos for Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro (“TheMarriage of Figaro”), Così fan tutte (“Women AreLike That”), and Don Giovanni; Arrigo Boito(1842–1918), librettist of Verdi’s last two operas,Otello and Falstaff; and Gilbert, of Gilbert and Sullivanfame. Wagner was the first composer to insist onwriting all of his own texts, a practice that has beenfollowed (though less strictly) by such composers asRimsky-Korsakov, Busoni, Delius, Holst, Hindemith,and Menotti. Later composers are divided,some writing their own librettos and others relyingon librettists.licenza, con alcuna (kôn äl koo — ′nä lē chen′tsä)Italian. A direction indicating that the performermay have some freedom in interpreting a passage.lied (lēt) pl. lieder (lē′dər) German: “song.” 1 InEnglish, the term for a type of romantic art song forsolo voice with piano accompaniment written sincethe early nineteenth century by Schubert, Schumann,Loewe, Wolf, Brahms, and other German composers.(The German term for it is Kunstlied.) Lieder areoften set to very fine poems, by poets such as Goetheor Heine. The accompaniment is often as importantas the vocal part, particularly in those series of liedercalled song cycles. The structure of the lied varieswidely. Some consist of a number of stanzas with arefrain repeated after each stanza. Sometimes themusic for the different stanzas is the same, and inother cases it varies from stanza to stanza. Otherlieder are in three-part form, consisting of an openingsection, a middle section, and a concluding sectionthat is exactly or almost identical to the opening section.Many of the great lieder are, however, throughcomposed;that is, the music follows the poetry,changing throughout the piece, without any specialscheme of repetition. A famous example of athrough-composed lied is Schubert’s “Der Erlkönig”(The Erl-King). Although the nineteenth century wasthe outstanding period of lieder composition, latercomposers have produced some notable examples,among them Mahler, Richard Strauss, Reger, and, inmore modern idioms, Schoenberg, Berg, Webern,and Hindemith. Songs very similar to German liederwere composed in other countries, most notably inFrance, by Chausson, Duparc, Fauré, and others.Such a song is generally called an ART SONG. (Seealso BALLADE, def. 3; SONG; SONG CYCLE.) 2 In thefifteenth and sixteenth centuries, a polyphonic (with