Art Song vs Pop Song

I have a fairly decent recording of my Songs from the Poets with soprano Hannah Pagenkopf. But every time I want to give a copy of the CD to friends or people interested I run into a problem: listeners today are largely unfamiliar with these kinds of songs which I would describe as "art songs" as opposed to the kind of songs people are familiar with today: "pop songs." Instrumental classical music and opera have a pretty good following, but the audience for art song is vanishingly small outside of Europe.

So what is "art song"? I would describe it is music for voice and usually a few or one instrument with lyrics of a personal nature. The basic idea goes back to the ancient Greeks who invented lyric poetry, i.e. short poems meant to be sung with the accompaniment of a lyre. Sadly, we don't have any extant examples. The next phase is found in the secular songs of Guillaume Du Fay in the form of rondeau, ballade and virelai. Here is a typical ballade:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bq6VfzW8Bb4

Many other composers, like Josquin, wrote similar settings. The solo song or ayre really took off in Elizabethan England with hundreds of works by John Dowland and others for solo voice and lute or small vocal ensemble. Here is a fine example.

We might call the lute ayres the second golden age of song. The third and most prominent was in the 19th century, originating in Vienna around 1800 and spreading to the rest of Europe. We are somewhat in the final declining phase of this period. The first great master was Franz Schubert who, despite dying at a very early age, thirty-one, wrote over six hundred songs, in German, called lieder. He was followed by another great composer in the genre, Robert Schumann who wrote many fewer songs, but of a superb quality. Here is Erlkönig, composed by Schubert in 1815 when he was seventeen years old:

There are four "characters" in the song: the father, rushing his son to a doctor, the son, the Erlking, there to steal the son away, and the horse that they are riding on. The piano depicts the horse and the singer the three characters. Another superb song is Im wunderschönen Monet Mai from Dichterliebe by Schumann:

Jumping ahead to the 20th century, Benjamin Britten wrote a very fine set of songs for voice and guitar. Here is the first song:

Just for the sake of completeness, here is one of the songs from my set. The poem is by John Donne:

(If you were very quick off the mark you will notice that I changed my song for a different one from the same set.)

As you can hear, these "art songs" are very different from the pop songs of today. But as someone who has written in both genres, there is certainly a line of influence. The basic idea is the expression of a personal sentiment with minimal musical accompaniment. There are certainly popular songs of today that are very close to being art songs. "Sad-eyed Lady of the Lowlands" by Bob Dylan would qualify:

As would several songs by John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison:

But as popular music has become more and more a mass-produced industrial project, it is very far away from the art song tradition.