Romantic Music
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It seems potentially unjust that we are in the second year of weekly blog posts before I first reflect on a work by the giant of English Choral Music that Charles Williers Stanford undoubtedly is: giant of English Choral Music despite being Irish in origin. Probably early works, his three motets (opus 38) are unusual… Read more
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This blog’s second year begins early in the season of Epiphany, and with one of the favourites of the season, popularised (for English audiences at least) in the translated version included in Carols for Choirs as Three Kings from Persian Lands Afar. Prior to inclusion in that venerable volume, it was the second version of… Read more
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In the nineteenth century one, and only one, woman was made a professor of the Paris Conservatoire. Professor of piano, Louise Farrenc – née Jeanne-Louise Dumont (her husband had been a flautist, but settled down to become a music publisher, and Éditions Farrenc had significant success). She, herself, developed from a child prodigy of an… Read more
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In the 1860s Franz Liszt, best known as piano virtuoso but actually with a more restrained sense to himself when appropriate, composed an oratorio based on frescos at the Wartburg Castle in Eisenach depicting the life of St Elizabeth of Hungary. The Wartburg is an interesting location in its own right, and between the times… Read more
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The German Lied is an essentially secular genre, but there are enough of them that deal with sacred themes, broadly construed, that it is possible to include at least an example in this blog. And so we turn to Fanny Hensel (née Mendelssohn – her brother Felix was also a composer, and the song we… Read more
Theology in Music 