A song cycle is a group of songs designed to be performed in a sequence as a single entity. As a rule, all of the songs are by the same composer and often use words from the same poet or lyricist. Unification can be achieved by a narrative or a persona common to the songs, or even, as in Schumann's second Liederkreis, by the atmospheric setting of the forest. The unity of the cycle is often underlined by musical means, famously in the return in the last song of the opening music in Beethoven's An die ferne Geliebte.
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.
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The first generally accepted example of a song cycle is Ludwig van Beethoven's An die ferne Geliebte (op. 98, 1816), along with the song cycle Die Temperamente beim Verluste der Geliebten (J. 200-3, op. 46, 1816) by Carl Maria von Weber. 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 great cycles were all composed in 1840. They comprise Dichterliebe, Frauenliebe und -leben, two collections entitled Liederkreis (op. 24 & 39 on texts by Heine and Eichendorf respectively) - a German word meaning a song cycle - and the Kerner Lieder (op.35), a Liederreihe (literally "song row") on poems by Justinus Kerner. Johannes Brahms composed settings (op.33) of verses from Tieck's novel "Magelone", and modern performances usually include some sort of connecting narration. He also wrote Four Serious Songs (Vier ernste Gesänge), Op. 121 (1896). 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 hängende Garten by Arnold Schoenberg and Ernst Krenek's Reisebuch aus den österreichischen Alpen are important 20th century 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 pinnacle 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 Songfest by Leonard Bernstein, Hammarskjöld Portrait (1974), Les Olympiques (1976), Tribute to a Hero (1981), Next Year in Jerusalem (1985), and A Year of Birds (1995) by Malcolm Williamson, 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, Mohammed Fairouz, Manuel de Falla, Juan María Solare, Edvard Grieg, Lorenzo Ferrero, Dvořák and Janáček, Bartók and Kodály, Sibelius and Rautavaara, Frederic Mompou and Xavier Montsalvatge, Nevit Kodali and A. Saygun etc.
Song cycles written by popular musicians are a short series of songs that tell a story or focus on a particular theme. Some musicians also blend tracks together, so that the start of the next song continues from the preceding one. A modern example of this can be found in Pink Floyd's popular album The Wall.
Song-cycle musical theater works are becoming extremely popular among both composers and fans of the genre. One of the earliest was "December Songs", created by Maury Yeston, and commissioned by Carnegie Hall for its Centennial celebration. They have been translated and performed in both French and German. Other examples include Cats by Andrew Lloyd Webber, Songs for a New World by Jason Robert Brown, William Finn's Elegies, and Bill Russell's Elegies for Angels, Punks and Raging Queens. Also 'Myths and Hymns' by Adam Guettel
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.