Auf dem wasser zu singen – Franz Schubert

Schedule?  What schedule?  I do apologise for the lack of posts recently – I’ve been sick and then uninspired.  I think for the time being, I’m going to abandon my sequence of posts on Monday and Friday and just post things as the mood takes me.

And today, the mood takes me to Schubert land.  I’m in a tired sort of mood, and this is just the sort of music I can float along to and relax…

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qO4mofM5Jt0&w=560&h=315] Continue reading

Monday Music: Erlkönig (Schubert)

It’s a Monday morning in Autumn, and time for a bit of Sturm und Drang.

(and this is where I confess that I just had to look up ‘Drang’, which turns out to mean stress.  There you go.  We all learned something new there…)

Erlkönig is, when it comes down to it, just a fabulous piece of music.  It’s clever, clever musical writing that builds on Goethe’s spooky poem until you can just about hear what’s going on without understanding the words.  Incidentally, this is another one of those pieces of music where you slightly hate the composer for composing something so spectacular at the age of 18 – not to mention for writing something with such a wrist-destroying left right hand part (all those octave triplets are just cruel).

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8noeFpdfWcQ&version=3&hl=en_US&rel=0]

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