LiederNet
June 14, 2015 9:19 PM   Subscribe

The LiederNet Archive is the world's largest reference archive of texts and translations of art songs and choral works, currently cataloguing 135,129 vocal pieces and 25,078 translations.

Created in 1995 by Emily Ezust, what began as a website of German texts to Lieder "grew to encompass all art song and choral music in any language, with translations to any language."
posted by jedicus (8 comments total) 23 users marked this as a favorite
 
This is a great site for discovering who has written music around your favorite poet. Shakspeare? William Carlos Williams? Walt Whitman? Emily Dickinson? You can search the heck out of this site.

The composer Ned Rorem has been known for his good taste in poetry.
posted by amtho at 9:46 PM on June 14, 2015


Amazing post!
posted by donatella at 11:02 PM on June 14, 2015


This is great -- thanks for posting!
posted by holborne at 5:51 AM on June 15, 2015


It's one of my go-to pages when looking for new music. And amtho, my small brush with greatness was meeting Ned Rorem.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 6:12 AM on June 15, 2015 [1 favorite]


This is great, but it feels lacking in sheet music or even midi versions of the music. With only the lyrics it feels a bit dead. But the reason for this is probably that sheet music is sold at a high price and jealously guarded with copyrights. :(
posted by sixohsix at 6:49 AM on June 15, 2015


If you're lucky enough to live near a music library, or can order sheet music for the few songs you have time to work on, then LiederNet becomes a valuable resource for _finding_ songs that interest you. Then you can go to the library or order the songs you want. If you want to hear them first, there's often a video of someone performing them in a recital on YouTube.

I've also used it as an aid to getting a quick translation; if I have a song in a library book with no translation, or what I suspect is a bad translation, I can often find the lyrics in LiederNet, then paste them into a web translation engine or some other resource.
posted by amtho at 6:56 AM on June 15, 2015


If you're looking for sheet music, the LiederNet FAQ has some suggestions:

"To locate public-domain sheet-music online, a few good starting points are the IMSLP / Petrucci Music Library (the free public domain sheet music library), Art Song Central and, for choral works, the Choral Public Domain Library."
posted by jedicus at 7:41 AM on June 15, 2015


RIP PianoSheets.org
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 3:21 PM on June 15, 2015


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