The nineteenth-century popularity of horror stories and tales of the supernatural found an outlet in lied in the dramatic ballad settings of Carl Loewe.
Here are three of Loewe’s settings of famous narrative poems by Goethe, poems that may be familiar in another context:
Danse macabre:
The Sorcerer’s Apprentice:
A Schubert song?:
But the mood darkens considerably in Brahms’ late song cycle, Vier ernste Gesänge, for which the composer uses, as he did in his earlier German Requiem, prose taken from the Lutheran Bible. The work was written in response to his close friend, Clara Schumann, having suffered a stroke:
Brahms: 4 Serious Songs, Vier ernste Gesänge, op.121
Texts: Biblical
I. Denn es gehet dem Menschen 00:08
II. Ich wandte mich 04:43
III. O Tod, wie bitter bist du 09:18
IV. Wenn ich mit Menschen und mit Engelszungen redete 13:43
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Pontarddulais!
The Art of Listening 