ABSTRACT
If the piano in Classical chamber music began with the upper hand in terms of its status (in the sense that the added instruments were seen to be accompanying it), the situation in vocal music was quite other. The basis of the Lied in our period was laid by Christian Gottfried Krause, a lawyer and composer in Berlin, which became the centre for the First and Second Berlin Lied Schools. He and a local poet, Ramler, published a collection of anonymous song-settings in 1753 entitled Oden mit Melodien. The composers are now known to have included Franz Benda and C.P.E. Bach. This collection was an illustration of Krause's ideas on songwriting (published the year before), showing a new approach to the Lied. The emphasis was to be on text and on a melody that should faithfully and, perhaps simplistically, reflect it in an easy setting that would not require a professional singer. Part of a general reaction to Baroque complication and Rococo fussiness – which, with other concerns, also prompted C.W. von Gluck's operatic reforms – the lied was to be folk-like, non-chromatic, un-taxing rhythmically and, like the poetry, strophic (that is retaining the same music for each stanza with miniscule changes to accommodate those of the text) with a keyboard accompaniment so supportive and unobtrusive as to be almost unnecessary.
