What do you think a specialized blog in 20th & 21th century Opera and one about Art Song have in common? Apart from this strong impulse to talk over minority subjects? Well, they have in common Strauss, Britten, Korngold, Berg... many composers. The two of us, OperaXX and Liederabend, thought that it would be a nice idea to talk about the same new composer in both blogs this week. I can give you a hint for his name: we are going to listen to newest song in this blog so far. But let's go step by step...
Even though the equinox announces autumn's arrival, in Barcelona this season is lazy and it takes some more weeks to show up. In the meantime we people keep wearing short sleeve clothing and sandals; at the most we take a jacket if we go out early in the morning. Eventually, one day... thermometers go down and get stuck at 18º or 20º and people from Barcelona can finally wrap up as mannequins in shop windows at mid of August (amazingly enough... now mannequins are already wearing coats...).
The last two weeks I posted the first two posts of the series about Wilhelm Meister's songs; from now on I will alternate them with other posts as I did with the previous series. Today, for instance, we go back to the happiest songs series; I hope that meeting Mahler again compensates, if necessary, for the little disappointment brought by Wilhelm's absence.
Last week I started to talk about Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship and its songs. As I told you back then, this week I would explain some more things about Wilhelm's life before starting with the first song. If you are thinking of reading the novel, I would recommend to go direct to the song. If you continue reading, though, I hope you have enough time and energy. Are you ready?
Imagine there was the Art Song Awards, a kind of Academy Awards (I wonder... how would it be known? The Schuberts? Would the statuette be a linden branch?). Anyway, if the awards existed, Johann Wolfgang Goethe would clearly be nominated to two categories: "The most musicalized poet" and "The most adapted poem ever". So far, I've published about ninety posts on the blog's Catalan version; twelve of the songs have already been Goethe's poems, the only poet that could put him in the shade would be Rückert, but just because I have weakness for him (to be honest, though, they are far from being comparable...)
