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Altenberg Lieder
Alban Berg's ''Five Orchestral Songs after Postcards by Peter Altenberg'' (German: ''Fünf Orchesterlieder nach Ansichtskarten von Peter Altenberg''), Op. 4, were composed in 1911 and 1912 for medium voice, or mezzo-soprano. They are considered a true song cycle, unlike his previous two groups of songs, the ''Sieben frühe Lieder'' of 1908 and the ''Vier Gesänge'', Op. 2, of 1910, and they are his first work for orchestra. The postcard texts by contemporary Viennese poet Peter Altenberg recount the stormy but beautiful condition of the soul and the palpable sensations of love and longing. The highly imaginative music responds with many displaced ostinati and a conflicted, lyrical passion. When two of the songs (Numbers 2 and 3) were performed for the first time – on 31 March 1913 under the baton of Berg's teacher Schönberg in Vienna's Musikverein – members of the audience were sufficiently taken aback as to erupt in a famous riot, wounding the composer's feelings so deepl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Orchestral Song
The orchestral song (German ') is a late romantic genre of classical music for solo voices and orchestra. History What was effectively song with instrumental accompaniment – the cantata and the aria – had been part of music since the early baroque. Beethoven and Schumann too had occasionally provided instrumental accompaniment to some songs. Full orchestration, to enable a song to "hold its own" in a 19th-century concert environment, developed from the 1840s. Among the earliest experiments with orchestral song are those of Liszt who orchestrated several of his songs in the 1840s but did not publish them. Liszt also had the operetta composer August Conradi orchestrate his ''Le juif errant'' and ''Jeanne d'Arc'' around 1848, but these too were neither published nor performed. Long after Berlioz' publication of his orchestrations of '' Les nuits d'été'' in 1856, Liszt finally published his own orchestration of ''Jeanne d'Arc au bûcher,'' as a dramatic scene for voice and orche ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |