Perceiving The Creative Styles Of Different Composers From The Goethe’s Same Lyrics Art Songs

Art song as a small size of comprehensive art form is crucial in the Western musicgenre, is a typical representative of the musical development process. From18to19century, the development of the art song has achieved innumerable success, this isinevitably related to its combination with poetry.The author while conducting research about "Goethe poem songs Showcase",published in Shanghai Music Press in2006and of which translation and annotationwas done by Mr Renkang Qian, found in this famous book that Beethoven, Schubert,Liszt, these three people have proved that the composer of the Neoclassical period toRomantic period of music history have used Goethe’s poetry such as “The joy andpain”,“Mignon Songs”,“Who know how to Acacia”“"Song of the Night Wanderer(1)”,“Song of the Night Wanderer (2)” to create art songs. When faced with the samelyrics, different composers have created distinctive art songs. The authorprogressively and from outside to inside conducted a research.Firstly, this article did a literature review about Goethe and his poetry, identifiedthe main reason why his poetry has received composers’s widespread interest,appreciation and creation competition: the creative musical poetry and pure poetry ofGoethe poetry are one. His poetry not only has a rich musical characteristic but is alsoeasy to compose.The most important is that the works of Goethe have characteristicssuch as profound philosophy, advanced thoughts, rich feelings, lofty mood. This islikely to arouse the composer’s inspiration. Almost each works of his have attractedthe attention of the composers, attract countless composers in competingcompositions. From Neoclassical period to Romantic period, his poetry occupies animportant position in the composer’s songwritings.Secondly, the author has conducted a literature analysis about the14same lyrics artsongs by the three composers, and has a basic grasp of their creative style.Then Theauthor conducted research and comparison about the creative approach of these artsongs, mainly four aspects: Harmony, tonality, musical structure, pianoaccompaniment texture in order to identify the uniqueness of their creative approaches.Lastly,The author not only compared the creative characteristics and music styles ofthe three composers’s art songs, but the most important is to research the root cause ofthe phenomenon. The author discussed from four angles: historical background, lifeexperiences, aesthetic background, cultural values, used the works instance todescribe the three composers’ different experiences and different ways of expressionin the same emotional areas to enable people to have a more objective andcomprehensive understanding of the three composers, that are Beethoven, Schubert,and Liszt, and deepen the understanding of music polysemy as well as a correct graspof the musical content.