Frauenliebe Und Leben

Singing Schumann is likely to become the standard introduction to some of the best-loved songs in the singer's repertoire. Written by a distinguished performer and internationally known teacher, the book offers astute, practical advice for bringing Robert Schumann's Lieder to life in performance. Richard Miller guides the reader through the interpretation of all of Schumann's solo and duet songs, drawing thoroughly on Schumann's compositional style and its historical background. In addition to covering the "familiar forty"--the much-performed songs Schumann composed in and around 1840 while trying to win the hand of Clara Wieck--Miller takes an in-depth look at the lesser known early and later songs. In particular, he focuses on the rich and varied repertoire of Schumann's later years, challenging the conventional view that these works reflect a decline in the composer's creative powers. Singing Schumann begins with an overview of Schumann as a song composer and then proceeds to survey the entire repertoire, song by song. It features the well-known cycles, including the Eichendorff Liederkreis, Frauenliebe und -leben, and Dichterliebe, as well as the Liederalbum für die Jugend and settings of texts by Goethe, Burns, Rückert, and Kulmann. Using numerous musical examples, Miller uncovers Schumann's characteristic compositional devices and describes his novel and experimental approaches to the interpretation of texts, often achieved through exceptionally colorful keyboard accompaniments. Musically sensitive and eminently readable, Singing Schumann is an invaluable guide for teachers, coaches, pianists, and singers.

Rufus Hallmark interprets Schumann's famously controversial song cycle in the social, literary, and musical contexts of contemporary German society.

The semiotic elements of a multiplanar discourse : John Harbison's setting of Michael Fried's "depths" / Claudia Stanger -- Whose life? : the gendered self in Schumann's Frauenliebe songs / Ruth A. Solie -- Operatic madness : a challenge to convention / Ellen Rosand -- Commentary : form, reference, and ideology in musical discourse / Hayden White.

Carol Kimball's comprehensive survey of art song literature has been the principal one-volume American source on the topic. Now back in print after an absence of several years this newly revised edition includes biographies and discussions of the work of

Publisher Description

Forced by a hand injury to abandon a career as a pianist, Robert Schumann went on to become one of the world's great composers. Among many works, his Spring Symphony (1841), Piano Concerto in A Minor (1841/1845), and the Third, or Rhenish, Symphony (1850) exemplify his infusion of classical forms with intense, personal emotion. His musical influence continues today and has inspired many other famous composers in the century since his death. Indeed Brahms, in a letter of January 1873, wrote: "The remembrance of Schumann is sacred to me. I will always take this noble pure artist as my model." Now, in Robert Schumann: Herald of a "New Poetic Age," John Daverio presents the first comprehensive study of the composer's life and works to appear in nearly a century. Long regarded as a quintessentially romantic figure, Schumann also has been portrayed as a profoundly tragic one: a composer who began his career as a genius and ended it as a mere talent. Daverio takes issue with this Schumann myth, arguing instead that the composer's entire creative life was guided by the desire to imbue music with the intellectual substance of literature. A close analysis of the interdependence among Schumann's activities as reader, diarist, critic, and musician reveals the depth of his literary sensibility. Drawing on documents only recently brought to light, the author also provides a fresh outlook on the relationship between Schumann's mental illness--which brought on an extended sanitarium stay and eventual death in 1856--and his musical creativity. Schumann's character as man and artist thus emerges in all its complexity. The book concludes with an analysis of the late works and a postlude on Schumann's influence on successors from Brahms to Berg. This well-researched study of Schumann interprets the composer's creative legacy in the context of his life and times, combining nineteenth-century cultural and intellectual history with a fascinating analysis of the works themselves.

Arguably no other 19th-century German composer was as literate or as finely attuned to setting verse as Robert Schumann. Finson challenges assumptions about Schumann’s Lieder, engaging traditionally held interpretations. Arranged in part thematically, rather than by strict compositional chronology, this book speaks to the heart of Schumann’s music.

This new study draws on analysis, literary criticism, and source studies to propose a new conception of the nineteenth-century romantic cycle. Rather than a unified whole, the cycle is seen as a fragmentary and open-ended form, which enables Schumann to express the romantic themes of transcendence and ineffability in musical terms.