mélodie

la mélodie (FR N-F) art-song; setting of a poem, usually for solo voice and piano, often interchanged with the term chanson, though the true mélodie has poetry of artistic value and an accompaniment that exhibits at least some independence from the vocal line; (original meaning) a succession of musical tones organized to form an agreeable or memorable contour or sound. The earliest use of the term mélodie for the art song in France was in the 1820s, the time when translated versions of…