Mozart invented the German lied – “song” in English – when he set a poem by Goethe to music. Composers such as Loewe, Zelter and Reichardt followed, but they are forgotten today because of Schubert, Schumann, Brahms and Wolf, who turned the lied into an art form. Beethoven wrote quite a few lieder, and some of them are quite good, although he never had Schubert’s gift for combining the German poetic tradition with the Italian melodic tradition.
Finding videos of lieder with English subtitles is difficult, which is why I’ve never done a Schubert series. But I’ve found a few, which I will share.
This is Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau with Gerald Moore on piano, and it looks to have been taped in the Seventies.