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It seems to me that that the key to appreciating a song sung in a foreign language is to understand the poetry. I don’t mean simply following the translation, I mean hearing the inner music of the spoken language that prompted the composer to set the poem to music in the first place. And in the case of Goethe, we begin with one of the giants of German letters: poet, playwright, novelist, botanist, scientist, the man who did so much to lift German literature from the humdrum position it found itself at the time of Bach’s death.

"Mailied" is a simple love poem full of the exuberance of the month of May, which Trollope once described as the glory of Northern Europe, a poem plumbing no great emotional depths but bearing witness to the extraordinary abundance of nature and its intoxicating effect on the human spirit. And the poem finds its perfect match in Beethoven, the musical colossus of the 19th century, so in tune with the aspirations of the French Revolution; Beethoven the Promethean figure whose symphonies and chamber music are so well known, but whose songs remain largely unknown. They occupy a marginal place in his output: it’s as if song for Beethoven was a kind of musical day-trip, a form which despite his achievements (I think particularly of his cycle “An die ferne Geliebte”) remained a source of not-quite realized potential. However, the best of his songs are very fine indeed, and a few have held their place in the repertoire, including this one.

2 Posted by Conor Biggs at 2:43 pm, December 12th 2007.

Erbauliche Gedanken eines Tabakrauchers

Of course, art song didn’t just spring out of nowhere, unlike Botticelli’s ‘Venus’. The origins of art song (if you accept my definition as being a song sung by one solo voice with one accompanying instrument) go back to medieval times: the Minnesänger. A minstrel would often accompany himself on the harp: Richard the Lionheart might have heard some of these songs from his dungeon in Germany. But what concerns us is more the advent of the modern Lied, i.e. a solo song with piano accompaniment. By the time Mozart’s short life came to an end in 1791, the forte piano, the precursor of today’s Steinway grand, was replacing the mainstay of baroque keyboard music, the harpsichord. But it needed more than the greater expressive potential of the new instrument to stimulate German composers to write great songs, and that stimulus was poetry. Germany until the arrival of Schiller and Goethe towards the end of the 18th century had nobody to rival French writers like Voltaire or Montesquieu or De la Fontaine. A host of mediocre poets were active around the time of Bach’s death in 1750, and their work was set by a long list of composers, whose value is more historical than musical. Before the arrival of the first great Lieder composer, Mozart, only the name of C.P.E. Bach sticks out. I thought I’d begin my brief survey of early German song with an example of one of Johann Sebastian Bach’s secular songs: a charming piece of music tacked on to a moralizing poem typical of its time. In fact German poetry of the period could be summed up as ranging between religious exuberance and instructional pedantry: "Erbauliche Gedanken eines Tabakrauchers".

Obviously songs like this were intended for domestic use: the notion of a song recital sung by a professional singer was some way down the road, making it’s first appearance about half-way through Schubert’s career. We are still rooted in the Age of Enlightenment: existentialist questions are answered by a firm faith in God, and all aspects of human behaviour are measured by that faith. Even the humble pipe-smoker! (Health hazards apart). Tobacco, like coffee, was greatly in vogue in 18th century Europe. So, onto the music. Finely crafted, as you would expect; strophic, with at times scant regard to the fact that a singer has to breathe at awkward places:, to the detriment of the poem: a good example is found in verse 2, between the lines “Sie fällt und bricht eh ich’s gedacht Mir oftmals in der Hand entzwei".

3 Posted by Conor Biggs at 6:30 pm, December 19th 2007.

C.P.E. Bach

We come now to C.P.E. Bach, the most most talented of Johann Sebastian Bach’s many composer sons, whose works are strikingly original but alas seldom performed. C.P.E. Bach worked for many years at the court of the music-loving Frederick the Great and wrote many songs, including 180 sacred songs. The texts vary from mediocre to downright awful: an example is “Passionslied” the text of which you’ll find on the poets page of this site.

There’s more in the same vein - a lot more, nineteen verses in all! Roll on Goethe and Schiller! C.P.E. Bach manages to write some fairly distinguished music for this stuff, like the striking effect of the voice’s first entry, almost as if the singer had forgotten to start singing. Obviously intended for domestic use, the perfect end to a strict protestant Sunday somewhere in Northern Germany... again, the instrument accompanying the singer would probably have been a harpsichord, possibly a forte piano.

4 Posted by Conor Biggs at 10:00 am, December 27th 2007.

Wider den Übermut

An even finer song by the same composer as last week is “Wider den Übermut”, one of his settings of religious poetry by Gellert. Beethoven’s short Gellert song cycle is still performed occasionally, but C.P.E. Bach can easily rival him. The moralizing tone we found in the previous song is still present, though less self indulgent. Once again the music rises above the poetry, indeed often being strikingly original, full of unexpected harmonic turns.

It’s as if the composer is continually asking questions... the piano interludes are also full of interest: ., what we call in musical jargon accented passing notes. Now, I’ve just talked about the posing of questions, which brings me to my following point: we are slowly but surely leaving behind the certainties of the 18th century, launching out into the the uncharted waters of romanticism, an attempt to fill the moral vacuum left behind by the French Revolution. It was left to artists like Voltaire, Byron, Turner and Schubert to translate that questioning spirit into art.

5 Posted by Conor Biggs at 2:54 pm, January 2nd 2008.

Das strickende Mädchen.

Which brings us to Haydn. He occupies a marginal place in the history of art song, although his best songs, written curiously enough in English, are consistently neglected. His vocal writing is always idiomatic - no doubt due to his experience as a choirboy in St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna.

In Haydn’s day there was no separate line for the voice: the singer wasn’t to be trusted! In fact, singing songs - as opposed to singing opera - was a purely amateur affair. Indeed, almost all songs at this time were strophic: experimentation with form comes later. The music speaks for itself; typical for Haydn is the lengthy piano introduction, hardly surprising given the title of this song collection: “Zwölf Lieder für das Clavier” . Mozart also refers to his violin sonatas as piano sonatas with violin accompaniment. A lengthy introduction, as I said, complete with cuckoo calls, whch gives us clue as to the fate the luckless lover.

6 Posted by Conor Biggs at 6:43 pm, January 12th 2008.

Abendempfindung

Mozart’s “Abendempfindung” is the first great classical song. Written in homage to his father Leopold,who had died a few months previously, the poem’s author is unknown - possibly written by Mozart himself. It’s no great piece of writing, bordering on the sentimental, but serves as a perfect vehicle for Mozart’s uncanny feel for human psycholology.

As often with Mozart, the smell of the theatre is not far away. Those two first bars - what do they express? I think they simply set the scene, they’re not especially descriptive. And yet out of this innocent, unmelodic material springs the theme which runs through the entire song. The song is too long to discuss in detail, but I should mention how we are now leaving behind strophic settings: Mozart was more than willing to experiment with form.. A second thing worth mentioning is the way in which he contrasts long and short phrases: listen to how he sets the words “Aus ist unser Spiel”, in the second verse. Just when the quaver movement of the accompaniment might have become monotonous, he abandons it, and writes simple chords. Another feature is his ability to surprise; listen to the delightful harmonic shift at the beginning of verse 4, it’s a if yet another door has been opened.

But it’s above all in the final verse that he reveals his true mastery: Mozart takes fully one quarter of the song’s total length to cover one verse, by repeating phrases, varying note lengths and adding rests in such a way that we are subconsciously aware that the song is coming to an end long before it actually does. He makes a long journey seem shorter. We are left feeling totally satisfied, without really knowing why. Art concealing art.

7 Posted by Conor Biggs at 8:08 am, January 20th 2008.

Rastlose Liebe

Goethe describes love in its frenzied, almost insane aspect. A true 18th century man would not have broached such a topic, but Goethe is of another age: let’s not forget that his cult novel “Das Leiden des jungen Werthers” prompted many unhappy young men to put an end to their days. We are fast approaching the monomania of Müller’s “Die Winterreise”. Goethe insisted that the poet speak from the heart, not slavishly imitate. He wrote it for Charlotte von Stein, shortly after exoperiencing a snow storm in the Thuringian Forest.

Most of us know Schubert's setting of this poem, but the setting by Carl Friedrich Zelter (1758-1832) is also a good song, if burdened by a little too many good ideas. There's a lot of stopping and starting, particularly given the frantic tone of the poem.

8 Posted by Conor Biggs at 6:15 pm, February 3rd 2008.

Schumann's Belsazar

Occasionally the bible provided inspiration to Lieder composers, and a fine example is this week's song, “Belsazar’, to a text by Heinrich Heine. Heine doesn’t have recourse to scripture for religious ends, but rather because this is a particularly good story: the downfall of Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, punished for blasphemy. The famous passage recounting the appearance of mysterious letters of fire, which Heine freely paraphrases, is taken from the Book of Daniel: “Mene, Mene, Tekel and Parsin. Mene, God has numbered the days of your kingdom and brought it to an end; Tekel, you have been weighed in the balances and found wanting; Parsin, your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and to the Persians.”

The feeling of nocturnal shennanigans is admirably portrayed by Schumann in the short introduction. We get scurrying semiquavers based on a jagged figure in the piano's left hand, and in the right these offbeat dissonances, and the whole thing sounds like frantic activity even though it can be reduced to two chords. Schumann’s depiction of Nebuchadnezzar’s growing fear is masterly: first, the semiquaver movement stops, to be replaced by rather menacing quavers. A short interlude for the piano depicts him tottering unsteadily, holding onto the table for support. Worse is to come (for the king, that is!): at the moment that the incomprehensible letters appear on the wall, the vocal line loses its melodic profile, and becomes wholly the narrator’s vehicle, underpinned by this sinister figure in the left hand of the piano. The writing becomes more tortuous while at the same time rhythmic activity slows to a virtual halt in a final passage of “secco” recitative, a throwback to baroque music, throwing the spotlight fully onto the narrator; the effect is chilling.

9 Posted by Conor Biggs at 6:11 pm, February 10th 2008.

Verrat

Brahms wrote over 300 songs, many of which remain in the repertoire, although his many exquisite folksong settings are seldom performed. Brahms was on the whole attracted to mediocre poetry not because his literary tastes were limited, but because for him poetry had to be subservient to his musical needs; like Bach, he always thought instrumentally. Composing songs was not always spontaneous; he is known to have read a poem, set it aside, and three years later find a suitable musical idea for it!

"Verrat" is a ballad, a form quite popular with romantic composers (another famous example would be Schubert’s “Erlkönig”). Most songs describe a state of mind: I can’t stop thinking of you, you don’t love me anymore, if you leave me now, you take away the greater part of me... that sort of thing (not a thousand miles away from pop song lyrics, actually). A ballad describes events. "Verrat", as you’ve just heard, is a simple story of betrayal and revenge, real penny-dreadful stuff, doubtless popular in its day.

The song begins with a lugubrious piano introduction, reminiscent of a baroque passacaglia (i.e. a theme repeated continuously). The voice enters. At the point where the wronged lover pursues his rival, the theme undergoes variation, accompanied by jagged chords. The piano writing could have come from any of Brahms’ mature works for piano solo. In fact, you could argue that Brahms uses the voice simply as another instrument: the sort of intimate bond that we find in Schubert between poetry and music is much less in evidence in Brahm’s songs. After the murder, the dust settles, musically speaking. Brahms wraps up the tale, this time doubling the voice part in the piano.

10 Posted by Conor Biggs at 8:37 pm, February 17th 2008.

Wolf

When we think of Wolf we think of his settings of Mörike, Eichendorff, Goethe, as well as the Italienisches Liederbuch and the Spanisches Liederbuch, most of these songs being written in feverish bursts of activity over a very short period of time. Wolf was perpetually dogged by severe bouts of depression, and like Schubert, was a frustrated operatic composer: his one opera, “Der Corregidor” has not entered the repertoire. In his song writing he perfected the art of writing miniatures, supplying psychological insight into the heart of the poetry in a way not seen since Schubert. “Fühlt meine Seele” is his last song, written shortly before his committal to a mental asylum (at his own request): Wolf, like so many other artists in the 19th century, died of Syphillis. Michelangelo, being a Renaissance man, wrote poetry. Another comoser to set his poetry was Shostakovitch. This poem depicts the writer in a state of emotional turmoil.

By way of a red herring, I want to say something about performance practice. Wolf was of the generation of composers who wrote lots of performance directions into the score. The gulf between performer and composer was growing, in that composers could no longer trust singers to obey even the simplest of instructions. Going back in time, Schumann did the same, Schubert less so. Then, too, editions have a rôle to play: compare the Urtext edition of the Mozart song we heard earlier to somer later editions with additional marks of expression added in by the editor. Let the performer beware! (Urtext simply means “original text”). Bach rarely wrote any performance indications into his music - in those days the only music played was contemporary music, so it was presumed that the performer knew what to do, stylistically speaking. When we go right back to the 15th century not only are there no performance indications, but if you decide to sing from the original manuscript - which I have - you are not even allowed to write your own indications!

Back to our song. The rich chromatic writing, depicting perfectly the protagonist’s tormented state, is heavily influenced by Wagner. The underlying thematic structure is just one three note cell which undergoes myriad transformations.

11 Posted by Conor Biggs at 5:21 am, February 25th 2008.

Strauss Der Einsame

Strauss said of himself, "I may not be a first-rate composer, but I am a first-class second-rate composer!" His father forbade him to study the scores of Wagner ...

Richard Strauss died in 1949, much later than the last great lieder composer, Wolf, but his songs belong nonetheless to that great tradition. The finest of them are justifiably famous - favourites of sopranos, not surprising since Strauss wrote most of them for his wife Pauline, herself a soprano. Most of his song texts are decidedly second-rate, so I thought it would be refreshing to consider a song which uses more than decent poetry (by Heine) and at the same time is written for bass voice.

The song depicts loneliness and loss. A leap of a minor sixth permeates the song, each time appearing with a new harmonization: the theme is varied in the central section, a passage of rare beauty describing the loved one, with a leap of a ninth. That theme is treated contrapuntally i.e. voices enter in turn. The death wish on the part of the protagonist is admirably reflected in the use of the bass voice.

12 Posted by Conor Biggs at 10:03 am, March 12th 2008.

Schubert Fahrt zum Hades

Schubert is generally acknowledged to be the finest of all Lieder composers. His vast output - over 600 songs - covers an enormous range of topics from love poetry to Greek mythology and helped establish classical song as a genre worthy of professional attention, not simply the preserve of amateur musicians. Moreover the piano under Schubert becomes emancipated, becomes the poetic conscience of the song, anticipating and commenting on the poetry itself.

Schubert set an astonishing array of poets, and one of the most important of these was Johann Mayrhofer, for a time a close friend of the composer’s, and one who exerted considerable influence on his literary tastes, above all introducing Schubert to classical mythology. Our next song, "Fahrt zum Hades" (Journey to Hell) is one such. Mayrhofer describes the departing soul leaving the earth and descending the River Styx, the river of forgetfulness. Schubert himself saw death as a liberator, once turning on a friend who had been commenting on the recent death of a mutual acquaintance with the words “Death is the not the worst thing that can happen to a man”.

A descending theme in the piano, in Schubert’s music associated with death, forms the introduction. Schubert describes perfectly the desolate scene before him, while at the same time remaining in a lyrical mode. A curious feature of Schubert’s songs is that, while often choosing melancholy subject matter, Schubert always manages to create something of beauty, the supreme example being "Winterreise", which deals with nervous breakdown and the alienation of the individual.

Back to our song.We move into triple metre at the words “Da leuchten Sonne nicht, noch Sterne”. Schubert encourages us to feel pity for the protagonist, without resorting to sentimentality. At the words “Vergessen nenn ich zwiefach sterben" (to forget is to die twice over) Schubert adopts a recitative syle, one which he consistently favoured, and possibly as a passing nod to opera, for we must not forget that Schubert wrote about twenty stage works, whose relative failure was a constant source of frustration. In fact many of his songs could be regarded as being mini operas.

The DANAIDS are the 50 daughters of Danaus 1 who married the sons of Aegyptus 1, and murdered their husbands (except one) on their wedding night. Tantalus offered up his son, Pelops, as a sacrifice to the gods. He cut Pelops up, boiled him, and served him up as food for the gods. Tantalus' punishment, now proverbial for temptation without satisfaction ("tantalising"[11] ), was to stand in a pool of water beneath a fruit tree with low branches. Whenever he reached for the fruit, the branches raised his intended meal from his grasp. Whenever he bent down to get a drink, the water receded before he could get any.

13 Posted by Conor Biggs at 1:22 pm, March 18th 2008.

French Song

What was French song up to at the time of Schubert, Schumann? Not a lot. The situation was perhaps not desperate, but the only figure of real stature writing music in France in the first half of he 19th century was Berlioz, who detested the piano! Certainly the achievements of composers like Gounod, Massenet and Saint-Saëns were not negligible in the long run, but as song composers they cannot even begin to compare to their neighbours east of the Rhine. There is nothing particularly French sounding about their songs, in the way that there is in the songs of Fauré. They contented themselves in following superficially German models. The result could sometimes sound like Schumann on an off-day.

14 Posted by Conor Biggs at 12:41 pm, March 23rd 2008.

Duparc's Soupir

Duparc’s compositional career was cut short by nervous debility. His own acknowledged legacy is just thirteen songs, but in those songs he charts new territory for the form: for the first time French song starts sounding French. There’s nothing particularly distinguished about the languid poem, written by Prudhomme, one of the Parnassian school of poets, but it's intense sadness of the poetry is well matched by Duparc, the opening in particular. Lesser composers of the period might have written a sort of ‘till ready’ introduction, but Duparc does something much more special. The descending figure is mirrored in the vocal writing. The song is full of the sort of chromaticism associated with Franck, but this chromaticism is underpinned by a sure-footed sense of tonality. At the words “Mais ces pleurs, toujours les répandre”, the vocal line loses its melodic profile.

15 Posted by Conor Biggs at 8:15 am, April 2nd 2008.

Chausson's Les Heures

Symbolism played such a great part in French art that I thought it would be instructive to consider one of its earlier musical manifestations: Chausson’s “Les Heures”. The flagship of French symbolism could be said to be Debussy’s opera “Pelléas”, but we are some years away from that achievement. Symbolism has this in common with surrealism: a tendency to speak in parable, in other words a willingness to interpret at several levels. If we turn to the poem, by Camille Mauclair (see "french poets" page) we see evidence not only of symbolism but also of what Mallarmé called the necessity to “musicalize” poetry. In other words, sound for the sake of sound. Read the poem yourself to see what I mean! You can see that the structure of the poem - all those word repetitions - has something to do with a quest for “musicalization; try those first lines again, up to “baigné de lune”. Very French too to try to personalize something as impalpable as the passage of time. (I remember walking passing by a butcher’s in Paris years ago and seeing a little flag stuck into a piece of meat bearing the legend “Prends moi, je suis tendre.” ) Quite a challenge, then, to set this sort of poetry to music, but Chausson does it superbly.

A bell-like theme, the ticking of a clock, opens the proceedings, and is always present. Next we get a transparent duet between the voice and the left hand of the piano. Throughout, no discernible melody as such; a process whereby melody begins to disintegrate, begun by Duparc, is continued by Chausson and reaches its zenith in the vocal works of Debussy and Ravel. You’ll notice traces of César Franck in some of the juicier chords, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

16 Posted by Conor Biggs at 10:54 pm, April 15th 2008.

Fauré's En Sourdine

Verlaine had an adventurous life, first getting married, then having an affair with Rimbaud with whom he quarelled, shooting him in the hand, which earned him a spell in prison. This poem is about sensibility to nature: as so often, romantic poets tended to idealize nature. The feeling of sylvan languor is translated to perfection by Fauré. Chords which at the time would have been regarded as dissonant were used by Fauré as if they were not. A triplet figure enters innocuously enough at the words “Ferme tes yeux”, later playing a more dominant rôle in the piano part. Finally at the words “Et quand solennel le soir” there is a wonderful feeling of inevitability about the arrival, thanks to a descending line in the accompaniment.

17 Posted by Conor Biggs at 11:43 am, April 29th 2008.

Ravel's Le Grillon

Ravel, for all that his music sounds exotic, remains firmly within the bounds of tonality, to the extent that he even used figured bass- a baroque shorthand way of writing chords.

He once described his most famous work, “Boléro”, as “a masterpiece without any music in it.” He had a fondness for repeated notes - we’ll hear that in our next song; Stravinsky once described him as a “Swiss watchmaker”.

If Ravel’s greatest achievement is in the expansion of the of the piano’s colouristic potential, his songs, especially the “Histoires naturelles”, show a pointillist fascination for detail. The choice of poetry was considered odd at the time - 1907 - for theses are prose poems on the theme of animals - unheard of in literature, and even more so in music. Indeed, Jules Renard was not best pleased that Ravel set his poems in the first place. The poetry is evocative and moving, and not in the least childish. Go to the poets page to read the poem.

We first hear an oscillating figure, a little bit like a modern door bell. Next, and typical for for Ravel, these exquisite octave doublings. Next, at the words “D’abord il ratisse ses étroites allées de sable” we get this scrap of a melody in the piano. After that, a variation on the same scrap, at the words “Puis il remonte sa miniscule montre”.

The performance of these songs in 1907 provoked a scandal, because Ravel insisted on compressing the final mute ‘e’ in words like ‘femme’; critics thought that he was debasing the language, making it sound too much like common speech (French speakers are notoriously protective about their language).

18 Posted by Conor Biggs at 10:21 am, May 7th 2008.

Poulenc & Éluard

Poulenc’s contribution to French song is probably the most important since Fauré. Manic depressive, he was once described as being “something of a monk and something of a rascal”. He composed over a hundred songs, 90 of these being written for his partner, the baritone Pierre Bernac. Poulenc distanced himself from trends in contemporary music, but his music undeniably sounds 20th century, thanks to his choice of poetry.

Poulenc made many settings of Paul Eluard’s verse (see poets page). Eluard was a leading light in the surrealist movement, a kind of Dali in verse. Fitting then that Dali should have painted his portrait. Poulenc once said of Eluard’s poetry; “There is a stillness about it which I do not understand. “ I concur! It helps to know that the poem was written in 1942, in occupied France. It may be that the poem is meant to be understood on different levels simultaneously; to me, it speaks of loss, disorientation, and death. The lion is obviously an allegorical figure.

This is dense stuff! Poulenc’s setting might appear dense too on first hearing though underlying the perpetual motion of the semiquavers is a fairly standard tonal scheme. Some of the harmonies are borrowed from the demi-monde of cabaret. Both poem and song are dense but very rewarding.

19 Posted by Conor Biggs at 10:43 am, May 21st 2008

Shostakovich's Night

In 1974 Dmitri Shostakovitch learned of the preparations in Italy for the five-hundredth anniversary of Michelangelo. He was fascinated by Michelangelo, composing a cycle of songs to poems by this consummate Renaissance man. Shostakovitch himself regarded the cycle as his unofficial sixteenth symphony, in the same way as Symphonies 13 and 14, both of which call on vocal soloists. He orchestrated the cycle but never lived to hear the first performance.

It’s impossible to ignore the influence of Soviet cultural policy on Shostakovitch’s evolution as a composer. I suppose the most often quoted story is the one about Stalin giving the composer lessons in composition. His first symphony was premiered when he was just 19, and brought him instant international recognition. The Michelangelo cycle is one of his last works, and demonstrates an increasing fascination with sparse textures, as in the song "Night". Out of this simple material grows a spartan theme, reminiscent perhaps of the loneliness of the creator. The voice enters in silence. A feature of the vocal writing is the downward turn of the phrases, so for instance at the point where the poet describes Night as being embodied in stone.

A wonderful passage follows, at the moment that Night awakens and begins to speak. We leave the real world and enter into the magical world of stone. These chord progressions are typical of Shostakovitch. In musical terminology, B minor, d sharp minor first inversion, minor 7th. This unique use of harmony is surely the fruit of the composer’s efforts to stay within the tonal system, since any deviation from the norm would have been considered too difficult for the proletariat, hence unpatriotic. (Not that this song cycle is particularly accessible, but perhaps Shostakovitch at the end of his life felt that his enormous reputation would protect him).

Please click on the recordings tab to hear a live performance of Shostakovich's "Night".

20 Posted by Conor Biggs at 12:59 pm, May 28th 2008.

Tchaikovsky's At the Window

Tchaikvosky is of course best known for his symphonies and ballets; in fact he is the best selling classical composer of all time; someone once quipped that the real winner of the Napoleonic campaign in Russia was the composer of the 1812 Overture! But equally true, the songs (and to a certain extent the operas) remain largely unknown.

Let’s start with Za aknom v tyeni milkaet (aka "At the Window"). Russian music has a reputation for being gloomy, so I want to give you a flavour of a humourous song. This is a variation on the age old topic of “Lean out of the window, golden hair.” A young girl is serenaded by her lover, who is trying to persuade her to leave her house and escape from the clutches of the old woman who is guarding her virtue. The conversation is one-sided and a little ridiculous. Go to the poets page to read the poem.

The song is a balanced mixture between thigh-slapping cossack and mock heart-on-sleeve: we get a jaunty theme to begin with amid of the balalaïka in the accompaniment. A feature of the vocal writing is the large leaps in the vocal part. The piano writing too displays considerable subtlety, for instance in the phrasing which stretches across a number of bars. That syncopated style of writing is typical of Tchaikovsky - there are many examples of it in his other works. The song ends with more cossak stuff; it may or may not be a direct quote from folk music - that hardly matters.

Go to the recordings page to hear Tchaikovsky's "At the Window".

21 Posted by Conor Biggs at 6:12 pm, June 5th 2008.

Tchaikovsky's best known song

Tchaikosky’s best known song, nyet, tol’ka tot kto znal, is known in this part of the world as "None but the weary heart" or for those acquainted with the original "Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt”. The song was made famous by Fritz Kreisler’s arrangment, in the same way that the luckless slow movement of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No.21 became immortalized in the film Elvira Madigan. Now, "None but the Weary Heart" is a fine song, but there are other Tchaikovsky songs equally fine, if not better. Slings and arrows of fortune . . .

The poetry is by Goethe, and recounts the anguish and love-pangs of Mignon - the same Mignon who sings “Kennst du das Land”, of which Beethoven made a beautiful setting. Please visit the poets page to read the poem.

A persistent feature of the song - and one found in a lot of Tchaikovsky’s music - is a syncopated figure, a gentle but persistent reminder that all is not well. The voice imitates that famous theme, to be followed by a piano commentary. In psychological terms, a kind of marshalling of thought. Then follows a passage of grief-stricken beauty at the word dalyyeko, distant. After this those syncopated chords really get going, whipping protagonist and listener alike into a frenzy. Curiously, for a grief-stricken song, we stay resolutely in the major at the end - a note of hope, perhaps? Possibly this unwillingness to lead us to the brink is what has led to the song’s popularity.

Please go to the recordings page to hear Tchaikovsky's best known song.

22 Posted by Conor Biggs at 11:17 pm, October 28th 2008

Learning the classical song repertoire 1

Learning new repertoire is a way of life for me: I follow tried and tested procedures which seem perfectly obvious to me, but might prove intriguing to the uninitiated.

I have always been fascinated by the spoken word: radio plays, recordings of poetry, theatre in general (to the point of preferring ‘straight’ theatre to opera). A song recital is in fact a heightened form of poetry reading (or should be: it sometimes becomes a vehicle for vocal display). In other words, one begins with the poem! I always begin by memorising the poem, after plodding through the text with a dictionary (a painstaking enough process when it comes to Russian!) Then I recite it, for several days if possible. The whole point is to thoroughly immersed in the inner music of the poetry before embarking on a study of the music. I have never understood singers who learn the poem and the music in tandem. Learning the poem as a poem – and not as a series of vocal sounds tacked onto the music - must be the first step.

23 Posted by Conor Biggs at 11:27 am, November 1st 2008

Learning the classical song repertoire 2

Onto the music then: this involves steps two and three. Unless the music is atonal I’m generally able to hear it in my head, which means I don’t have to ‘bash in the notes’, which in turn means I can visually (mentally) memorise the piece. That may sound strange, but I like to have a clear photographic image engraved in my memory before singing ‘in’ the notes. I don’t have a ‘photographic’ memory as such; I memorise the first bar mentally, ‘rewind’ to the beginning, add the second bar, then repeat the process (step two). Then I record the accompaniment and restart the process, this time singing (step three). As soon as I make a mistake or even sing the right notes without knowing why, I rewind – a laborious process indeed, but it guarantees a sense of security on the concert platform which is the best method of combatting nerves. Step four of course is working with a’live’ accompanist. I like to have as many rehearsals as possible (as many as ten, if the programme demands it).

The whole process of learning one song can take up to two weeks, a lot longer if the song is printed in a key too high for my voice, in which case I have to transpose it.

Why do I go to such trouble? Well, you can’t be truly free to express yourself on the concert platform if you haven’t put in the spadework. My learning process works for me – other singers adopt a more piecemeal approach, one that seems to work for them. The ability to tap into one’s inner resources under pressure – which is exactly what a performance is – gives rise to a sense of freedom and improvisation impossible to create in rehearsal. Without the painstaking preparatory process, the performance would flop.

24 Posted by Conor Biggs at 9:05 am, November 5th 2008

Poetic imagination

Listening to Boris Kristof earlier today I ws struck by his poetic imagination – a gift he had in common with Callas. What do I mean by poetic imagination? In simple terms, the gift of a good raconteur. A singer who is preoccupied by music alone, or worse still technical prowess, can never succeed in moving his or her audience. The listener must be convinced at the moment of listening that the interpretation he or she is hearing is a truly valid interpretation of the poem. Otherwise the singer might as well be ‘singing’ a Beethoven piano sonata. Nothing wrong with Beethoven of course, but instrumental music, because it is a non-verbal form of communication, appeals on an abstract level. Vocal music has to do both: it is abstract (the sounds the singer emits, as well as the piano accompaniment, are instrumental), but a layer of verbalism (the poem) is the driving force behind it.

Aria versus song?

You can easily disprove my theory when watching the reaction of people listening to "Nessun dorma". Who knows – or cares – what the aria is about? Everybody is just waiting for that top note on "Vincerò". A penalty shoot-out in music, if you like. But "Nessun dorma" is an operatic aria, and should really only be sung in the context of "Turandot" – on stage - where it makes eminent theatrical sense. On the recital platform, theatre and poetry are indivisible: the singer must act with his or her voice alone, just as he would if reading a straight poem. And the key to vocal acting is poetic imagination.

25 Posted by Conor Biggs at 7:32 am, November 13th 2008

Conquering stage-fright

Master the music, or the music will master you

About twenty years ago I came across a book entitled ‘conquering stage-fright’. I’ve never seen the book since then, and I suspect it is out of print. It was full of old-fashioned common sense, and changed my approach to learning music immediately. The book’s main message was this: memorize everything you intend performing, even if you end up using a score (as is usually the case in oratorio perfomances.) Anything less than a complete mental-visual grasp of your material can lead to disaster. It sounds cruel, because it is: master the music, or the music will master you (Although I have to say, that I’ve seen singers in action on stage who are obviously unprepared but manage to ‘pull it off’. Not for me!)

Nervousness is essential to any good performance: the body releases adrenalin, on the assumption that danger is at hand. In other words, the same instinct that prompted our forefathers to run for their lives is active during performance. A powerful tool, but one that can wreck a concert if preparation is not thorough. As to taking beta-blockers: if you find yourself having to take these, it’s time for you to leave the profession. The marvellous thing about performing – as opposed to rehearsing – is that the unpredictable will – and should – happen. As ye sow, so shall ye reap… hence the lengthy preparation I outline in steps 1-4.

26 Posted by Conor Biggs at 4:09 pm, November 22nd 2008

Mussorgsky’s Songs and Dances of Death: Medieval archetype meets 19th century Russian romanticism

Arseny Arkadyevich Golenishchev-Kutuzov (Russian: Арсений Аркадьевич Голенищев-Кутузов) (1848 - 1913), is a Russian poet known in part for writing the texts of Modest Mussorgsky's two song cycles of the 1870s: Sunless and Songs and Dances of Death.

It took a long time for the atheist philosophies of Voltaire and Nietzsche to be translated into the arts. However many adherents Voltaire may have had in the I8th century, it would have been unthinkable for composers like C.P.E. Bach, Mozart or Beethoven to have reflected such views in their song-settings. A true hall-mark of late romanticism is a willingness to broach such topics, although in perhaps less trenchant terms (one thinks of the world- weariness of much of Mahler’s music, for instance). Mussorgsky’s settings helped prepare the way for Ensor’s shockingly aetheist ‘Christ Crucified’, where Christ is depicted as a skeleton (shocking to this writer, at any rate, brought up as he was with the customary Western European Judaeo-Christian baggage).

What, you may ask, is uplifting about these songs? Uplifting perhaps not, but like all great art, they encourages us to ask existentialist questions. In all four of the cycles’ songs Death appears ‘In the Midst of Life’, to quote Ambrose Bierce. Only in the last song, ‘Commander-in-Chief’ is Death truly vindictive, and that may be owing to his scorn for the futility of warfare. Elsewhere he seems almost benevolent, as in ‘Lullaby’, where he puts an end to the dying infant’s suffering, and similarly ‘consoles’ the invalid in ‘Serenade’.

Musically Mussorgsky is at full tilt, resorting largely to melodic declamation of the sort often heard in his opera Khovanshchina. (‘My music must be an artistic reproduction of human speech in all its most subtle windings’). ‘Trepak’, the third song in the cycle, employs the cossack-song form of the same name (in which the legs are kicked from a squatting position), and besides being effective and topical in its own right – since the song deals with the demise of a drunken peasant – it reveals the general tendency of classical music of this period to interest itself in the heritage of national folk music styles.

27 Posted by Conor Biggs at 11:08 am, April 10th 2009

How many Schubert songs?

How many songs did Schubert write? Received wisdom puts it at around 600. John Reed and Graham Johnson, two leading experts on Schubert song, claim a figure in excess of 600, but some of these songs are incomplete (although since completed by anoother hand). I cannot in all honesty regard these as Schubert's, except perhaps for those where only the final chord is missing. Why not record such songs in truncated form, as has been done with Schubert's great, incomplete oratorio, Lazarus?

A number of the songs are drinking songs, thus intended (surely) for a group of men, not as solos.

My humble tally comes to 577. Which comes as a relief, since I intend performing them all!

28 Posted by Conor Biggs at 1:08 pm, April 14th 2009

Male or female?

People occasionally get hot under the collar about the sex of a singer when it comes to certain songs in the repertoire. I remember attending a riveting performance of Winterreise in Manchester given by Birgitte Fassbänder. Why not? After all, the emotional gamut run by the male protagonist is not the exclusive remit of a man. I admit that performing Gretchen am Spinnrade will prove a challenge to this male singer, but the precedent exists, albeit in a different art form: Dickens frequently protrayed female characters in his public readings. Curiously enough, there is no objection to male singers singing both Death and the Maiden in the eponymous song. And although in certain songs equal importance is ascribed to two characters of the opposite sex, it should be possible for one singer to interpret both parts. Schubert's Cronnan (Which features two characters, Shilrik and Vinvela) is a case in point. John Reed comments that 'There is nothing to suggest that Schubert intended the piece to be performed as a duet. It is a dramatic scena for voice and piano.' There is a practical consideration too: songs like Cronnan are less likely to be performed if two singers are required. Another rarely performed Schubert masterpiece, Szene aus Faust, poses a similar problem: how to portray Gretchen, Mephistopholes and a unison male chorus using just one singer! I have done it, but Schubert purists would probably shudder.

One of Schubert's most famous songs is traditionally sung by one singer, but has three characters (and a narrator): Erlkönig. Interestingly, there is also a version for three voices, which is (sadly) never performed. I rest my case...

29 Posted by Conor Biggs at 4:30 pm, April 14th 2009

Transpositions

My project to learn and perform all of Schubert's songs begs certain questions, notably the thorny one of transpositions. The Schubert expert John Reed has compiled a list of Schubert songs according to their keys, ascribing properties to these keys which have met with general approval - or in any case little disagreement ('D major is for Schubert important as a symphonic key... the emotional associations of E major are with innocence and joy.') I myself feel no such associations, but that is purely subjective. I wonder though if the quest for associating certain keys with corresponding emotional states is based on certain historical givens: for instance, D major in orchestral works by baroque composers sounds festive, as it cannot but, since D major is the key par excellence for trumpets of the period (brass instruments only became capable of playing in all keys during the 19th century).

Back to songs. Apparently it was common practice for Schubert to transpose his songs for interested singers, but not in the way one might imagine: if a bass asked to perform a song down, say, a fourth, Schubert transposed the accompaniment up a fifth! This system works remarkably well, certainly better than the alternative, which makes so many accompaniments sound muddy. (incidentally transpositions don't really work with songs by Debussy and Ravel: colouristic effect is as important as tonality, if not more so). Problems arise occasionally: certain passages can sound rather 'tinkly'. An even more important consideration has to be considered by the singer: if I perform a song in a key which is so high that it draws attention to certain words simply because they pose a technical challenge, I am better off singing the song in a lower key.

30 On interpretation

What I’m about to write about is probably taken as read by singers of classical song, so this is intended more for those who are not performers but are interested in Art Song. Getting into the mind of a performer might make interesting reading!

The most important weapon in the armory of a Lieder singer is a highly developed sense of poetry, or poetic vision if you prefer. To illustrate what I mean, I’m going to take a look at Rachmaninov’s song ‘Fate’. Fate in this song is portrayed as vindictive – not one the hands-off Classical Fates, spinning their distaffs, remaining aloof, but a real party-pooper. On the face of it, a gift to the interpreter. One of the more interesting aspects of this song is that Fate is a kind of Death figure by proxy, or if you prefer Rachmaninov’s take on Mussorgsky’s famous song-cycle ‘Songs and Dances of Death’ To hear Mussorgy’s famous song cycle, click on the recordings page.

Fate, in Russian, is a woman: Sud’ba (Судьба). Rachmaninov hits on the happy idea of using Beethoven’s Fate’ theme from the Fifth Symphony as the building block for the entire song. The appelation ‘Fate’ was applied to the symphony by later generations, in the same way as the piano sonata in c sharp minor Op. 13 No. 2 was later christened ‘The Moonlight’, and Rachmaninov takes advantage of this cultural ‘tagging’. The poem is by Apukhtin – not generally known to us here in the West, but popular still in Russia, and frequently set by Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov.

There are three principal characters – or rather victims – in the piece. I should explain at the outset that it’s easier to interpret songs with a strong story line: ballads likeSchubert’s ‘Erlkönig’ come to mind. Most songs deal with an emotional state – of the type ‘If you leave me now you take away greater part of me/ ‘You are a Little Flower /‘After a Dream’. A ballad on the other hand deals with an event or series of events in linear fashion.

Back to our song! Fate is introduced after a short piano introduction in which Beethoven is omnipresent, and proves to be a bad-tempered old lady, hobbling around on a walking stick. First we see the peasant, sowing his crops happily, hand-in-hand with Fate, the next moment succumbing to the effects of famine. Fate describes this with horrid Schadenfreude. Next, the wealthy Hooray Henries, revelling à la ‘Belshazzar’s Feast’ - that most colourful episode from the Book of Daniel.* Rachmanonov introduces a new theme in the piano, marvellously vainglorious in tone. At a certain point the guests fall silent as a ghastly hand appears, pointing towards them. ‘Move over’, says Fate, ‘Make room for a new guest!’ Finally, in a passage of great lyrical beauty we are introduced to two lovers. ‘No yist’ na shchastye zhe zemle! (‘There is happinies on earth after all!’) intones Apukhtin. But not for long… the lovers’ bliss is short-lived, as they discover Fate snooping around in the undergrowth (Rather comical, that ‘Happiness? Think again!’ says Fate, and the song ends with an insistent reiteration of that famous theme. Throughout the song Fate intones the words ‘Stook, stook, stook’ (Knock knock knock) with a venom that can become comical if the interpreter is not careful.

The length of the song might appear daunting to a non-Russian singer – how am I going to memorize all those words? To which I would reply: don’t sing in a language you can’t speak, however sketchily. (I would love to be able to sing Kilpinen’s Finnish songs, but I don’t). My Russian is not fluent, but sufficient to allow me to inflect the words as I think the poetry demands, and I can think, or dream, or imagine in Russian. When I sing about the luckless peasant, the feasting Hooray Henries confronted with that admonishing hand, or the young lovers thwarted in mid-élan, I actually see those situations: I invent – or rather re-invent during each performance: I go into story-telling mode. I sing as if for the first time, as in a spontaneous conversation., while keeping a careful eye on practical matters such as my collaboration with the pianist. Everything - the speed of my vibrato, the amount of time I spend on a specific vowel or consonant, the intensity of the breath I take – is coloured by my poetic vision. Story-tellers were a cherished race in days of yore! Fidelity to the inflections of speech, the sheer love of the spoken word – that is one of the keys to good Lieder singing. Of course, ballads like ‘Fate’ present fewer problems of interpretation. More difficult are those songs of a philosophical nature, like Schubert’s magisterial ‘Grenzen der Menscheit’, but even there opportunities present themselves. Harder again are Bach arias, for in Bach there is a lot of text repetition, militating against the story-telling mode that I speak of. Which is maybe one reason that baroque music does not lend itself to Art Song!

* ‘In the same hour came forth fingers of a man’s hand, and wrote over against the candlestick upon the plaster of the wall of the king’s palace: and the king saw the part of the hand that wrote.’ (Dan. V)