Ich habe genug, tonight before intermission.

Listening to Quasthoff I notice that the tempo seems way too fast. It almost seems that the text in some places are clipped some of his r’s aren’t rolled very much. Also, lots of the long phrases are straight-toned. In other places, the word stress is better, as in the second full entrance to the erblickt part. Even though the piece is much faster, he does a good job of executing some the text. Some of his vowels, especially “aa” seem awfully bright to my ear. After listening to it a second time, the tempo didn’t seem AS quick— some of his ‘der’ words sounded more like open eh's to me. In contrast to a lot of singers, Quashoff seems to really take delight in adding in making pronounced ending consonants. Not to say they are wrong, but it sounds probably 25%-40% more than most german singing I have heard thus far while doing these blogs. Strangely enough, some of the ending [t] like in the word “heiland” are VERY soft, and almost don’t seem to have a [t] at all.

Of course I listened to papa Dieskau second, because he truly is a master of interpretation and it was easy to find comparisons after listening to two distinctly different singers. The tempo to my ears immediately seems more reverent to the topic of the music, the Virgin Mary. In the very first few phrase Diskau does not make a big deal out of the ending consonants in “genug”. He does however, in the word “heiland” pronounce the [t] but very expertly, there is even space between heiland and der frommen without breathing. Diction wise, I also hear the double mm in frommen vibrated. In the same way some of the ’n’ ending consonants are vibrated as well with contrast to Quasthoff who does not. Also, he really uses the ‘f’ in hoffen dramatically, which I enjoy. His ending consonants to the word blickt are very constant, one can hear the [k] and the [t] separately .

“Ich habe genug” has definitely progressed my musical understanding, at least of baroque music anyway. Though I have had some opportunity to work on music with an orchestras, chamber music in some ways foreign to me and it has been a treat to work on this piece with Dr. Marshall and Sarah Keadle. It is so important with a long piece like this get the word stress and phrasing in the right place otherwise it sounds blocky. I feel really lucky to have the resources to do this piece with such an expert on baroque music.

3 Brahms Vergebliches Ständchen

Of course Rothenberger being the “strangest” voice, I had to start with her first. Her ending consonants are very pronounced compared to the other two. The pattern I have noticed with German diction ending consonants is how important and yet simultaneously unimportant they are. Some of her oo vowels seem more much more oo than the other two. Another strange vowel I notice is the öffne mir” which almost sounds like a schwa vowel instead of an umlaut sound.

Schawrzkopf:

The original link was dead, so I listened to this recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Bp9OqKX108 finding a video for this woman singing this song was extremely easy, and after listening it’s very easy to understand why. Her interpretation is extremely musical. Though I’m sure that her mouth isn’t making gigantic words and diction, though I can almost imagine her singing this song with a coyness and a litheness similar to that of a ballet dancer. Beyond her just being a fantastic singer, what I hear is her using the ending consonants lightly, instead of really spending time on them. Sometimes her ending d’s [t] are softer than other times.

Christa Ludwig 

She is really theatrical in this performance, especially  on the “Öffne mir” parts, she really digs into the darkness of the ö sound. Even though she seems to scoop a little on some of the pitches, it does seem very intentional. In general, her voice sounds a lot darker. Her vowels especially seem dark compared to the lightness of Schwarzkopf. 

It’s interesting that you mentioned turning pages for this woman. The two times I’ve turned pages in my life have been for Dr. Peter Marshall, the very first time was for none other than Jamie Barton.

On Olaf Bär

The first thing I notice about this particularly fantastic singer is the way each of the words fit together in a cohesive phrase. There’s no question about the umlauts when he uses them, the are very pure and seem almost dark. The way in which he puts on the [x] at the last moment really accents the word and doesn’t take too much time away from what he is singing. The [ҫ] are particularly soft in it pronunciation. You can tell from the inflection of the text that he really understands the push and pull of the texts. He does a fantastic job of changing dynamics and color. After listening a few times, it doesn’t seem like he rolls his r that much, and when he does it’s a very soft and slight roll. The second video in particular I had to listen to quite a few times, it is really hard to hear the video because of how quietly he sings. In particular, it sounds like his German is pretty standard, he sounds like a very sweet and soft singer, but one with a lot of power that can be made equally with his diction and his dynamic.

"Them Boys Can sing"

The last time I sang this arrangement of Ständchen was for Graham Johnson in 2013 at Songfest. His response was… “interesting.” However, the diction of these children is more than just interesting, their diction is spot on and very clean, everything sound very forward with excellent diction.

After listening to the german interview one gets a very good sense of the ends of words. For example wichtig has a very unique sh at the end that gives one an idea on how to sing the same consonant. Also, from listening to native germans speak you can get an idea of word stress, and also how quickly they speak. Despite the speed, you still get a sense of inflection. It is more soft than people make it out to be stereotypically. The ends of words with an en ending or schwa sounds is almost un pronounced.