Description
Instrumentation: voice and piano
Edition: score
Editor: Elisabeth Goell
Difficulty: easy to medium difficulty
Women Composers from America, Germany, England, France and the Netherlands.
Muriel Herbert, Catharina van Rennes, Sibylle Mertens-Schaaffhausen, Fanny Hensel geb. Mendelssohn, Emilie Zumsteeg, Lili Boulanger, Amy Marcy Beach, Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, Rebecca Clarke, Elizabeth Poston
The Christmas-story, known to us all, seemed to me to incorporate so much of a woman’s life. Wonderful and yet questionable circumstances, joy over the expected child, care and hope, pain and despondency, homelessness and consolation, the entire palette of human experience is contained within this story. The works in this two editions exemplify this rich variety of women’s compositions in all its different shades. There are, for example, the complex, dense layers in the works of Lili Boulanger, the simple folksong – like setting by Luise Greger or Emilie Zumsteeg, improvisational melodies from Bettine von Arnim and artfully shaped miniatures by Rebecca Clarke and Fanny Hensel, to name a few…
With some of the texts I have taken interpretational liberties, as they contained suitable symbolic language. Others clearly defined the subject matter. The beauty and delight, as in life, is to be found in variety, not in uniformity.
