Lied
It was Schubert who was to be the greatest of all Lieder composers.  Schubert wrote over 600 songs.  Very often he wrote in a form which had been used by Walther von der Vogelweide: three verses of which the first two have the same music (A-A-B, or as von der Vogelweide called them: “Stollen, Stollen, Abgesang”).  Other songs of his are what is known as “durchkomponiert” (“through composed”).  Here each verse is different, so that the composer can express the words of each verse with different music.  The wonderful thing about Schubert’s songs is the way in which the piano accompaniments help the voice and show the meaning of the words. The piano was a fairly new instrument at the time and could do things that would have been impossible on the harpsichord.   One of his earliest songs is the famous Erlkönig (Erlking).  The piano accompaniment is very difficult to play because the right hand has continuous repeated octaves which describe the galloping of the horse in the wild, stormy night.  Grettchen am Spinnrade is a song which sets a poem from Goethe's Faust.  The young girl is sitting at the spinning-wheel thinking of her lover.  The piano has a rippling accompaniment which sounds like the gentle clatter of the spinning-wheel.  At the moment when the girl imagines her lover's kiss the piano part comes to a stop, then gradually starts up again as the girl wakes up to the world around her.