Bookshelf Debra Greschner (bio) Loges, Natasha, and Laura Tunbridge, eds. German Song Onstage: Lieder Performance in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2020. Paper, 292 pp., $32.00. ISBN 978–0-253–04701–4; eBook $16.99 ISBN 9780253047021. www.iupress.indiana.edu The role of German song in recital programs, while perhaps not sacrosanct, is certainly firmly established, and equally entrenched are the performance mores for lieder. As the authors in this collection of essays explain however, currently accepted performance practice is not always analogous with historical practice. This compendium, an outgrowth of a conference devoted to German song, is edited by Natasha Loges, Head of Postgraduate Programmes at the Royal College of Music, and Laura Tunbridge, Professor of Music at the University of Oxford. The volume provides a wide ranging discussion about the presentation of lieder in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as well as observations on the genre by contemporary German song recitalists. The volume contains twelve essays that focus extensively on programming, with correlative emphasis on specific performers who influenced the creation and performance of German song. In the opening chapter, Susan Youens explains that the career of Anna Milder-Hauptmann exemplifies the multifaceted effects of a singer on both composer and audience. Milder-Hauptmann was Beethoven's first Leonora and the dedicatee of Schubert's "Suleika II," and her clarion voice was the inspiration for the latter's Der Hirt auf dem Felsen, D. 965. Youens shares examples of concert programs in which Milder-Hauptmann presented lieder and operatic excerpts interspersed with orchestral works and chamber music. Such patterned miscellany programs are unusual today, but recital programs that encompassed both song and instrumental works were commonplace in the nineteenth century. In another chapter, Loges offers an overview of seven performances of Robert Schumann's Dichterliebe, Op. 48 given by baritone Julius Stockhausen and Clara Schumann. The recital program divided the song cycle into two parts, and alternated the sections with solo piano works and other instrumental offerings. Loges argues that such interpolation helped audiences become familiar with the song cycle. Several essays address singing translations and gender neutral performance, two aspects of recitals that were prevalent a century ago. Katy Hamilton illuminates the significance of Natalia Macfarren (née Andrae) in the annals of singing translations. Macfarren was a prolific translator of lieder texts who, unlike her contemporaries, created singing translations without altering rhythms. The singer Amalie Joachim, née Schneeweiss, presented carefully crafted programs that chronicled the history of German lied. Essayist Beatrix Borchard underscores that these concerts affirmed there was no expectation singers would confine themselves to gender specific songs. In the same vein, musicologist Heather Platt looks to the performance of song cycles in the United States, where recitals such as the presentation of Frauenliebe und -leben by George L. Osgood serve as an indication that attitudes were not rigid as to which genders should sing which songs. Singers such as Joachim were described as a "gender-neutral, almost sacerdotal, figure singing at the altar of art." (146) This priestly descriptor vividly illustrates that the importance of the singer extended beyond programming choices. Benjamin Binder, in his discussion of the personalization of the public stage, opines that Robert and Clara Schumann, who held sincere performance ("inniger Vortrag") in high esteem, based their evaluation of a lied performer upon their perception of the singer's personality. Jenny Lind, who fused "person, persona and character" (63) was an ideal exemplar, while Pauline Viardot was less respected because she relied upon theatrics rather than inner emotion. Rosamund Cole enumerates the contributions of Lilli Lehmann to the genre; in addition to championing the music of contemporary composers, Lehmann demonstrated that recital performances could be lucrative as well as artistically significant. Individual artists such as George Henschel fostered the codification of the solo vocal recital in England as a vehicle for [End Page 297] German song, as traced by William Weber and Simon McVeigh. Several of the authors make the point that the principle of Werktreue, although prevalent in this era, was interpreted in a malleable way. This fluidity is apparent in the previously cited fragmented performances of Dichterliebe by Stockhausen...
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Sep 9, 2024
Christopher A Gilligan 
Open Access