Art songs, as one of the most expressive types of songs and music, have become a wonderful flower in the art field with their high taste, high interest and elegance. In the past few years, our country has suffered a lot. In 1950s, influenced by the ultra-left ideological trend, some people thought that the content of art songs was full of personal feelings and moans of feudalism and petty bourgeoisie, which was incompatible with the proletariat. In the 1960s, the Cultural Revolution made art songs worse, and many excellent Chinese and foreign art songs were banned and criticized. Since then, art songs have been ignored by people and closed for nearly half a century in the severe winter, which has caused the gap between the appreciators and creators of art songs today. The true meaning of art songs has always been little known, especially among young friends.

Art songs originated in Europe at the end of18th century19th century. It is basically produced and developed on the basis of lyric songs. However, once it appeared, it showed its unique artistic charm in a short time, and developed in Aidit with its strong vitality, which is still widely circulated today.

At the beginning of the popularity of art songs in Europe, composers soon formed some relatively strict and fixed artistic requirements for this new song art form in terms of the content and techniques of songwriting, which was obviously different from other kinds of song art forms such as lyric songs, narrative songs, folk songs and popular songs.

After a series of creative practice of art songs, the specific meaning of early art songs was quickly and clearly determined. For a long time, the concept of art songs should be embodied in two aspects before it can be called pure art songs.

First of all, the lyrics of songs must be poems written by famous writers and poets. For example, German art songs "Riding on Singing Wings", "Bodhi Tree" and "Listen, Listen, Lark" were all written by literary masters Heine, Mill and Shakespeare. Secondly, musically, it is required that the tune must have the artistic image of scene blending and poetic lyrics. It embodies the unspeakable, elegant and upward artistic realm, artistic taste and artistic ambition of poets and composers.

An excellent artistic song work should be a perfect combination of high-level literary poetry and a kind of poetry and music that appropriately uses music creation techniques in tune according to the content of poetry.

The tune of an art song, including a singing part and an accompaniment part, is usually accompanied by a piano. The significance of this accompaniment part is not only the lotus leaf-like foil to the singing part, but also the perfect interweaving of accompaniment and singing by using various expression techniques in music art, forming the melody texture of music and jointly shaping a complete and rich musical image. The Trout by Schubert, a German composer, and the Wish by Chopin, a Polish composer, vividly embody this creative intention in music.

In addition to the above songs, the classic works of early typical art songs can also be listed as Schubert's Wild Rose, Chun Mu, Where to Go, Last Wish, Mozart's Longing for Violets in Spring, Beethoven's I Love You and Miss My Hometown, Schumann's To the Sun and When Warm Wind Blows Over the Sea, and Russian composer Tchaikovsky.

The content of art songs covers a wide range, including "You are like flowers and grapes in Turpan" which shows love, and "Dripping Water from the Rock Mouth" which shows optimistic and cheerful working life and socialist construction. It can be said that people's deep-seated good wishes, praise of the motherland's scenery and mountains, melancholy, yearning, joy and excitement of life, sigh and sadness of love, resentment and condemnation of aggressors are all reflected in art songs.

In terms of musical artistic expression, artistic songs also have a broad space, which can mobilize all kinds of musical creative thinking, creative techniques and musical language to try and explore. According to the content of different meanings, or using rich and varied timbres to express flowers and birds, spring is beautiful. Or use a variety of chords and modes to accurately and delicately depict the complex inner world of the characters and express the thoughts and feelings of joy, anger, sadness and joy, which is incomparable to other types of songs. To sum up, heavy makeup in music creation techniques and euphemistic and implicit expression of psychological feelings are two major characteristics of artistic expression of artistic songs.

Listening to art songs is of great help to improve people's artistic accomplishment, artistic realm and artistic appreciation ability. It brings people a kind of artistic enjoyment that lasts for three days and has endless aftertaste.

Art songs are mostly solo in singing form. But the voices are widely used, including soprano solo, coloratura soprano solo, mezzo-soprano solo, tenor solo, baritone solo, and even bass solo and mezzo-soprano solo. In addition, there is a choir and several duets.

The representative works of chorus in art songs include Zigang by German composer Schumann, Sunset Red on Cuifeng by Taiwan Province composer Cunshengweng, Skills by mainland composer Huang Zi, Haiyun by Zhao Yuanren, Call My Milk by Qu Xixian, Pastoral and Chunxiao by Chinese American composer Chen Bo.