Lieder and Art Song for Beginners/Intermediates

[EdgeleyRob]

More for Edgey, and anyone else finding their way into the German lied:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLUyY8m3dPA

(Do I get a prize from Pumpkin for breaking the "only alive" sequence?)

Yep,1-0 ferney,that is divine.

[kea]

The words constitute half of all songs. A knowledge of languages is a huge advantage. I have a friend who loves Schubert songs and song cycles passionately, but she has no German at all. I often wonder what exactly she is listening to. It can't be same as what I hear.

I don't like words in music at all—they are, at best, a distraction, at worst, competition. This is just a personal preference though (the part of my brain that processes music also seems to do language, so they end up working against one another). It generally pleases me that most singers sing in such a way that the words are more or less incomprehensible—although it displeases me that most of them sing with pretty extensive vibrato, so as a result there are a lot of songs I don't listen to because even though they're great music they've never been interpreted in a way that appeals to me. (This applies to most repertoire after ca 1820)

(As for what I listen for in songs... well, the sounds, I guess!)

I will say that my favourite song composer of the 20th century is probably Kurtág.

[BBMmk2]

I do rather have a penchant for English Song(as it's called) but not much of a fan of lieder and the like, I'm afraid.

[rauschwerk]

I will say that my favourite song composer of the 20th century is probably Kurtág.

Examples please!

A favourite English song of mine which I should have included in my last post is King David by Howells. The piano part is challenging, since one has to represent the sounds of a harp with both hands, whilst the right hand adds snippets of birdsong (needing a different tone-colour). It almost needs three hands, in fact. But it must sound effortless! I think I almost did justice to it last time I played it.

It's a beautiful song which I love. There must be recordings but I can't recommend one because I've never heard one.

[Mary Chambers]

I

I don't like words in music at all—they are, at best, a distraction, at worst, competition. This is just a personal preference though (the part of my brain that processes music also seems to do language, so they end up working against one another). It generally pleases me that most singers sing in such a way that the words are more or less incomprehensible—although it displeases me that most of them sing with pretty extensive vibrato, so as a result there are a lot of songs I don't listen to because even though they're great music they've never been interpreted in a way that appeals to me. (This applies to most repertoire after ca 1820)

(As for what I listen for in songs... well, the sounds, I guess!)
.

Do you find out what the text is and then ignore it, or simply not read it at all? Is the voice then just an extra instrument as far as you're concerned? I am curious about this.

[kea]

Examples please!

The two songcycles that made the greatest impression on me were Kafka-Fragmente and Messages of the late Miss R. S. Troussova. I also remember enjoying Scenes from a Novel quite a bit, though I don't remember it as well.

I

Do you find out what the text is and then ignore it, or simply not read it at all? Is the voice then just an extra instrument as far as you're concerned? I am curious about this.

I do like to read the texts, but preferably after listening to the music (which sometimes helps to understand elements of musical structure). Before can work too, though that colours my experience of the music somewhat differently. It's just the at-the-same-time thing that doesn't really work (and usually causes me to focus on the text to the detriment of the music).

Yes, I'd say I look upon the voice as "just" a musical instrument—and have listened to song arrangements where it's replaced with another one (eg cello or whatever) with no loss of enjoyment—that's partly because of how different singing is (timbrally) from speech, but then some modernist composers incorporate speech and other sounds as extended techniques/"found objects", and make them sound musical by decontextualisation from language. (Does Sequenza III count as lieder? ) So to an extent it depends on comprehensibility, with the more text being understandable the less "musical" the voice being.

[gurnemanz]

I tend now just to call them all songs, whatever language they're in. I will say Lieder occasionally, but I think art song is a silly, meaningless and unnecessary expression. Is it used to distinguish them from pop songs?

Of course they can be in English. Britten is the best English song composer, and uses a huge variety of great poetry in his works. One of the problems with the peerless songs of, for example, Schubert is that the language is a barrier to many English-speaking people, and they really don't translate well. The words constitute half of all songs. A knowledge of languages is a huge advantage. I have a friend who loves Schubert songs and song cycles passionately, but she has no German at all. I often wonder what exactly she is listening to. It can't be same as what I hear.

It was when I started studying German at Durham nearly 50 years ago that I "got into" Lieder, having known mainly rock, pop and folk songs up till then (it being the 60s, after all). One of our lecturers told us that no study of German poetry was really complete without knowing the musical settings and played us some to try and make his point. (The lecturer in question, John Smeed, later wrote a book on the subject which I only recently discovered and duly bought second hand).

Knowing some of the songs helped me in my final exams. I wrote on essay on Goethe's poetry and was more readily able to recall bits of text I wished to quote by singing the song to myself. I can specifically remember doing this with Ganymed ... which I could recite by heart to this day.

[doversoul1]

Do you find out what the text is and then ignore it, or simply not read it at all? Is the voice then just an extra instrument as far as you're concerned? I am curious about this.

I said this when a subject of translated opera came up some time ago, so my apologies if you happen to remember what I said then.

I spent my youth listening to (mostly American) pop songs, then to Jazz vocal with translation in the sleeve notes etc., and watching films in various languages with subtitles. As a result, I developed a way of combining what I hear (the voice) and what I understand (from the text in translation) quite seamlessly. One exception is reading the printed libretto while I watch an opera, in my case at home on screen. This doesn’t work too well.

My current main interest in song repertoire is Italian Baroque songs and cantatas. Apart from a handful of Handel’s works, even on the Internet, finding the words of these songs, let alone their English translations is pretty remote. I found out with my annoyance that unless it is a brand new release, there is no guarantee that CDs include the full texts.

The words of many songs in this repertoire are not all that subtle, wiki translation is usually good enough to tell you what the title (roughly) means, and after awhile you build up a reasonable set of vocabulary to be able to guess and follow what the song is roughly about. Also, many cantatas are based on the Biblical stories which can be found out with a bit of Google search (I did not grow up with the Bible), and this helps to follow the ‘narrative’ of the cantata. With all these ‘tricks’, and as the music is there to ‘paint’ the words, once you get an idea, it isn’t as impossible as it may seem to appreciate and enjoy these songs and cantatas without knowing Italian.

I imagine your friend enjoys Lieder in a similar way. Of course this is no equivalent to being able to understand the original language but as long as the music and the performance are strong enough to pull me along, I am perfectly happy to listen to songs without understanding the actual words. I really don’t fancy listening to Monteverdi’s madrigals in English translation.

[ed.] I think what attracts me to these songs is not so much the text but the way in which human voice is used. Text or at least what the song is about is important, as, without it, the music makes little sense but it is hearing the voice that gives me the pleasure.


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[Roehre]

On the question of language and comprehension, I have serious problems with singers who cannot pronounce French.
This may be because, although nowhere near bilingual, I learned French songs in early childhood from a native speaker. But it worries me much less when an English singer malforms a German word. Anyone feel the same way?

I find songs horrible if sung by singers who are incapable of pronouncing German, French, English (or whatever language I do understand well - a handicap with parents[-in-law] and grandparents speaking 6 languages between them) idiosyncratically. Whatever the quality of the singing, I avoid them. Rules out Janet Baker e.g. in otherwise brilliantly sung, but horribly pronounced works like Brahms', Mahler's, Strauss' or Ravel's songs or other vocal works. DFD in French repertoire (Fauré e.g.): avoid at all costs. Even his English pronunciation -like the War Requiem- spoils my enjoyment.

[Mary Chambers]

In the War Requiem I don't mind DFD's poor English - it's about different nationalities, after all. That generation of singers, and older, didn't usually have the language skills today's singers have.

[LeMartinPecheur]

[DFD's] English pronunciation -like the War Requiem- spoils my enjoyment.

For a real feast of this, try (or avoid) his 1970s DG disc of Ives songs. On top of the pronunciation he doesn't always get the right notes, in The Swimmer particularly.

[Roehre]

For a real feast of this, try (or avoid) his 1970s DG disc of Ives songs. On top of the pronunciation he doesn't always get the right notes, in The Swimmer particularly.

Don't mention that one. A pity he didn't record the German texted songs of Ives'

[rauschwerk]

And so a thread born of enthusiasm is in danger of becoming a series of gripes about vibrato and pronunciation. Any chance of more discussion of actual music? I only ask.

[LeMartinPecheur]

And so a thread born of enthusiasm is in danger of becoming a series of gripes about vibrato and pronunciation. Any chance of more discussion of actual music? I only ask.

One supreme Lieder composer whose name appears but once in this thread is Hugo Wolf. And no favourite songs mentioned at all

If I could only save one of his Songbooks I think it would be the Mörike. One song? Fussreise, if only because I can always recall the vocal part and can almost sing it Also, I love the poem, though doubtless many others in this Songbook are greater.

Favourite recording? Um, tricky, but I do have a soft spot for Schwarzkopf's late Decca, so aptly and accurately described IIRC as a Fussreise in high-heels

[gradus]

Apart from Elgar's Sea Pictures, I'd suggest to a newcomer, Like to the Damask Rose and The Shepherd's Song.
Mendelssohn's Volkslied especially when sung by Margaret Price and Janet Baker's recital of English song that includes the intensely beautiful The Fields are Full.
Amongst the finest of all English song recitals on disc, Bryn Terfel's recording of VW's Songs of Travel, Butterworth's Shropshire Lad and various delights from Finzi and Ireland.
Brahms's Mainacht and Schumann's Nussbaum and Widmung are other songs I'd try to play to someone willing to explore the song repertoire. I mentioned Granados above but there are many gems in the Spanish repertoire that seldom get performed, more or less anything by Falla and Montsalvatge is worth listening to.