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Les nuits d'été, Op. 7, is a song cycle by the French composer Hector Berlioz, setting six poems by Théophile Gautier. The cycle, completed in 1841, was originally for soloist and piano accompaniment. Berlioz orchestrated one of the songs in 1843, and did the same for the other five in 1856. The cycle was neglected for many years, but during the 20th century it became, and has remained, one of the composer's most popular works. Of the many recordings made in the 20th and 21st centuries, most are of the orchestrated version and are sung by a soprano or mezzo-soprano.
The following lists note recordings in opera and recital of soprano Jessye Norman.
"Erlkönig", Op. 1, D 328, is a Lied composed by Franz Schubert in 1815, which sets Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's poem of the same name. The singer takes the role of four characters — the narrator, a father, his small son, and the titular "Erlking", a supernatural creature who pursues the boy — each of whom exhibit different tessitura, harmonic and rhythmic characteristics. A technically challenging piece for both performers and accompanists, "Erlkönig" has been popular and acclaimed since its premiere in 1821, and has been described as one of the "commanding compositions of the century".
References
- ↑ The Song Cycle, p. 64, Laura Tunbridge (2011). "The orchestral song has a complicated genealogy. There were ... In order to hold their own against the larger-scale works, Lieder needed to be amplified; automatically achieved through the addition of instrumental accompaniment. This would ..."
- ↑ The Liszt Companion, p. 433, Ben Arnold (2002). "Szitha concluded, "Though Le juif errant was never published and Jeanne d'Arc only in a late 1874 variant, the two pieces bear out that back in the latter half of the 1840s Liszt was already experimenting with the genre of the orchestral song."
- ↑ German Lieder in the Nineteenth Century, p. 299. Rufus E. Hallmark (2010). "It is often said that with the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen Mahler established the genre of the orchestral song cycle, but it was an idea whose time was certainly ripe, ..."
- ↑ San Francisco Symphony playbill, San Francisco Symphony Orchestra (1999). "The genre of the orchestral song came into vogue throughout Europe in the years just before the turn of the century. Mahler, who gave such compositions the full stature of symphonic movements, provides the most spectacular examples, but French composers were quite as enthusiastic. Often their melodies were composed all-but-simultaneously in two ..."
- ↑ Jean Sibelius, p. 311, Tomi Mäkelä (2011). "Sibelius' sole significant contribution to the orchestral song – a fashionable genre at the turn of the century, prominently represented by Gustav Mahler – was Luonnotar. a setting of erik Johan Stagnelius' 'Serenad' for baritone and orchestra "
- ↑ The Song Cycle, p. 64, Laura Tunbridge (2011). "This would be one way to explain the genesis of what is sometimes called the first orchestral song cycle, but is perhaps better seen as one of its progenitors: Hector Berlioz's Les Nuits d'été (Summer Nights), composed for voice and piano in .."
- ↑ The Cambridge History of Nineteenth-Century Music, p. 164, Jim Samson (2001). "These songs were later orchestrated, and are sometimes claimed as the first orchestral song cycle.10 Berlioz's achievement, even in the original versions with piano, was to integrate poem, voice and instruments into a homogeneous texture."
- ↑ Musorgsky, in memoriam, 1881–1981, p. 221, Malcolm Hamrick Brown (1982). "Shostakovich's late style has been characterized as austere, economical, sparse, and "archaic"-sounding. ... works such as the Thirteenth (1962) and Fourteenth Symphonies can be perceived more readily as orchestral song cycles, than as ."
- ↑ Martinů and the Symphony, p. 462, Michael Crump (2010). "In 1932, Martinů received a request from the singer Magdalena Mateˇjovská for a song from his early orchestral song-cycle Magic Nights. He reworked the central number from the cycle for alto and piano, transposing it down a fourth and ..."
