There are some composers, painters, writers, actors, you name it, that we especially like even though there're not among the most important. At one particular moment, they catch our attention and since then, we follow them with interest; They, eventually, become part of our top names and we even love them a little more because they are considered (please pay attention to the quotation marks) "minor" ones. I would say George Butterworth isn't a well-known composer outside the UK, but I fell in love with his music long time ago. That's why I dedicate the first post of August to him, when I was supposed to start my summer posts; Next Friday marks the centennial of his death and I didn't want to miss this date without a thought for him. So please let me share this week a song by George Butterworth and next week, I’ll begin my posts around the Schubertiade Vilabertran.

 

We are in peak summer and it seems that anything has changed at Liederabend... Shouldn’t summer be a time to relax and slow down our pace? Anyway, in two weeks’ time, we're beginning four brief posts focused on the programme of the Schubertiade Vilabertran but today we could listen to something lighter than Lied.

 

Some time ago we spoke of French romance. The genre was born in the eighteenth century, at the French court, and after the revolution, it spread among bourgeois families. It had little impact outside the salons and it faded out when mélodie was born; In salons, however, romances were still sung because mélodie, intended to professional musicians, wasn't a real option. Such a fashionable entertainment in Paris became also  [...]

 

Within the opus of the composer Enrique Granados (Lleida, Spain 1867-1916), his works for voice and piano carry great weight; they represent on the one hand, the will to transcend with lyrical flights from the keyboard (of which he was a master as performer, improviser and composer) and on other hand, with his intention to create a corpus of great quality, that would be an equal to the great song cycles by the rest of the European composers, and which due to the zarzuela output by Spanish composers in the 19th century, had been overwhelmingly marginalized. His corpus is articulated around two fundamental cycles, the Tonadillas and Amatorias which, as we will see, are very different in style and features. They are heterogenic cycles but both represent two milestones in terms of the extensive Lieder compositions in the first quarter of the 20th century; they open the way [...]

 

Last post of Liederabend's alphabet before the end of the season, D is for Dichterliebe. In fact, it was about to be "C is for cycle", but then C is for contemporary wouldn't have been possible; choosing an alphabet has something to do with puzzles. So I thought I could choose a cycle that would represent all of them. I could have chosen "W is for Winterreise" but W was occupied with... Well, W was already occupied. And as I said the last time that I spoke about it, I'm crazy about Dichterliebe. I would say there is no other cycle I've listened so much, so greedily; sometimes I avoid listening to it because I know that I could initiate another Dichterliebedependency period. Why do I love it so much? Here I give you five reasons, there are many more ...

 

Matthäus von Collin was an influential gentleman in the Vienna of the early 19th century. Tutor of Napoleon's son, professor of History and Philosophy at the University, host of an important cultural salon, part-time poet and friends with Josef von Spaun. We're especially interested in those last three aspects because Collin was one of those middled-aged gentlemen who, after Spaun had introduced them, befriended Schubert, welcomed him to his household, spread his music and introduced him to other influential people. Unfortunately, this relationship didn't last very long because Collin died in 1824, at forty-five; at least, it resulted in five Lieder, one of which we heard a while ago: the beautiful Nacht und Träume, composed after the poet's death.