Some time ago, in this series The same poem, one more song, we listened to the song that Charles Ives composed based upon the poem by Hermann Allmers that begins with the words “Ich ruhe still”, the same poem that Johannes Brahms turned into the beautiful lied Feldeinsamkeit. In that article, I mentioned that Ives’s song was an academic exercise assigned by [...]

This week’s poem is a bit like last week’s, “Ein Fichtenbaum steht einsam”: it has inspired many songs, but none is particularly well known. I’m talking about the poem that begins with the words “Freudvoll und leidvoll” [Full of joy and full of sorrow], by Goethe, which is part of the play Egmont. It's sung by Clärchen, the protagonist’s lover, to tell her mother [...]

The poem “Ein Fichtenbaum steht einsam” found in Heinrich Heine's Lyrisches Intermezzo has been set to music numerous times; however, none of these compositions have achieved significant popularity. Not even the one by Franz Liszt, which you might think Lied lovers would know first. This actually works in our favour for the “The same poem, one more song” series [...]

July has arrived, so we end up the regular Liederabend season and launch the summer edition. We’ll feature our traditional posts dedicated especially to those readers who, despite the heat, still need their weekly song (much appreciated!), posts marked by having the same music but very little text.

Did you ever walk into a museum room and one piece stood out more than the others? Not a well-known one, nor one you were eager to see, but one you did not know and compelled you to go straight to the other end of the room. It happened to me at the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin, with a painting of a man in dark clothes standing on a light gray background and gazing to the left.