Einst [Once long ago] is a minimal song. It only has fourteen bars, the vocal line doesn't go beyond a fifth (the distance between C and G on the C major scale that we all know) and, as for dynamics, neither voice nor accompaniment moves from piano. The poem is also minimal, only a four-verse stanza that tells us about an absence. Its shortness leaves us with no idea if the [...]

Nadia Boulanger gave her first music lessons at her sixteen, when she was still a student. This pedagogical side was the most significant of his career, which lasted more than 70 years. However, Boulanger was also an organist, pianist, conductor, and composer, although her compositions are from a brief period in her life.

If you have visited the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin, you may have stopped before the painting illustrating this article, Im Etappenquartier vor Paris [In the Troops' Quarters outside Paris], an oil on canvas painted by Anton von Werner in 1894. Eight soldiers of different ranks gather in a relatively small space, from the orderly who lights the fire to those who sit casually in the armchairs, probably those of higher rank.

My dearest, happy new year! The new brand calendar has many musical ephemerides, and probably the most significant for us, liedlovers, is related to Hugo Wolf: 22 February marks 120 years since his death. I hope that the anniversary will help to spread his magnificent work, which is not yet sufficiently well known; I also hope that here on Liederabend, his presence would be even [...]

Herod waited for the Kings to come back and tell him where the child he feared was, but they had also been warned in a dream and returned home on another path. Then the furious King of Judea ordered to kill all the children of Bethlehem and the surrounding area younger than two years. Today, December 28 (if you read this on the day it's published) commemorates the [...]