After his phenomenal art song year of 1840, Schumann did not abandon lied but was much less focused in his production. In 1849, he produced his Spanisches Liederspiel (Spanish Song Game) This is not a book of song for one

“Je veux écrire mon songe musical…..” (I want to write my musical dream….) In three of my previous articles for Interlude (September 7, 2011, September 6, 2014 and December 13, 2015) I had concentrated on Debussy’s works related to the

Robert Schumann as a Song Composer In the generation following Schubert, his new model for lieder writing influences many composers. Robert Schumann (1810-1856) took his models to heart and in doing so, produced some of the best music of the

Although he set the great poets such as Goethe, Beethoven set one poem by a German writer who was better known for his plays. In music, many of those plays were the basis for great operas: Wilhelm Tell became Rossini’s

When we think of Beethoven (1770-1827), we think of his orchestral music – great symphonies that brought a century-old genre forward. By the end, it wasn’t enough to have a large orchestra, he also had to have a chorus as

Franz Grillparzer, Ignaz Castelli, and Eduard von Bauernfeld were all friends of Schubert and appear in the 1868 ‘Schubertiade’ drawing done by Moritz von Schwind, where they are standing behind the women on the right side of the picture.

“One day I must be able to improvise freely on the keyboard of colors: the row of watercolors in my paintbox” Paul Klee (1879-1940), son of a German music teacher and a Swiss mother, started studying violin as a child,

One of the most enduring images of Schubert as a musician is an 1868 drawing of one of his musical evenings. The engraving by Moritz von Schwind.