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Next Saturday, it's St. George's Day and, as every year, plenty of roses will cover the streets of Catalonia. Also, as every year, this week I'm bringing a rose for you, a rose disguised as a song. For the first time, we can infer from the poem what kind of a rose we are talking about: a Damask rose and I am delighted because it's one of my favourites. Damask roses arrived in Europe during the time of the Crusades, in the 13th Century; there are usually pink, from almost white to intense pink, and often bloom in different colours. Their colours are always very delicate, and the shrubs, with light gray-green foliage are easily noticed from afar, not only for their beauty but also for the scent, intense and unmistakable: when we say that “it smells of roses" we are referring to Damask roses. We know (or strongly suspect) that the poet of this song is talking about those roses because he [...]
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Isabel Villagar is a singing teacher who, some months ago, suggested to collaborate on a miniseries about Liederabend that she would link to her webpage, La brujula del canto. Her readers have a wide range of interests, since on her blog, she talks about many different things related to voice, not necessarily about singing and not about lyrical either. Whereas Liederabend readers, on the contrary, are quite specialized. Considering so, we’ve tried to find subjects that might interest followers on both websites.- Details
Song of the week: Die zwei Augen (G. Mahler) - D. Fischer-Dieskau, W. Furtwängler (cond.)
A few weeks ago, chatting with another blogger, I realized I had not still spoken about Mahler's Songs of a Wayfarer and I promised him that I would soon; it's a fundamental, beautiful cycle. Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen is an early work of Gustav Mahler, at least in its first version, written when he was twenty-four. The origins of the cycle are quite convolute but it seems clear that it stems from a love story. Recently, we've talk about many songs with a love story!- Details
In November 1775, J. W. von Goethe met Charlotte Stein, a thirty-three years old lady (seven more than him) who was married with six children, and fell in love with her. She also fell for him and an intense love story began, basically, an epistolary relationship. For twelve years they wrote to each other thousands of letters, until one day Goethe went to Italy without telling her a word. She felt terribly hurt by the way he left her and urged him to return all her letters (ladies used to do that to indicate a relationship was finished and gentlemen, in turn, used to do so to prove they didn't want to endanger them); years later, they resumed their relationship, but not as eagerly as the first time. Apart from some 7000 letters written by Goethe (Charlotte destroyed hers), that love story left some reflection on his literary work, as the character of Natalie in Wilhelm Meister's [...]
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Last week, in my post about George Butterworth, I mentioned several times Ralph Vaughan Williams, their friendship and their common interest in folk English music. Their careers were parallel until the war; Vaughan Williams was thirteen years older than Butterworth but started to compose later and their early works came just about together. I just wonder if Butterworth would have been as successful as his friend If he had not died so young.Series
