I think I told you I didn't want to start this blog. I had just given my first course of Lied, whose title stated my intentions: “Lied, a close genre,” and the descriptor just clarified: “Lied is often considered a difficult musical genre, far from our day to day. But we shouldn't forget that it tells us about life” Lied tells us about life, of course; its language is different from ours, but, if we feel close to Shakespeare's works, I don't see why shouldn't we feel close to a poem written 200 years ago. And an aim of that course, of all my courses, was to overcome, or at least to weaken, the reservations of reluctant assistants.
But that was a course, we saw our faces, we talked, we laughed… A blog is different; the dialogue begins as a monologue and the exchange of opinions comes later. I wasn't convinced with the idea, and I was spurred on. And that's how Liederabend began. By the way, I'm uncertain if I ever told you about the name: after dismissing many ideas, I dreamed it: Liederabend. My poor brain was working after-hours.
The first major change arrived at the beginning of the next season, the bilingual posts. Some people had told me they had tried to read the Catalan posts translated into English with an automatic translator, and that was unintelligible. And they were right, automatic translators of that time were scarce and Catalan-English translations were virtually useless. As insufficient as my English could be, it was better than the translator.
The decision of publishing also in English resulted in the first serious technical problem. I was using Blogspot platform because the other popular blog platform back then, Wordpress, inserted ads in the middle of the posts, something I refused. The thing was that Blogspot wasn't multilingual; at least, it was flexible, and you could modify the code. And I'm an engineer, aren't I? So, I devised a system to set up an apparently bilingual blog. I kept making changes for some months, but a time arrived when, however flexible, Blogspot became definitively insufficient. Then arrived the second major change: to move from the rental (free) flatlet to my own (paid) house which, thanks to my wonderful web designer, is spacious and comfortable, and becomes larger every time I need it.
In fact, I can tell you now of a new extension. So far, you could reach all the songs on Liederabend from the menu We listened to, where the composers are listed in alphabetical order. From today, you can reach them from the menu Composers, where they are named in chronological order; I have always thought that time context is important (I sort my CD this way at home) and I've long wanted to add this chronology. I hope it will be useful to you.
On 2 February 2012 I published Liederabend's first article with a descriptive title: “A blog about what?”. Weeks, months and years passed, and here we are: 2 February 2022, ten years later. Thank you all for being there. Maybe usual readers missed those traditional figures in the title of Liederabend's anniversaries. Here you are: 538 / 124 / 238 / 239 / 235. In other words, over the ten last years we heard 538 songs from 124 composers, with poems from 238 poets, performed by 239 singers and 235 pianists. I must admit, I feel a bit dizzy after reading the figures.
The song to celebrate the tenth anniversary will be Im Haine, a light, bright song with the adequate dab of shadows. The composer is the apple of my eyes, of course; it's Schubert's 112th Lied in Liederabend, and the poem is by Franz Bruchmann. Im Haine is performed by two great musicians: Simon Keenlyside, who was the representative of the present-day singers on Liederabend's alphabet, and Malcolm Martineau, who was the representative of the pianists.
Once again, thank you very much. We'll meet again next week.
Sonnenstrahlen
Durch die Tannen,
Wie sie fallen
Ziehn von dannen
Alle Schmerzen,
Und im Herzen
Wohnet reiner Friede nur.
Stilles Sausen
Lauer Lüfte,
Und im Brausen
Zarte Düfte,
Die sich neigen
Aus den Zweigen,
Atmet aus die ganze Flur.
Wenn nur immer
Dunkle Bäume,
Sonnenschimmer,
Grüne Säume
Uns umblühten
Und umglühten,
Tilgend aller Qualen Spur!
Sunbeams
through the fir-trees
falling,
Draw from there
all pain;
and in our hearts
dwells pure peace only.
The still murmuring
of mild breezes,
And the whispering
of delicate scents:
they float down
from the branches,
breathing gently on the entire meadow.
If only
the dark trees,
the shimmering sunlight,
and the green forest-edge,
could blossom
and glow around us all the time,
erasing every trace of pain!
(translation by Emily Ezust)
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