Favorite orchestral songs

[IcedNote]

We all know the usual suspects: Strauss and Mahler.

Who else is on your list? Sibelius? Schoenberg?

I've always liked Zemlinsky's Lyric Symphony.

You?

-G

[Ted Quanrud]

Hi Garrett --

Franz Schubert. Years ago, I heard the wonderful soprano Mitsuko Shirai in Minneapolis in a recital of Schubert songs orchestrated by other composers. Some years later, DGG issued a CD with Anne Sophie von Otter and Thomas Quasthoff in a similar recital. It includes Die Forelle (Britten), Erlkonig (Berlioz and also Reger), Staenchen (Offenbach) and other songs orchestrated by Webern, Liszt, Brahms and others. I don't know if it's still available, but it's well worth seeking out.

Other favorite composers of orchestral lieder include Berlioz, Wagner, Wolf, Zemlinsky and, of course, Mahler and most especially Strauss.

[johnQpublic]

Try the half dozen or so songs Duparc orchestrated. Very tasty.

And don't miss Canteloube's "Songs of the Auvergne"

[John F]

Another vote for Zemlinsky's Lyrical Symphony. I love Duparc's songs, but not his orchestration of them - it would take some doing to match his piano accompaniments for atmosphere, and I don't think he quite manages it. If Wagner had orchestrated his Wesendonck songs, they'd probably make my list, but he only did it for "Träume," and the orchestrations of the other songs by other hands are merely OK.

Berlioz: Les nuits d'été

Debussy: Ballades de François Villon

Ravel: Sheherezade; Don Quichotte à Dulcinée

Shostakovich: From Jewish Folk Poetry

Britten: Serenade for tenor, horn, and strings

Messiaen: Poèmes pour Mi

Lieberson: Neruda Songs

Corigliano: One Sweet Morning

[josé echenique]

Korngold has a beautiful song cycle called "Lieder des Abschieds" recorded by Linda Finnie in Chandos.

[absinthe]

Barber: Knoxville
Berg: Der Wein
7 Early Songs
Altenberg Lieder

[stenka razin]

The 'Four Last Songs' of Richard Strauss always touch my heart and soul. Gorgeous music to close your eyes and drift away............


Regards,
Mel

[IcedNote]

...Zemlinsky's Lyrical Symphony. I love Duparc's songs...

1) Is it truly supposed to be "Lyrical Symphony" instead of "Lyric Symphony"? I always see "Lyric," but it's unlike you to make a mistake like that.

2) I've never even heard of Duparc before. Must check him out!

-G

[Tore]

We all know the usual suspects: Strauss and Mahler.

Who else is on your list? Sibelius? Schoenberg?

I've always liked Zemlinsky's Lyric Symphony.

You?

-G

I am very fond of Benjamin Britten's Serenade for tenor, horn and strings, op. 31. My favourite recording is the 1944 Decca recording with Peter Pears, Dennis Brain and Britten conducting.

Tore F Steenslid
Sotra, Norway
www.steenslid.com

[John F]

...Zemlinsky's Lyrical Symphony. I love Duparc's songs...

1) Is it truly supposed to be "Lyrical Symphony" instead of "Lyric Symphony"? I always see "Lyric," but it's unlike you to make a mistake like that.

2) I've never even heard of Duparc before. Must check him out!

-G

The actual title is "Lyrische Symphonie." "Lyric" and "lyrical" are both correct translations of "lyrische," but now you mention it, I see the standard title in English is indeed "Lyric Symphony."

As for Duparc, here's a sample - with piano, not orchestra:



The Baudelaire poem with English translation is here:

http://www.recmusic.org/lieder/get_text ... extId=2256

[IcedNote]

As for Duparc, here's a sample - with piano, not orchestra:

Ah, that's really nice! I'll definitely be finding time to listen to more of him later.

-G

[Len_Z]

I'd like to add another vote for Richard Strauss' Four Last Songs and add Wagner's Wesendonck Lieder (really surprised nobody mentioned them yet, as those two works are my absolute favorite in the genre).

I also really liked the following CD:


Joseph Marx seems to be one of the most underrated composers of the last century and is only now being very slowly rediscovered.

And one more addition: Shostakovich' Symphony #14.

I know, I know, strictly speaking it shouldn't qualify, but as far as Orchestral Songs go I find it very hard to beat.

[John F]

Shostakovich 14 should be on my list too.

[Beckmesser]

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Elgar's Sea Pictures. It's one of my favorites, along with Four Last Songs (Strauss), Wesendonck Lieder (Wagner), and Les nuits d'été (Berlioz).

[Wallingford]

Grieg's Den bergtekne,Op. 32, for baritone with two horns and strings:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgG80crstXY

[Len_Z]

And three more (how could I ever forget?): Brahms' Vier ernste Gesänge, Alt-Rhapsodie and Schicksalslied

[jbuck919]

As for Duparc, here's a sample - with piano, not orchestra:

Very fine, I'm sure, John, if you were in the studio when he was singing into the Victrola apparatus. There are a number of YouTube performances of this, and not wanting to be too revisionist or risk a non-native speaker, I thought a performance by Régine Crespin might be excused.



Here is an excerpt from a movie with a probably not unrealistic dramatization of how Lauritz Melchior would have made a Victrola recording. And yes, I am aware that the technology might not be the same as that for the recording you posted.

[John F]

Since the song is addressed to a female lover, it's really a man's song - sorry, Régine. And trifles like recorded sound quality aside, Charles Panzéra's 1932 recording is the finest performance of the song I've ever heard - which is why I chose it here.

Gérard Souzay's early Decca with Jacqueline Bonneau is a close second, though the singing may even be too self-consciously beautiful:

[jbuck919]

Since the song is addressed to a female lover, it's really a man's song - sorry, Régine. And trifles like recorded sound quality aside, Charles Panzéra's 1932 recording is the finest performance of the song I've ever heard - which is why I chose it here.

Listeners do not have to be audiophiles to find the poor recorded sound of historic recordings more than a "trifle" as an obstacle to appreciation. I realize that if I made a fetish of this, I would be missing out on a great deal, but I hope I am not the only one for whom recording quality is no small consideration even for the greatest singers. I wouldn't miss all of Caruso because of it, but I wouldn't prefer Panzéra to Souzay in this song in spite of it. Just stating a different perspective, and not implying that your ability to cut through the sound problem is not admirable.

As for women performing songs set to "male" poems, there is a long tradition of this, as I am sure you know. A woman is thought to be interpreting a musical/poetical situation, while a man (as Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau emphasized in his refusal to sing certain songs) is an inappropriate medium for the interpretation of a song/poem emanating from a woman's persona. The mystique rules once again.

[John F]

It's true that women have performed "men's songs," or even men's song cycles. Lotte Lehmann and Christa Ludwig sang and recorded Schubert's "Winterreise," though it's hard to imagine a psychological underpinning for the story the cycle tells, song by song. Why do they do it? They'd have to tell us, but my guess is that the artistic appeal of that repertory overrides their concern for dramatic verisimilitude. It isn't just Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau who wouldn't sing repertoire in which the persona is inescapably a woman; I doubt that any male singer in history has added "Frauenliebe und -leben" or even "Gretchen am Spinnrade" to his repertory. They don't need to - they have "Dichterliebe" and "Die schöne Müllerin."

I agree with this, because I think the words of the song really matter, and both the composer and the performer should think so too. The voice and, in the most basic terms, the appearance of the performer should be consistent with the words that come out of his/her mouth, not just what they mean but what they imply. In many cases the "voice" in the song is undefined, or we say it's the poet's voice; songs with such texts are fair game for either sex. But some songs call for a dramatic impersonation, as surely as singing an operatic role. And unless the "role" in the song calls for cross-dressing, like Cherubino and Platée, and I don't know of any song that does this, it's no go.

[jbuck919]

t isn't just Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau who wouldn't sing repertoire in which the persona is inescapably a woman; I doubt that any male singer in history has added "Frauenliebe und -leben" or even "Gretchen am Spinnrade" to his repertory.

Exactly (I hope you don't think you were doing anything but reinforcing my point in that statement).

I agree with this, because I think the words of the song really matter, and both the composer and the performer should think so too. The voice and, in the most basic terms, the appearance of the performer should be consistent with the words that come out of his/her mouth, not just what they mean but what they imply. In many cases the "voice" in the song is undefined, or we say it's the poet's voice; songs with such texts are fair game for either sex. But some songs call for a dramatic impersonation, as surely as singing an operatic role. And unless the "role" in the song calls for cross-dressing, like Cherubino and Platée, and I don't know of any song that does this, it's no go.

Sorry, but citing cross-dressing roles, which also only go in one direction, also reinforces my point. In music, women can get away with impersonating men, and men cannot get away with impersonating women, and that's just the way it is--and probably should be, as politically incorrect and un-modern as that sounds.

[Len_Z]

I will never forget the performance of Wesendonck-Lieder by Matthias Goerne. I was incredulous at first, but he made it sound riveting and true.

[John F]

Sorry, but citing cross-dressing roles, which also only go in one direction, also reinforces my point. In music, women can get away with impersonating men, and men cannot get away with impersonating women, and that's just the way it is--and probably should be, as politically incorrect and un-modern as that sounds.

Correction: in opera, women can get away with impersonating very young men, i.e. adolescents whose voices (as the convention has it) haven't yet broken, and only in comedy. Up through the 18th century, mature men singing in the soprano or alto register were surgically "created," and after that practice ceased, so coincidentally did cross-dressed casting in opera - except in a couple of nostalgic neo-18th-century operas by Richard Strauss, and the parodic role of Prince Orlofsky in "Die Fledermaus" by the other Strauss. Castrato roles, long taken by female singers faut de mieux, are now often cast with adult males singing falsetto, even if female sopranos may be closer to the power and even the timbre of the castrati.

Never, as far as I know, are female singers cast in male operatic roles like the persona in Baudelaire's and Duparc's "L'invitation au voyage," who begins by addressing his lover, perversely enough, as "My child, my sister." A female singer adds an unasked-for lesbian element that spices up the relationship even more and in an irrelevant way. No, it won't do.

There are female operatic roles cast with men, typically old or ugly or grotesque characters (I mentioned Rameau's Platée, for a tenor, and there's the monstrous cook in "Love for Three Oranges," a "hoarse bass"). This too has been done only in comedy; the idea is to make the characters as abnormal and sexually unattractive as possible, in voice as in appearance and the rest.

I haven't mentioned the effect on the music of radical transposition for a high female voice, putting the vocal line up an octave while the accompaniment remains in its original register and changing the song's texture. Transpositions from tenor to baritone or bass, affecting vocal line and accompaniment, and sometimes contradicting the key relationships among the songs in a cycle, are so common, and for good reason (the finest Lieder singers are not often tenors), that complaints about it are in vain, and can even seem like mere pedantry - though they're not. I'm talking wholly about persuasive interpretation, giving the poem's and the song's full dramatic value. When the gender of the singer is wrong for the poem, the audience has to forget about persuasion, indeed forget about the words, and just enjoy the pretty sounds.

[lennygoran]

There are female operatic roles cast with men, typically old or ugly or grotesque characters (I mentioned Rameau's Platée, for a tenor, and there's the monstrous cook in "Love for Three Oranges," a "hoarse bass").

Found another opera with a "skirt role" but don't know much about it:

"These roles are often ugly stepsisters or very old women, and are not as common as trouser roles. Britten's Madwoman in Curlew River ..."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeches_role#Opera

Regards, Len

[John F]

Right you are. A special reason Britten had for composing the role for a male tenor - and perhaps for composing the opera at all - was Peter Pears, his preferred interpreter and homosexual lover, which is rather a special case.

[lennygoran]

Right you are.

And how about this info!

"Gluck’s La clemenza di Tito gives us the trouser role of Sesto, while Mozart’s opera of the same name provides the skirt role of Vitellia. "

http://www.sfcv.org/reviews/didonato-tr ... -and-pants

Regards, Len

[John F]

Vitellia is sung by a female soprano in every performance I've seen or heard of Mozart's opera, and it was sung by a female soprano in the world premiere. Sure, it's a skirt role, but not for a man wearing a skirt. In Mozart's opera, the role of Sesto was created by a castrato. Today it's sung by mezzo-sopranos, but probably the countertenors will take it over eventually. The "trouser role" in Mozart's opera is the minor part of Annio, too small to justify the kind of fees that the castratos demanded, so then and now it's been sung by a mezzo-soprano.

Your source is a record review, and I don't think it's evidence that the role of Sesto in Gluck's "Clemenza di Tito" was originally sung by a female rather than a male soprano. The reviewer may just be noting that Joyce DiDonato sings one of Sesto's arias, the character is a man, and she's a woman. Whether he actually knows anything about Gluck's opera, beyond this aria in this recording, I have my doubts. The opera was composed before Mozart was born, for Naples, where it was said at the time that the surgery was actually performed, though Dr. Burney couldn't confirm that. If they made castratos in Naples, I'm sure they hired them for the opera too. Just my guess, of course.

Between Mozart and Strauss, the only trouser role (for a woman) I can think of is Beethoven's Fidelio, who of course is a woman in disguise. We're to assume she gets away with it by pretending to be very young, to explain her high-pitched voice.

[jbuck919]

To facilitate a conclusive resolution in this matter (ha!), I sought out a performance of Debussy's Trois ballades de François Villon. The first and third of these are from a male perspective, the second from a female. So a male singer performing them has to sing the second song in the first person impersonating a woman, complete with numerous adjectives in the feminine, while a female singer has to play the role of the man in the first and third song. I happened to locate a performance of the second and third songs by Charles Panzéra to illustrate my open-mindedness , and on top of everything else, in this case we hear the songs with the composer's orchestral arrangement of the original piano accompaniment.

Nothing like clearing up fuzzy points, is there?



Texts, alas without translation, here:

http://www.recmusic.org/lieder/assemble ... ycleId=535

Here is a verse translation of the text of the middle song (first on the YouTube) which I found--somewhere.

Lady of Heaven and earth, and therewithal
Crowned Empress of the nether clefts of Hell,—

I, thy poor Christian, on thy name do call,
Commending me to thee, with thee to dwell,
Albeit in nought I be commendable.

But all mine undeserving may not mar
Such mercies as thy sovereign mercies are;
Without the which (as true words testify)
No soul can reach thy Heaven so fair and far.
Even in this faith I choose to live and die.

Unto thy Son say thou that I am His,
And to me graceless make Him gracious.
Said Mary of Egypt lacked not of that bliss,
Nor yet the sorrowful clerk Theopbilus,
Whose bitter sins were set aside even thus
Though to the Fiend his bounden service was.
Oh help me, lest in vain for me should pass
(Sweet Virgin that shalt have no loss thereby!)
The blessed Host and sacring of the Mass
Even in this faith I choose to live and die.

A pitiful poor woman, shrunk and old,
I am, and nothing learn'd in letter-lore.
Within my parish-cloister I behold
A painted Heaven where harps and lutes adore,
And eke an Hell whose damned folk seethe full sore:
One bringeth fear, the other joy to me.
That joy, great Goddess, make thou mine to be,—
Thou of whom all must ask it even as I;
And that which faith desires, that let it see.
For in this faith I choose to live and die.

(There is an envoi, which Debussy apparently chose to omit.)

[lennygoran]

Vitellia is sung by a female soprano in every performance I've seen or heard of Mozart's opera, and it was sung by a female soprano in the world premiere. Sure, it's a skirt role, but not for a man wearing a skirt.

Thanks it anyone could clear this up I knew it would be you! Regards, Len

[IcedNote]

And don't miss Canteloube's "Songs of the Auvergne"

Just listened to these for the first time. Interesting little pieces! Not enough variety for my tastes, but still glad to have heard them.

-G

[maestrob]

[moreno]

I find very enjoyable the delicate beauty of the Reynaldo Hahn's songs.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EEtfIgpKiA[/youtube]