One of the first people I followed on Twitter was Elisa, because I knew her from her blog In meinem Leben, in meinem Lied (one of the blogs you can find linked on the right column, below). That was more than three [...]
Last week, we talked about one of the most common images in Christmas music, a child cradled in his mother’s arms; Today, we're talking about another essential idea in Christmas: light, since the winter solstice, which coincides with Christmas time (well, to be precise, it's the other way around) marks the return of light after winter’s long nights. Christian tradition puts together both images, the birth of a child is also the birth of light and hope, and so, we celebrate Saint Lucy's Day, decorate our homes with candles and after Tree Kings' Day, we realize with joy that, suddenly, days get longer. Northern lands suffer the lack of light more than we, Mediterranean people do, of course; They have extremely long nights and the sun shines so weakly that you hardly feel it on your face. In this context, the song I'm sharing today, Det mörknar ute (Outside it is [...]
It's Christmas Time. In this year’s calendar, three weeks to go until Three Kings' Day and, as always, my three respective posts will be related to these dates. To begin with, we have one of the most usual Christmas musical images, a lullaby; after all, we celebrate a child's birth. So far we've listened to Brahm's Geistliches Wiegenlied, Britten's That jongë Child and Balulalow and Strauss's Weihnachtslied; today, we add a song by Barber to our list, A Slumber Song of the Madonna.
Last week I started a post dedicated to Franz Schubert's friends; as it grew and grew I decided to split it into two parts, and this is the second one. We talked at the first part about Joseph von Spaun, Johann Mayrhofer, Franz von Schober and Johann Michael Vogl; today I'm introducing a few more members of Schubert's circle.
Not all the friendships were long-lasting. The life in Vienna was hard in those years; at first because of the war, while Schubert was at Konvikt, then because of the repression of Klemens von Metternich's government. One victim of that situation was Johann Senn, a fellow student of Franz, who in 1813 lost his scholarship (that's to say, the possibility of study at the board school) because he was part of an intellectual circle and that wasn't [...]