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

See Examples For:

song cycle

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

Written in 1946 by a young French composer released from a Nazi prison camp, the hourlong song cycle for very dramatic soprano and piano reimagines Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde as exotic Peruvian lovers.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 29, 2024

Whereas with “Fiddler” Jewison went for truth, with “Superstar” he leaned into the inherent absurdity of a groovy song cycle about the Passion.

From New York Times ● Jan. 22, 2024

“It is Omar Khayyam set to music, you know”—she turned to Grace—“from the song cycle, ‘In a Persian Garden.’”

From Grace Harlowe's Problem by Flower, Jessie Graham [pseud.]