No, it's not that Captain Obvious came to remind us that Schubert wrote songs. The title refers to an occasion, shortly after Schubert's death, when the words "song writer" were used in a contemptuous way.

In that time, when an important musician died in Vienna, his friends (often also musicians) used to organize a Requiem Mass in his memory. It was done when Gluck, Haydn, Salieri and Beethoven died. Schubert's friends wanted to perform Anselm Hüttenbrenner's Requiem (the same piece performed in Beethoven ‘s honour) in the Augustiniankirche, one of the most important churches in Vienna. They suggested the renowned singer Ludwig Tietze to sing the tenor’s part but foolishly, he refused. According to Joseph Hüttenbrenner, the  [...]

 

I'm writing this on Monday, October 2nd. I had a half-written post for this week, talking about Schubert, but I put in on the shelf. It's not easy to get the brutal images of yesterday out of my mind and to focus on something else. I wasn't even able to bring myself to join a few words as a plan B and I was about to not post for the first time in more than five years. Until the words of a friend came to help me [...]

 

This expression, "You shall not pass!", is known worldwide (and I think I'm not exaggerating with this "worldwide") as the motto of the defenders of the Republican government during the Spanish Civil War. We Catalan people also identify these words as the beginning of a poem widely spread during the war; I remember seeing in some book of History the reproduction of a pamphlet with the four verses. The poem, however, was not written during the civil war; In fact, its author, Apel·les Mestres, died at 82 precisely on July 19, 1936. The day after Franco's coup, the day after the war began. This poem, entitled La cançó dels invadits (The song of the invaded), is part of a collection called Flors de sang (Flowers of blood), that Mestres wrote after the German invasion of Belgium in World War I. Some sources attribute the origin of the expression "You shall not pass!" [...]

 

My dearest all, this week I'm on holiday, as far as possible from any piece of technological junk. I'm thinking of you though, and today it's Wednesday, so I'm sending you this musical postcard from one of the places more Lied-inspiring ever.

 

Jacques Villon is a French painter who lived between 1875 and 1963. He belonged to a family of artists; His real name was Gaston Duchamp and the painters and sculptors Marcel Duchamp, Suzanne Duchamp and Raymond Duchamp-Villon were his brothers (curiously, Raymond also adopted Gaston's pseudonym). Jacques Villon began his career as an illustrator in several magazines; a few years later, he engaged himself into "serious" painting and cultivated different styles such as impressionism, cubism and futurism. His work is extensive, but I would say that he's not as well-known as his contemporaries Picasso, Chagall, Braque, Gris, Klee and Miró (perhaps some art expert could share his or her opinion about Villon).