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:For the Van Dyke Parks album, see Song Cycle (album). A song cycle is a group of songs designed to be performed in sequence as a single entity. Usually all of the songs are by the same composer and use words from the same poet. Unification can be achieved by a unifying theme or by a narrative, and is often underlined by musical means.
The term originated to describe cycles of art songs (often known by the German term "lieder") in classical music, and has been extended to apply to popular music.

Song cycles in classical music

The first generally accepted example of a song cycle is Ludwig van Beethoven's An die ferne Geliebte (1816). The genre was firmly established by the cycles of Franz Schubert: his Die schöne Müllerin (1823) and Winterreise (1827), based on poems by Wilhelm Müller, are among his most greatly admired works. Schubert's Schwanengesang (1828), though collected posthumously, is also frequently performed as a cycle. Robert Schumann's best known cycles are Dichterliebe (1840) and Frauenliebe und -leben (1840), and he also composed two collections entitled Liederkreis (both 1840; op. 24 & 39 on texts by Heine and Eichendorf respectively), a German word meaning a song cycle. Johannes Brahms contributed settings (op.33) of verses from Tieck's novel "Magelone", and modern performances usually include some sort of connecting narration. Gustav Mahler's Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, Kindertotenlieder, and Das Lied von der Erde expand the accompaniment from piano to orchestra. Hugo Wolf made the composition of song collections by a single poet something of a speciality although only the shorter Italian and Spanish Songbooks are performed at a single sitting, and Hans Eisler's "Hollywood Liederbuch" also falls into the category of anthology. Das Buch der hángende Garten by Arnold Schoenberg and Ernst Krenek's Reisebuch aus den österreichischen Alpen are important 20c examples, and the tradition is carried on by Wolfgang Rihm, with so far a dozen works. Hector Berlioz's Les nuits d'été (1841) pioneered the use of the orchestra, and the French cycle reached a pinacle in Gabriel Fauré's La bonne chanson, La chanson d'Ève and L'horizon chimérique and later in the works of Poulenc. Recent masterpieces such as Poèmes pour Mi, Chants de terre et de ciel and Harawi by Olivier Messiaen, and Paroles tissées and Chantefleurs et Chantefables by Witold Lutosławski should also be mentioned.
Perhaps the first English song cycle was Arthur Sullivan's The Window; or, The Song of the Wrens (1871), to a text of eleven poems by Tennyson. The composer and renowned Lieder accompanist Benjamin Britten also wrote cycles that are among the glories of the literature, including The Holy Sonnets of John Donne, 7 Sonnets of Michelangelo, Sechs Hölderlin-Fragmente, and Winter Words, all with piano accompaniment, and the orchestral Les Illuminations, Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings, and Nocturne. Other examples include Vaughan Williams' Songs of Travel, Samuel Barber's Hermit Songs (1953) and Despite and Still, and by Leonard Bernstein, Honey and Rue by André Previn (composed for the American soprano Kathleen Battle) and Raising Sparks by James MacMillan (1997). Modest Mussorgsky wrote Sunless (1874), The Nursery and Songs and Dances of Death, and Dmitry Shostakovich wrote cycles on English and Yiddish poets, as well as Michelangelo and Pushkin.
Cycles in other languages have been written by Granados, Grieg, Dvorak and Janacek, Bartók and Kodaly, Sibelius and Rautavaara, Nevit Kodali and A. Saygun, etc...

Song cycles in popular music

Song cycles have also been written by rock musicians. Many pop albums have included a short series of songs that tell a story, thus resembling a rock opera. Two early examples are The Who's "A Quick One While He's Away" (from A Quick One, which may have influenced Pete Townshend's rock opera Tommy), and James Pankow's "Ballet for a Girl in Buchannon" (from Chicago's album Chicago II). Other examples from this era include the Beach Boys/Brian Wilson album SMiLE (begun as an unfinished Beach Boys project in 1967, released as a Wilson solo album in 2004), and Smile lyricist Van Dyke Parks' debut album Song Cycle (1968).
   Popular music song cycles that focus on a particular theme rather than a narrative theme have been produced by many artists, usually as concept albums. A well-known example is Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon (1973), which deals with insanity and life's hardships. Their follow-up albums Wish You Were Here, Animals, The Wall (though more narrative and closer to rock opera) and The Final Cut, can also all be considered as song cycles, as can solo albums by Pink Floyd member, Roger Waters. The Beatles Abbey Road album contained on the second side a medley of songs composed by the group. The idea was gestated in Paul McCartney, who composed five of the eight songs in the suite. In addition, John Lennon wrote the remaining three songs, as well as parts of McCartney's songs to fill in the empty bars. Song cycles by other artists not necessarily belonging to the rock genre include Marvin Gaye's 1971 What's Going On, and Janet Jackson's Rhythm Nation 1814 (1989), both of which address contemporary social and political issues. More recently, R. Kelly's Trapped in the Closet has added another song cycle to the repertoire, though it's also listed as a mini-opera. Outside of the United States and Europe, the song cycle form was used to great success in the seminal "Os Afro-Sambas", composed by Brazilian musicians Vinicius de Moraes and Baden Powell de Aquino. This series of songs was dedicated to various deities in the Afro-Brazilian candomblé religion, and has inspired generations of musicians since its debut in the 1960s.
   Besides the few minutes of silence after the final song, Marilyn Manson's second album, Antichrist Superstar, has been considered a song cycle. Additionally, when the album is put on full loop, the 99th track (known as "Empty Sounds Of Hate") blends into the first song, "Irresponsible Hate Anthem". Similarly on The Mars Volta's release Frances The Mute, there's a song cycle between the last track, "Cassandra Gemini (Pt.E) - Sarcophagi", and the first track, "Cygnus...Vismund Cygnus (Pt.A) - Sarcophagi".
   Heavy metal band Iced Earth commonly ends their albums with three-song cycles, including The Dark Saga, Something Wicked This Way Comes, and The Glorious Burden. Guitarist Jon Schaffer also did this on the debut album of his side project Demons & Wizards. Iron Maiden used the same effect on their release Seventh Son of a Seventh Son.
   Another group of note to utilise cycling is Terrorvision, whose albums Shaving Peaches and How To Make Friends And Influence People. The former work cycles with a refrain to the lead track, "III Wishes", being heard at the end of final track "On A Mission" (though this doesn't play out as intended on first editions of the album, which have a hidden track, or on later editions of the album, which have a bonus track in the form of the single (remixed) version of "Tequila"). The latter work both begins and ends with a female vocal repeating "tic, toc". In this case it's the final track on the album, "What Makes You Tick", segueing it's vocal into the beginning of the lead track, "Alice, What's the Matter". Again, the presence of a hidden track on the album makes this less effective than it could have been in practice.

Song cycles in musical theater

Song-cycle musical theater works are becoming extremely popular among both composers and fans of the genre. Examples include Cats by Andrew Lloyd Webber, Songs for a New World by Jason Robert Brown, William Finn's Elegies, and William Russell's Elegies for Angels, Punks and Raging Queens.

Bibliography

Ruth O. Bingham, "The Early Nineteenth-Century Song Cycle", in The Cambridge Companion to the Lied, ed. James Parsons (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 101-119.

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