Saturday, May 8, 2021

The little nonsense song “Marmotte” is a simple song well within the reach of any fledgling singer or accompanist. What most don’t know is that the poem was part of a play written by Goethe, in which it is sung by beggar children playing with their marmots (a kind of large squirrel often trained to perform tricks by traveling hurdy-gurdy musicians).This plaintive song, in a mixture of French and Austrian dialect, captures the loneliness of a child wandering and begging through the land.

 Friday, May 7, 2021

The "Six Songs from Gellert" ends with the masterpiece, "Bußlied" (Song of Atonement):

 Thursday, May 6, 2021

The simple poem "Gottes Macht und Vorsehung" (God’s Power and Providence) is the penultimate song from Beethoven's Gellert cycle and is the prelude to tomorrow's "Bußlied" (Song of Atonement).

 Wednesday, May 5, 2021

The majestic hymn "Die Ehre Gottes aus der Natur," the fourth of Beethoven's Opus 48 Gellert Lieder, is sung worldwide in many languages and settings.

 Tuesday, May 4, 2021

The third of Gellert's poems in Beethoven's song cycle is "Vom Tode" (On Death).

 Monday, May 3, 2021

Christian Fürchtegott Gellert was a professor of philosophy at Leipzig University, who in 1757 published a set of poems called “Geistliche Oden und Lieder” (Sacred Odes and Songs). These were very popular and inspired C.P.E. Bach to set all 54 poems to music! Beethoven selected six of these songs and composed his own settings in what became the first “Liederkreis” (song cycle) – a new genre which Beethoven would revisit with “An die ferne Geliebte” and which was later developed richly by Schubert and Schumann.