At a dinner where we were talking about music the name Barber came up. My friend I. said, “Barber? Les Mélodies passagères are his, right?” Since I didn’t know the Mélodies passagères, I made a mental note.To trace the origin of this cycle we have to go back to May 1946, to the first edition of the Prague Spring Music Festival, because that was where Francis Poulenc and [...]

So far on Liederabend we have heard three songs that set the William Shakespeare's poem that begins with the line “Come away, come away, death,” a poem found in Twelfth Night. In the context of the play it is a song sung by the clown Feste at the request of his master, Duke Orsino, who is lovesick (here you can find a synopsis).

I don’t usually write an article every year related to the feast of All Saints; I only do so occasionally. But if I had started back in 2012, as I did with the feast of Sant Jordi, for example, I could already have shared fourteen wonderful songs by Carl Loewe, and I would still have material for many more years. For Loewe loved to write about spirits, ghosts, and graveyards—and he did it very well.

We now reach the final part of Tragödie. Last week I mentioned that the poem in the central section, Es fiel ein Rief in der Frühlingsnacht, was not originally by Heine but, as he himself explained, a traditional song. I also told you that in the version of this same song collected by Anton von Zuccalmagio there was a fourth stanza, added to the three included by Heine.

Last week I referred to Tragödie as a triptych, for lack of a better definition. Because it has three parts, and because it is best appreciated if we consider it as a whole. But also—and this is a reason I had not yet mentioned—because the second part, the one we will hear today, is the one that gives meaning to everything. In other words, it is the central part of the triptych, the main one.