Part songs for male voices are less numerous than solo songs, and their heyday, in German-speaking lands during the nineteenth century, was relatively short. For Schubert, however, the genre was far from insignificant; he composed part songs for the circle of close male friends that was crucial to his rather small-scale creative world. This little disc, recorded in the Netherlands in 1989, makes an excellent case for the relevance and the sheer beauty of Schubert's part songs. Consider the several settings of Goethe's ...
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Part songs for male voices are less numerous than solo songs, and their heyday, in German-speaking lands during the nineteenth century, was relatively short. For Schubert, however, the genre was far from insignificant; he composed part songs for the circle of close male friends that was crucial to his rather small-scale creative world. This little disc, recorded in the Netherlands in 1989, makes an excellent case for the relevance and the sheer beauty of Schubert's part songs. Consider the several settings of Goethe's poetry presented here, works that quickly blow away any conception of the part song as a mere vehicle for beer-hall gemütlichkeit. The tense Sehnsucht, D. 656, quite different in mood from, but nearly the equal of, the great setting of this text ("Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt..."/Only those who know longing...) for a single low voice. And the 10-minute setting of Gesang der Geister über den Wassern, D. 714 (Song of the Spirits over the Waters), accompanied by a small string group,...
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