My dearest, at the end of this post we'll listen to a voice, as usual, but before that we're doing a new exercise: to observe a voice. Our aim is to draw some conclusion from our observation of vowels and consonants.

Let’s start by hearing a few seconds of spoken speech...

Friedrich Rochlitz was a lucky gentleman that didn't need to work to earn a living, so he worked a lot for pleasure, sharing his time between music and literature. With respect to music, he composed some works, he was the librettist of some others and in 1798 he founded in Leipzig the weekly Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung. Regarding literature, his output was so extensive that when he decided to publish his best works, in 1822, he needed six volumes. His curriculum vitae was quite impressive, but today Rochlitz is mostly known as the author of the poems of two lieder by Schubert: Alinde and An die Laute [...]

Long ago in a distant land, a 15-year-old girl lived happily, protected by her parents in the middle of nature. It happened that the emperor met her, and the next day he asked for her hand; a few months later they got married. If this were an old tale, the end would be “and they lived happily ever after”, but in fact, that's just the beginning of the story.

A boy and a girl are sitting on the banks of the brook, in silence. They look at their reflection and the moon and the stars are their only witnesses. What an idyllic scene! And suddenly the girl says: "The rain comes. Farewell, I am going home". There's something odd in this story. I'm talking about Tränenregen, one of the Lieder from Die schöne Müllerin and, as we know, there are some strange things in this song cycle.