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.