# Asian lieder?



## Cnote11 (Jul 17, 2010)

Does anybody know any composers who have composed art songs in their native languages, such as Arabic, Korean, Japanese, Mandarin, Hindi, etc.?


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Most of Takemitsu's songs are pop songs, rather than art songs. He did do a piece for chorus, soloist, and orchestra (that I don't particularly care for, too Hollywood-esque) called My Way of Life. Other than that, I'm not sure.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Possibly Bright Sheng for madarin art songs.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

Cnote11 said:


> Does anybody know any composers who have composed art songs in their native languages, such as Arabic, Korean, Japanese, Mandarin, Hindi, etc.?


I, too, also want to know this.


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## Praeludium (Oct 9, 2011)

Isn't Takemistu's Coral island written in Japanese ? That's the impression I got when listening to it, but I'm not sure.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Yes, that had slipped my mind. I'd hesitate to call it "art song" though, more like an orchestral piece with vocals. He also did a piece for chorus called Wind Horse in his concert music style, and maybe one other(?), but the rest of the chorus pieces are pop songs, many of them originally for film scores he wrote.


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## LordBlackudder (Nov 13, 2010)




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## Turangalîla (Jan 29, 2012)

Haha, I was about to mention Messiaen's _Harawi_ but then I realized that the songs are South American, not Asian. Nevermind .


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

CarterJohnsonPiano said:


> Haha, I was about to mention Messiaen's _Harawi_ but then I realized that the songs are South American, not Asian. Nevermind .


Also set primarily in French...with bits of other languages and nonsense syllables thrown in. Great work, but not at all Asian.


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## JamesBond (Mar 22, 2013)

Not sure


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Rabindranath Tagore, a Bengali who won the 1913 Nobel Prize for literature, was a famous composer of art songs. Per Wiki, "Tagore was a prolific composer with 2,230 songs to his credit. His songs are known as rabindrasangit ("Tagore Song"), which merges fluidly into his literature, most of which -- poems or parts of novels, stories, or plays alike -- were lyricised. Influenced by the thumri style of Hindustani music, they ran the entire gamut of human emotion, ranging from his early dirge-like Brahmo devotional hymns to quasi-erotic compositions."

Amazon shows a lot of recordings, even including "Songs of Tagore: Top 50 Hits"!

Ragas are commonly sung as well, usually of great difficulty and requiring techniques beyond those available to singers trained in the Western vocal tradition. There are, again, many recordings.


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## Il_Penseroso (Nov 20, 2010)

Uzeyir Hajibeyev (1885-1948) the famous Azerbaijani composer, wrote two beautiful Romances after Nizami Ganjavi (1141-1209): Without you and Sweetheart, but originally they are both supposed to be sung in the style of Azerbaijani troubadour male singers called Aşıq (pronounced Ashigh, means The lover man) not in the way of western operatic tone production. 

Gomidas (Komitas) Vardapet (1869-1935) was a great Armenian composer who is considered as the father of modern Armenian classical music. Gomidas Vardapet suffered a bad psychotic breakdown after the horror 1915 Armenian Genocide. He was taken to Paris and died in a psychiatric clinic. Debussy knew his music and praised especially his songs. Some (originally written with piano or Armenian traditional instruments accompaniment) arranged by Serouj Kradjian and sung by Isabel Bayrakdarian, are available on a CD 'Gomidas Songs' released in 2008.

In my country before the 1979-revolution, composers like Mortezā Hannāneh (1923-1989), Samin Bāghtchebān (1925-2008) and Hossein Dehlavi (b.1927) wrote a couple of Art songs, mostly based on Divān of Hāfez (1325-1390), Rubā'iyāt of Omar Khayyām (1048–1131) and other famous Persian classical literature resources. Tehran had a very good opera basement in those years and apart from a few operas in Persian, a number of standard operas were also staged in Rudaki Tālār (Rudaki Theatre) in 1970s. There were good opera singers from Persia to sing Art songs, but they rarely left recordings and so not easily can be found or even released for listening, some maybe on youtube channels.


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