The Grand Tour was a journey through Europe, with Italy as the final destination, that many young men from wealthy families used to do to round off their training and see the world. However, Thomas Moore's trip to Italy was motivated by a different motivation: to avoid the prison of creditors. Twenty-five years earlier, he had been given a position of responsibility in Bermuda [...]

On this occasion, the poem is the one that begins with the words “Es war ein König in Thule”. Goethe wrote it in 1774 and “recovered” it in 1808 to include it in his Faust, this time a ballad sung by Gretchen. I told you about it a few years ago in some detail, when we listened to Der König in Thule, the song Franz Schubert made upon these verses; I will briefly tell you the story to give you [...]

Alexander von Zemlinsky scholars have spent many years trying to establish his catalogue because he was a man of much composing and little publishing, and not very straightened with his works. At first, he only numbered those he published, and later, those he intended. Considering that his work was forgotten after his death in 1942, like that of so many of his[...]

One of the composers I encountered in the program of the Schubertíada this year was Hamilton Harty, a composer well-known in the United Kingdom during the initial three decades of the 20th century, yet unknown in Catalonia.

In Burning Patience [Ardiente paciencia] by Antonio Skármeta, Pablo Neruda reproaches the postman Mario Jiménez for sending the girl he loves, as if they were his own, verses he has written. And the young man replies: “Poetry doesn't belong to those who write it, but to those who need it”. I was thinking about it while I was preparing this article about a song by Reynaldo [...]