> > ITA ... however, she does a bit more crooning on her "Goethe-Lieder" CD
> > than I feel comfortable. Her "Gretchen am Spinnrad" has way too many
> > musical theater affectations and last year when I played it for my German
> > diction class, my students (none of whom were particularly sophisticated)
> > reacted in horror at the "Und ach ... sein Kuss!" because it was just so
> > inappropriate.
>
> I wonder about how inapproriate it really is for Upshaw to take such
> liberties, though. Weren't art songs meant for informal "salon"
> get-togethers? I suppose some were written for concert performances, but
> most were probably done by people with "serious-amateur" caliber voices
> for their friends. They weren't subject to the same formal, academic eye
> that arts songs are seen under now...
Up until the time of Schubert, composers, including Reichardt, Zumsteeg
and Zelter, wrote very simple, strophic songs for the consumption of
amateurs. One of Schubert's great contributions was the elevation of the
song to something greater than the tradition of these earlier composers.
Johann Vogl, a baritone at the Vienna Opera, was often Schubert's choice
for introduction of his new songs, as was the great German soprano,
Wilhemina Schroder-Devrient. Brahms, perhaps the lieder composer most
drawn to the folk tradition, also wrote for opera singers, including
Hermine Spies and Julius Stockhausen. While the romance inhibited the
development of the French melodie for some years after the emergence of
the lied, even the French composers chose to write their songs for the
noted singers of the day: Faure for Charles Panzera, Debussy for
Jane Bathori and Claire Croiza. Of course there were many others, these
are the names that come quickest to mind.
> > People of every era have different ideas of what is painfully corny.
While there is some truth in this statement, it is not one that can or
cannot be proven undisputedly in regard to our discussion. However, I
surely have doubts that the greatest musical minds of our civilization,
having created works which have survived their own natural time and place,
would have produced works that could have ever come across to the
audiences of their day or this one as 'corny'.
Mark Montgomery
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