At the end of the 19th century, the relationship between composers and publishers was as the previous century: the composer used to sell his work for an agreed amount and he lost virtually all his rights on that work. Nowadays, the usual set-up, where the composer has more control over his work and shares the gains with the publisher, was driven by Richard Strauss, who in 1898 wrote to one hundred and sixty composers posing the need to improve their situation. His proposal was so successful that, shortly after, the German parliament approved a new law to rule the rights of [...]

At the beginning of this story, Friedrich von Hardenberg is twenty-two. He's a young man from a noble family, extremely intelligent and sensitive, passionate about literature, philosophy and science. He has spent four years in university and works as an apprentice (eventually, he should manage the salt mines that his father manages) and he keeps studying and writing. Then he first meets the other key person in the story, Sophie von Kühn, who is twelve. According to people who knew them, the girl is not especially brilliant, nor especially beautiful, nor especially anything. She is an ordinary girl, but she [...]

While Mahler was composing his fifth symphony, between 1901 and 1902, his Wunderhorn time was ending. In August 1901 he finished Der Tamboursg'sell, the last Lied composed with poems from Des Knaben Wunderhorn, and that summer he musicalized some poems by Friedrich Rückert. As we know, there is a strong link between the first four symphonies by Mahler and his Lieder; For example, the first one and Die zwei blauen Augen, the second one and Des Antonius von Padua Fischpredigt or the third one and Ablösung im Sommer. But in the fifth symphony we don't find this link, we can no longer sing (privately, of course) any Lied by Mahler when we listen to it.

March 25 (four days after listening to a song from his Chansons de Bilitis) marked 100 years since the death of Claude Debussy, so the musical world is paying homage to him this year. In fact, he's not a composer that visits us often; we've only heard three songs so far and it seems that we're going from anniversary to anniversary, because the first one was Beau soir, on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of his birth, in August 2012. Today we're listening to a fourth song, a mélodie that is not considered among the best (well, not every peace can be a masterpiece) and it's not well-known. I like it, and I especially like the recording [...]

My dearest all, I'm still on holiday, but I'm thinking of you and I've been looking for the usual musical postcard to send you. I must admit I was getting on my nerves because I couldn't find any (and I was sure there were plenty) when I came across a Lied that I jotted down on my notebook long time ago. The pianist was Leonard Bernstein and we never had listened to him playing the music of another composer [...]