My dearest, I had a close relationship with viruses during the last days. The half-written post on my table deserves more attention that I can give so I'll finish it later. That's why today we have a momento musical, my solution in those cases.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is pretty much over! Liederabend's alphabet comes to an end. Almost three years after that 'A is for amor', we're reaching letter Z.

As I said when we got to the letter X, finding a word for z has been really difficult... I turned to my dictionary seeking inspiration and on the fourth and last page, when I had almost lost hope, I found a good possible option.

The letter D of my Liederabend's alphabet was for Dichterliebe and cycles, in general. I talked about how difficult is to define a cycle and gave some examples; today I'm expanding on my collection of complicated stories with the strange case of the cycle composed as a cycle, premiered as a cycle and vanished as such for fifty years.

We can’t help believing on the pseudo-romantic idea that true works of art are those made under dictation from a muse: those images of the writer writing a whole novel without rising from his chair or the painter that leaves his studio with tangled hair and a masterpiece on the easel. I'm not saying that there are no works created like that, but let’s face it... cinema has done a lot of damage. This pseudo-romantic idea has a corollary: the underrating of commissioned works. How could be art something brought about by a contract? And we forget that artists also enjoy eating regularly and to warm up in winter [...]

My dearest, happy New Year filled with music!

To finish our Christmas season, I'm sharing a song by Peter Cornelius, a composer who wrote several song cycles with religious themes, usually with his own texts. Four years ago I talked about his Weihnachtslieder, op. 8, which includes a very well-known song, Die Könige. Today we're listening to the next song, Simeon, which tells the presentation of Jesus at the Temple; it was customary for the parents to take the children at the temple forty days after their birth and to offer for them a pair of turtle-doves. The Christian calendar celebrates [...]