This discussion has certainly piqued my interest. Since I adore opera, the emotion and the melodies, and I'm not put off by languages I don't understand, I searched a little on the net for art songs or lieder. I know very little about them, except that Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Wagner, Liszt, Strauss...wrote many, so there must be something very beautiful about the German language and poetic, musical expression. In this link, [http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/ent/A0845923.html], I found the following statements:

The song literature of Western music embodies two broad classifications - folk song and art song.

The German romantic lieder of the 19th cent., in which the vocal line and the piano accompaniment are of equal musical significance, are considered to be among the finest of all art songs.

Like I said, I'm not familiar with art songs, but since so many wonderful composers wrote so many of them, there must be something there worth investigating.

*******disclaimer************

I'm not discussing "what is a folk song" or "what is an art song" or "what is a pretty language." Nor have I not read Marion's original post. I just thought this was an interesting idea.

********funny story**********

When I was teaching high school, we had a German exchange student (extrememly intelligent, extroverted, all around good sport) who was in one of the plays for drama class. He spent several months practicing how to say "Where were we" in the play!