song cycle

American  

noun

1. a group of art songs that are usually all by the same poet and composer and have a unifying subject or idea.

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song cycle British  

noun

1. any of several groups of songs written by composers during and after the Romantic period, each series employing texts, usually by one poet, relating a story or grouped around a central motif

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Etymology

Origin of song cycle

First recorded in 1895–1900

Example Sentences

Another project has been Bullock’s riveting staging, with dance, of Olivier Messiaen’s mystical, Amazonian, sex-love-death song cycle, “Harawi,” which came to the Wallis in October 2024.

From Los Angeles Times • Jan. 19, 2026

It’s an exhortation and an anthem — “Be the rain you remember falling” — the emotional peak of a song cycle about a girl named Sun Green who’s trying to save the Earth.

From Salon • Aug. 19, 2025

As a song cycle, it’s a revelatory marvel.

From Los Angeles Times • Oct. 22, 2024

Although its expansiveness and form recall Mahler’s “Das Lied von der Erde,” it is neither a song cycle nor a symphony.

From New York Times • Apr. 18, 2024

It was this spot that had inspired Mark’s song cycle, “The Sun-dial.”

From The Best Short Stories of 1915 And the Yearbook of the American Short Story by O'Brien, Edward J. (Edward Joseph Harrington)