Category:Glees

The glee is a type of partsong that flourished in 18th- and early 19th-century Britain. Earlier examples are almost all for men's voices (occasionally with B.C.) but, later, soprano voices (sometimes sung by trebles) were frequently included. Whilst many glees are in simple binary form, more ambitious examples consist of several dramatically contrasted sections, often ending with a fugue. For competitive purposes glees were often classified as 'humorous' or 'serious' (the latter embracing anything from the Ossianic to the amorous). Although largely supplanted by the romantic partsong roughly from the time of Mendelssohn and his imitators onwards, some glees continued to be composed throughout the 19th century.