Liederspiel: Grand Opening

We are pleased to announce that the first episode of our fortnightly series designed to unearth Orientalist and Medievalist strains in the nineteenth-century Lied repertoire premieres this Saturday, 19:00 (GBT = 20 Uhr deutscher Zeit) on our Youtube Channel. The publication of the accompanying blogpost will immediately follow the pre-recorded stream. This week, we turn our attention to Brahms’s sumptuous Volkslied, “Schöner Augen schöne Strahlen”, published in his Deutsche Volkslieder (1894), shining light on his skilful handling and wilful manipulation of the Volkslied tradition to suit his own artistic aims.

Title Page of “Deutsche Volkslieder” (Simrock, 1894)