494/119/222/217/216

Another year has passed and thi week marks the 9th anniversary of Liederabend. I won't say the year has passed very quickly, on the contrary; it coincided exactly with the pandemic year (just one year ago, the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona was cancelled amid great controversy) and this time has been long, exhausting, sad and confusing. In consequence, Liederabend went through fire and water, like everybody, I guess. I imagine that my posts always reflect my mood, but since this time the mood is collective, who knows, maybe someday we will go through the fifty-five articles (I don't remember why so many) and think of this situation. This unfortunate year also reflects in your visits to the website; not only have they increased considerably, but the increasing also follows the different lockdowns at different places in the world. Thank you for choosing this site to make your time at home more bearable, I hope music has brought you some peace of mind.

Looking at this year's figures, I realize that the number of new composers has doubled: from eight, last year, to fifteen. Some were introduced from a recital programme, others were brought by the performers and some were suggested by the readers, such as Norbert Glanzberg, I love when that happens so, thank you, Lluís Emili! I have also noticed that we reached exactly one hundred posts with Schubert's Lieder. My curiosity was aroused, and I checked how many posts include Schumann's Lieder: fifty-four. And Wolf, Strauss and Brahms have also about half the Schumann's songs. So, not surprisingly, the four composers put together have almost half the total songs. If everything goes as planned, next year we'll celebrate the 10th anniversary (10th!) of Liederabend, and I make a mental note of going deeper in the composers' list to draw some more detailed conclusions.

As for the rest of the figures, the number of poets, singers and accompanists added to the drop list you find at the right (or below in the mobile version) is almost the same: 22/20/22. That is, almost every two weeks, a new one has been entered, the prevailing trend of the last years. And all in all, we get the figures in the title of this article: since 2 February 2012 we have listened to 494 songs by 119 composers, from the poems of 222 poets. They have been sung by 217 singers, that had 216 accompanists who, as you know, are mostly pianists; the rest are orchestras with their conductors and, occasionally, other ensembles such as quartets or different instrumentists. In fact, this year we listened to a really unusual instrument, the dulcimer.

I usually decide in advance the song for the anniversary week, but this time I didn't feel inspired (what I told you, I'm going through fire and water). Looking back over the posts of recent months, I remembered that one of the pandemic posts, that is, directly related to the pandemic, was In Haven, the second of Edward Elgar's Sea Pictures. We listened to it in June, when I was missing the sea. With weekend lockdowns, daily lockdowns, regional lockdowns, local lockdowns and so on, I can only see the sea in Barcelona (and I'm grateful we're not experiencing the 1km-lockdown we experienced in springtime, because I live 3 km far from the sea). So, why don't we listen to another Sea Picture, let's say the last one, The Swimmer?

Elgar chose a different poet for each song, and The Swimmer's poet is Adam Lindsay Gordon. Of Scottish origin, he moved to Australia at his twenty. Biographies define him as "horseman and poet", although he was only posthumously recognized as a poet. His life was sadly short: he killed himself at thirty-seven, overwhelmed by economic problems, suffering health problems derived from horse racing accidents and after having lost his child a couple of years ago. He died in 1870, shortly after his collection Bush ballads and Galloping Rhymes was published; This poem collection gave Gordon the prestige he had wanted, and he was eventually considered the beginner of the Australian poetry. The Swimmer is included in this collection, and it tells us about a furious ocean; it contrasts the violence of the storm with the beauty of the sea calm, while at the same time contrasting lost love with happy days. It is a long poem, of thirteen stanzas, of which Elgar only put into music four and a half: the first two, half of the third and the last two.

Before I finish this anniversary post, I would like to thank once again Emily Ezust for providing most of the English translations of the poems; not this week, but you often find her name as a translator. If you don0t know yet her webpage, http://www.lieder.net, have a look, because it's a huge source of information.

And having said that, I leave you with the great Sarah Connolly and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Simon Wright, performing The Swimmer.