English composer Gerald Finzi (1901–1956) was too young to fight in the First World War, but he experienced personally the results of the carnage. Within a span of two weeks in 1918, combat claimed the life of his only remaining brother, as well as his teacher, the composer and pianist Ernest Farrar. Finzi’s Farewell to Arms, Op. 9, a song in two parts for tenor and small orchestra, evokes melancholy remembrances of these …
…I have a dream today. I have a dream that one day every valley shall be engulfed, every hill shall be exalted and every mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plains and the crooked places will be made straight and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together. This is our hope. This is the faith that I will go …
In September of 1840, Robert Schumann presented a collection of 26 songs, composed the previous spring, to his beloved Clara as a wedding gift. The cycle, Myrthen, Op. 25, contains intimate musical ciphers and codes which had personal meaning to the couple. Myrtle flowers, referenced in the title, are associated with Aphrodite, the goddess of love. Based on a poem by Friedrich Rückert, the opening song, Widmung (“Dedication”), begins with the lines, …
Composed in the 1880s, prior to the First Symphony, Erinnerung (“Remembrance”) is one of the early songs of Gustav Mahler. It is the second in a collection of fourteen Lieder und Gesänge (“Songs and Airs”) published in 1892. The text, by the German poet, Richard Leander (1830-1889), reflects on the intermingling of love and song. Mahler’s setting is shrouded in dreamy melancholy and quiet anguish. The lamenting melody drifts over a hypnotic stream of …
Composed in 1891, Iolanta, Op. 69 was Tchaikovsky’s eleventh and last completed opera. On the evening of December 18, 1892, it shared a double premiere with the ballet, The Nutcracker, at Saint Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theatre. Mahler conducted the Vienna premiere in 1900. Then, the work fell into relative obscurity. Set in one act, Iolanta is based on a story by the Danish writer, Henrik Hertz (1798–1870). Iolanta is a fifteenth century French …
The twentieth century brought a revival of the English art song, which had fallen fallow after the death of Henry Purcell in 1695. (William M. Adams) Central to this revival was Ralph Vaughan Williams, a composer who drew inspiration frequently from England’s distant musical past. First published in the magazine, The Vocalist, in 1902, Whither Must I Wander? became part of Vaughan Williams’ Songs of Travel. The cycle of nine songs, originally written …
In 1894, the French writer, Pierre Louÿs, published a series of erotic poems titled, Les Chansons de Bilitis. Louÿs, who sought to “express pagan sensuality with stylistic perfection,” attributed the poems to Bilitis, an Ancient Greek woman who was a contemporary of Sappho. In the introduction of the book, Louÿs claimed that he had translated the collection following its discovery on the walls of a tomb in Cypress. In fact, Pierre Louÿs had …