Johannes Brahms was a great admirer of art, especially painting and drawing. This will give me the chance to write (at least) three articles about three different artists who inspired him to write a song. This article, the first one, talks about Brahms and Franz Kugler, who never met.

I could have borrowed the title of this article from one of Charles Dickens's works, Great Expectations, because 1816 for Franz Schubert was a year of hopes and expectations. However, his projects did not come out as he had hoped, and the subsequent disappointments ended up causing a change in his life.

In 1874, the catholicos Gevorg IV founded a seminary in Etchmiadzin, in the cathedral premises, which was the religious centre of the Armenians. The head of the Armenian church established that every year twenty orphans who stood out for their intelligence and willingness to study were chosen to receive in the seminary the education that their situation did not [...]

My dearest, this week we are blowing thirteen candles, for the thirteen years that have passed since I published the first entry of Liederabend on February 2, 2012. Thank you for being there, for reading, and for commenting. I'm happy to keep learning and sharing, knowing that you're on the other side of the screen.

I first heard about Komitas on the radio years ago; the songs were alternating with the story of his life. I liked the songs, and his tragedy (which is the tragedy of the Armenian people) impressed me, to the point that I recall perfectly where I was passing with the car while listening to it.