I wanted to write about this song because I think it is a song meant to be a song and that makes me take a point of authenticity that is not always easy to find in the repertoire. The spontaneity and freshness that Shakespeare knew how to find with Feste, I think Beach has been able to find it in the same way with her music. Also, when I have to play it in public, I empathize a lot with the character because in a way I am also doing the same job as the fool.
Although most of the Art Song pieces are songs written from poems, there are exceptions in the repertoire, such as songs that became emancipated from a theatre piece. The best-known case is the Romanze aus "Rosamunde", which was originally part of Schubert's incidental music for the play Rosamunde, Prinzessin von Zypern by Helmina von Chélzy.
The father of Mieczysław Weinberg arrived in Warsaw fleeing from the pogrom of Kishinev (then in the Russian Empire) in 1905, where his father and grandfather had died. More than thirty years later, Mieczysław was the only survivor of his family; He was able to escape from the Warsaw Ghetto, while his parents and his sister were killed in the Trawniki concentration camp in 1943. He settled in the USSR, where his father-in-law was murdered in 1948 by Stalin's secret police, and he was [...]
Singing that spread its wings, like a bird; wings that give shelter to us and a voice that transports us to paradise. A poet, Heinrich Heine, who suggests idyllic images and a composer, Felix Mendelssohn, who set them into music.
Can you separate the art from the artist? A few months ago, I listened to a radio program (Musiques empoderades, Catalunya Música) where this matter was discussed. Some guests thought that the work doesn't necessarily reflect the darkest aspects of the creator's life, while others maintained that the work is part of life, and that both are inseparable.