Swiss singer, pianist, and composer Fanny Hünerwadel was born in 1826 and died of typhoid fever in 1854, at age 28. The booklet notes do a nice job of introducing her, noting among other things that she practiced an early form of music therapy in an insane asylum. She was apparently very good at what would today be called networking, crossing paths with a wide variety of composers, performers, and pedagogues. The music on this album falls into three sections: 1) short works (both vocal and instrumental, with one little ...
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Swiss singer, pianist, and composer Fanny Hünerwadel was born in 1826 and died of typhoid fever in 1854, at age 28. The booklet notes do a nice job of introducing her, noting among other things that she practiced an early form of music therapy in an insane asylum. She was apparently very good at what would today be called networking, crossing paths with a wide variety of composers, performers, and pedagogues. The music on this album falls into three sections: 1) short works (both vocal and instrumental, with one little string quartet) written into a small album owned by Hünerwadel, 2) a set of songs by Hünerwadel herself, and 3) a group of songs dedicated to Hünerwadel by composer Wilhelm Baumgartner. The first group is the most interesting, offering little snatches of musical thought from the middle of the nineteenth century. Some of the composers are Swiss, but others came from points farther afield and range from the moderately well known (Franz Abt, Johann Wenzel Kalliwoda) to giants (Wagner and...
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