Richard Strauss: 40 Songs

SKU: CA.916100

ISBN 9790007252670.

For almost 30 years the conductor and musicologist Clytus Gottwald has made transcriptions of songs and instrumental pieces for unaccompanied choir by a wide variety of different composers, which have been performed throughout the world with huge success. Richard Strauss left a wealth of wonderfully sensitive and subtle songs from all decades of his compositional output, many of them written specifically for his wife, the singer Pauline Strauss-de Ahna.

SKU: CA.5280900

ISBN 9790007246525.

With the songs Reger wrote between summer 1889 and spring 1901, he made his mark in the music world. His style displayed a harmonic and melodic intransigence which challenged, fascinated, and irritated performers and audiences in equal measure. The song collections which Reger compiled became ever more extensive: opp. 35 and 37 contained six and five songs, opp. 43 and 48 eight and seven, and opp. 51 and 55 twelve and fifteen songs. As well as this, he wrote some individual pieces for inclusion in the Neue Musik-Zeitung (WoO VII/23-29).

In his assiduous search for texts, Reger turned to contemporary lyric poetry with its plurality of styles. The poems which he set were by representatives of the literary Jugendstil (art nouveau) and impressionist movements, including Otto Julius Bierbaum, Detlev von Liliencron, and Richard Dehmel. Here, Reger's musical hallmarks were intensity and subtlety of feeling, a desire for intimacy, and a modern emotional language. This corresponded with the concentration on the modern declamatory song following on from Hugo Wolf, to whom op. 51 is dedicated. In addition, Reger ventured to set texts which Richard Strauss had also set previously, in the process finding different solutions in mood and tonal language.

In January 2008 the Max-Reger-Institut (MRI) in Karlsruhe began publishing a scholarly-critical edition of the works of Reger (RWA). This is supported by the Mainz Academy of Sciences and Literature, and as a Hybrid Edition is exploring new approaches in editorial techniques.

For the first time, in this edition the digital component for this volume will no longer be supplied on a data storage device, but published in an online portal.

SKU: CA.5281000

ISBN 9790007297220.

The third volume in the Songs and Choral Works Series of the Reger Complete Works (RWA) contains the songs Max Reger composed (almost entirely in Munich) between 1901 and February 1903. With these compositions, Reger not only entered into direct competition with the so-called “Munich School” around Ludwig Thuille, Max von Schillings, and Richard Strauss, but also attempted to establish himself more widely as an uncompromising renewer of the genre. The songs contrast with the Romantic song aesthetic through their forward-looking declamatory style and they display a treatment of the piano which goes far beyond conventional song accompaniment.

In January 2008 the Max-Reger-Institut (MRI) in Karlsruhe began publishing a scholarly-critical edition of the works of Reger (RWA). This is supported by the Mainz Academy of Sciences and Literature, and as a Hybrid Edition is exploring new approaches in editorial techniques.

The digital offer belonging to the volume is published in an online portal.

Content
Kompositionen. Acht Lieder op. 79c
Lieder WoO VII/31und VII/32
Sechzehn Gesänge op. 62
Schlummerlied WoO VII/33
Zwölf Lieder op. 66
Sechs Gesänge op. 68
Siebzehn Gesänge op. 70
Wiegenlied WoO VII/35.

SKU: HL.14030791

8.25x12.0x0.051 inches.

This title is taken from Dvorak. However. The models from which the songs are derived are clearly identifiable, as are the composers from whose language they have been derived. The piece appears to be in one movement though it is in fact two with a coda. The first is French in style, a sort of Waltz. It is quick and harks upon the likes of Francaix and where its idiom becomes more advanced, Messaien. The other is Germanic, a slow movement with echoes of German expressionism - perhaps Richard Strauss, perhaps Mahler. The two movements are partly complete; the cod reconciles their differences and completes them. I see the piece as my own version of En blanc et noir.