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A was for amor, it couldn't be otherwise, how many songs on Liederabend don't speak of love? B was, naturally, for baritone (and baritonophilia. C is for contemporary as an answer to a common question: Do people still write Art Songs? And my answer is: sure they do! Not as frequently as in the nineteenth century, of course, but people still write songs. Today, we're listening to a beautiful one, a love song sung by a baritone. Some things never change.
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It was difficult to find the poems and also, some information about Bloch and his cycle; I’d say that suggests that the composer was quickly forgotten. Ernest Bloch was born in Geneva in 1880. He began to learn music as a child and lived in some European cities, first as a music student and after, trying to make his way as a musician, until he moved to the United States with his own family (he got married in 1904) in 1916. There, he achieved the success he hadn't had in Europe, so he decided to stay and was nationalized in 1926. Nevertheless, he missed Switzerland. He went back to his homeland and stayed there for about ten years. In 1938, driven by anti-Semitism and winds of war, he finally returned to America, where he died in 1959. Bloch left a rather extensive work (symphonic music, concerts, chamber music, choral works...) that I don't know at all; [...]
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In the previous post of Wilhelm Meister's series, I talked about Mignon, who was then very ill. Wilhelm went to visit her and took Felix with him. Natalie told him that the girl had changed. She was disguised as an angel for a birthday party and she didn't want to wear back her boyish clothes again. The doctor, and now we get into the 16th post and the Chapter 3 in the VIII book, tells him some more things that Natalie had learned from Mignon. The most important is that the girl virtually lives only for him.- Details
Next Saturday, it's St. George's Day and, as every year, plenty of roses will cover the streets of Catalonia. Also, as every year, this week I'm bringing a rose for you, a rose disguised as a song. For the first time, we can infer from the poem what kind of a rose we are talking about: a Damask rose and I am delighted because it's one of my favourites. Damask roses arrived in Europe during the time of the Crusades, in the 13th Century; there are usually pink, from almost white to intense pink, and often bloom in different colours. Their colours are always very delicate, and the shrubs, with light gray-green foliage are easily noticed from afar, not only for their beauty but also for the scent, intense and unmistakable: when we say that “it smells of roses" we are referring to Damask roses. We know (or strongly suspect) that the poet of this song is talking about those roses because he [...]
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Isabel Villagar is a singing teacher who, some months ago, suggested to collaborate on a miniseries about Liederabend that she would link to her webpage, La brujula del canto. Her readers have a wide range of interests, since on her blog, she talks about many different things related to voice, not necessarily about singing and not about lyrical either. Whereas Liederabend readers, on the contrary, are quite specialized. Considering so, we’ve tried to find subjects that might interest followers on both websites.
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