A love song is a song about romantic love, falling in love, heartbreak after a breakup, and the feelings that these experiences bring. Love songs can be found in a variety of different music genres. They can come in various formats, from sad and emotional pieces to fast songs that only have a faint love theme and major on the sound and popularity.
Love songs have existed for many years and can be found in the histories and cultures of most societies, though their ubiquity is a modern phenomenon.[clarification needed]
The oldest known love song is the love song of Shu-Sin, which was discovered in the library of Ashurbanipal in Mesopotamia.[1] It was about both romantic and erotic love. Prior to the discovery of the love song of Shu-Sin, Solomon's Song of Songs from the Bible was considered the oldest love song.[citation needed]
Early history
There are several theories about the origin of music in a general sense. According to Charles Darwin, it has to do with the choice of partner between woman and man (women choose male partners based on musical performances), and so the first music would be love music. However, Herbert Spencer saw music develop from a passionate eloquence, and music arise as an expression of emotions.[2]
In Ancient Greece, music was made at weddings, and there were love songs, as Erato as a muse was the protector of the love song, but knowledge is based on myths and on archaeological evidence, not on written music. In the 9th century a musical notation was developed in the Eastern Roman Empire, the neume notation, and after the addition of lines the staff was created around the 11th century, such that the exact form of music is only well-documented from this period.
Fol. 28r of the Gruuthuuse-manuscript, with to the bottom right the song 'Egidius waer bestu bleven'
An explanation of the genesis of love songs can be found in Denis de Rougemont's "Love in the Western World".[3] De Rougemont's thesis is that the love song grew out of the courtly love songs of the troubadours, and that those songs represented a rejection of the historical Christian notion of love.
Medieval love songs are called "Minnelied" in Middle High German, chant d'amour courtois by troubadour (Langues d'oc) or trouvère (Langues d'oïl). The (unfulfilled, unattainable) courtly love in a noble environment is central. The worship of a woman is a recurring theme. A number of personae return, such as a lover who regrets being rejected, the lady who regrets the absence of her lord who is on a crusade. Generosity, nobility of character, receptivity to new experiences and attention to beauty and appearance are common themes. The 14th century Codex Manesse includes love songs by dukes as John I, Duke of Brabant and William IX, Duke of Aquitaine.
The Gruuthuse manuscript - written in Middle Dutch - composed around 1400 in Bruges contains 147 songs, including a number of love songs with musical notation. The manuscript is from several lyricists, mostly unknown.[4][5]
Within classical music, Romanticism is most commonly associated with love music, especially romantic love music, and the love song is called a romance, although the term is not limited to vocal music.
The Oxford Dictionary of Music states that "generally it implies a specially personal or tender quality".[6] A romance can be narrative and usually amorous, but also a simple aria in an opera, as examples, Plaisir d'amour by Padre Martini and Georges Bizet's aria "Je crois entendre encore" (romance de Nadir) from the opera Les pêcheurs de perles.
Franz Schubert wrote several romances, and Giuseppe Verdi wrote "Celeste Aida" about the impossible love for an Ethiopian slave girl. Poets such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Federico Garcia Lorca wrote romances, which were later set to music, such as Take this waltz by Leonard Cohen.[7]
Medieval music encompasses the sacred and secular music of Western Europe during the Middle Ages, from approximately the 6th to 15th centuries. It is the first and longest major era of Western classical music and is followed by the Renaissance music; the two eras comprise what musicologists generally term as early music, preceding the common practice period. Following the traditional division of the Middle Ages, medieval music can be divided into Early (500–1000), High (1000–1300), and Late (1300–1400) medieval music.
A troubadour was a composer and performer of Old Occitan lyric poetry during the High Middle Ages (1100–1350). Since the word troubadour is etymologically masculine, a female equivalent is usually called a trobairitz.
Courtly love was a medieval European literary conception of love that emphasized nobility and chivalry. Medieval literature is filled with examples of knights setting out on adventures and performing various deeds or services for ladies because of their "courtly love". This kind of love was originally a literary fiction created for the entertainment of the nobility, but as time passed, these ideas about love spread to popular culture and attracted a larger literate audience. In the high Middle Ages, a "game of love" developed around these ideas as a set of social practices. "Loving nobly" was considered to be an enriching and improving practice.
In music, monophony is the simplest of musical textures, consisting of a melody, typically sung by a single singer or played by a single instrument player without accompanying harmony or chords. Many folk songs and traditional songs are monophonic. A melody is also considered to be monophonic if a group of singers sings the same melody together at the unison or with the same melody notes duplicated at the octave. If an entire melody is played by two or more instruments or sung by a choir with a fixed interval, such as a perfect fifth, it is also said to be monophony. The musical texture of a song or musical piece is determined by assessing whether varying components are used, such as an accompaniment part or polyphonic melody lines.
Bernart de Ventadorn was a French poet-composer troubadour of the classical age of troubadour poetry. Generally regarded as the most important troubadour in both poetry and music, his 18 extant melodies of 45 known poems in total is the most to survive from any 12th-century troubadour. He is remembered for his mastery as well as popularization of the trobar leu style, and for his prolific cançons, which helped define the genre and establish the "classical" form of courtly love poetry, to be imitated and reproduced throughout the remaining century and a half of troubadour activity.
Medieval French literature is, for the purpose of this article, Medieval literature written in Oïl languages during the period from the eleventh century to the end of the fifteenth century.
Na Castelloza was a noblewoman and trobairitz from Auvergne.
The trobairitz were Occitan female troubadours of the 12th and 13th centuries, active from around 1170 to approximately 1260. Trobairitz is both singular and plural.
Trouvère, sometimes spelled trouveur, is the Northern French form of the langue d'oc (Occitan) word trobador, the precursor of the modern French word troubadour. Trouvère refers to poet-composers who were roughly contemporary with and influenced by the trobadors, both composing and performing lyric poetry during the High Middle Ages, but while the trobadors composed and performed in Old Occitan, the trouvères used the northern dialects of France. One of the first known trouvères was Chrétien de Troyes and the trouvères continued to flourish until about 1300. Some 2130 trouvère poems have survived; of these, at least two-thirds have melodies.
"Parlez-moi d'amour" is a song written by Jean Lenoir in 1930. An English translation was written by Bruce Sievier and is known as "Speak to Me of Love" or "Tell Me About Love". Lucienne Boyer was the first singer to record the song, and she made it very popular in France, America, and the rest of the world.
A planctus is a lament or dirge, a song or poem expressing grief or mourning. It became a popular literary form in the Middle Ages, when they were written in Latin and in the vernacular. The most common planctus is to mourn the death of a famous person, but a number of other varieties have been identified by Peter Dronke. The earliest known example, the Planctus de obitu Karoli, was composed around 814, on the death of Charlemagne.
Peire d'Alvernhe or d'Alvernha was an Auvergnat troubadour with twenty-one or twenty-four surviving works. He composed in an "esoteric" and "formally complex" style known as the trobar clus. He stands out as the earliest troubadour mentioned by name in Dante's Divine Comedy.
"Plaisir d'amour" is a classical French love song written in 1784 by Jean-Paul-Égide Martini (1741–1816); it took its text from a poem by Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian (1755–1794), which appears in his novel Célestine.
Les pêcheurs de perles is an opera in three acts by the French composer Georges Bizet, to a libretto by Eugène Cormon and Michel Carré. It was premiered on 30 September 1863 at the Théâtre Lyrique in Paris, and was given 18 performances in its initial run. Set in ancient times on the island of Ceylon, the opera tells the story of how two men's vow of eternal friendship is threatened by their love for the same woman, whose own dilemma is the conflict between secular love and her sacred oath as a priestess. The friendship duet "Au fond du temple saint", generally known as "The Pearl Fishers Duet", is one of the best-known in Western opera.
Guillaume le Vinier (c. 1190–1245) was a cleric and trouvère, one of the most prolific composers in the genre. He has left compositions in all the major subgenres of trouvère poetry: chansons d'amour, jeux-partis, a lai, a descort, a chanson de mal mariée and a ballade. He wrote Marian songs and even an imaginary dialogue with a nightingale. His work can be dated with some precision: the poem "En tous tens" is quoted in the Roman de la violette, which was written around 1225.
Middle High German literature refers to literature written in German between the middle of the 11th century and the middle of the 14th. In the second half of the 12th century, there was a sudden intensification of activity, leading to a 60-year "golden age" of medieval German literature referred to as the mittelhochdeutsche Blütezeit. This was the period of the blossoming of Minnesang, MHG lyric poetry, initially influenced by the French and Provençal tradition of courtly love song. The same sixty years saw the composition of the most important courtly romances. again drawing on French models such as Chrétien de Troyes, many of them relating Arthurian material. The third literary movement of these years was a new revamping of the heroic tradition, in which the ancient Germanic oral tradition can still be discerned, but tamed and Christianized and adapted for the court.
Opéra imaginaire is a 1993 live-action animated musical anthology television film. It has been compared to films like Fantasia and Allegro Non Troppo, and consists of 12 different segments, most of which are based on different popular operas. All of these segments are done in a greater variety of animation styles than Fantasia had done. It was nominated for best production at the CableACE Awards in 1994.
The Trois poèmes d'amour is a 1914 song cycle for voice and piano by Erik Satie. It is the only set of mélodies Satie composed to his own texts. In performance the set lasts between 2 and 3 minutes.
The song Egidius waer bestu bleven is an early rondeau from Dutch literature and a famous Middle Dutch song.
The Chansonnier d'Arras is an illuminated manuscript of the late 13th century containing a variety of religious and philosophical texts and songs in 220 folios. It is written in the Picard dialect of Old French. It is now manuscript 657 in the municipal library of Arras. In trouvère studies, it is known by the conventional siglum A.
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