Open thread 2/21/22
I think Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau had one of the most beautiful voices in the world. Maybe the most beautiful. I don’t even like lieder very much, and he sang a whole lotta lieder. But I don’t really care what he sang; he always sounded so gorgeous.
I was introduced to Fischer-Dieskau through – of course! – a recording of him as the Father in “Hansel and Gretel.” His Wiki entry doesn’t even mention the role, but to me he was superb in that opera. Here he is:
[Drafted into the Wehrmacht in 1943] he was captured in Italy in 1945 and spent two years as an American prisoner of war. During that time, he sang Lieder in POW camps to homesick German soldiers.
Fischer-Dieskau smoked during a large part of his career. In an interview with B.Z.-News aus Berlin in 2002 he said, “I quit smoking 20 years ago. I smoked for 35 years, and then stopped in a single day.”
First heard of him on Karl Haas’ syndicated radio program Adventures in Music, maybe half a century ago.
Liked the voice, don’t care for lieder. Too syrupy.
I first encountered Fischer-Dieskau on various recordings of Bach’s cantatas and oratorios, and later on Brahms’ Deutsches Requiem. I’m with Richard Aubrey– Lieder are not my dish of tea.
More information on Fischer-Dieskau’s army service at https://www.poetsandprinces.com/in-celebration-of-dietrich-fischer-dieskau/. His disabled brother Martin was murdered in the Nazis’ euthanasia program.
MollyG,
I just read your poem, LATE ANTHROPOCENE COCKTAILS”
My goodness, is that clever!
Very well done!!
That H&G aria is wonderful!
Im Abendrot:
https://youtu.be/9z10qWgz0HQ
Well, Lieder are not all syrupy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XP5RP6OEJI&ab_channel=MeetTheNeet
Although my favorite role for him is the Count in Marriage of Figaro. De gustibus….
I once tried to convince my mother to help me try to learn the Winterreise cycle by playing the accompaniment. I like to think that it was not a lack of faith in my singing abilities on her part which caused that little project to die in the cradle.
I had never known of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau … what a sublime voice. And not a big fat man! Will add him to my opera playlist.
Since this is an open thread: anyone, especially Neo, have any reactions this movie, 2000 Mules, said to expose a great deal of fraud in the 2020 election?
https://2000mules.com/
Another great voice; Erich Kunz sings German University Songs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-bNCcVQBJk
Zaphod: thanks for the link of DFD singing “Im Abendrot”–hadn’t heard that one. I’ve got the Fritz Wunderlich recording:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5mmckLp4Lw
Also not too shabby.
Mac:
I took note of it a while back but haven’t watched it.
Oh, a great voice. Reminds me of the recently departed Karl Gott, who for 40 years was at the top of Czechoslovak male singers, often winning the “best” of the year. He sang these types of songs, but also a bit more pop oriented, like this one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DvMSX-55Qc
Totally different than most of what I listen to, like Jango 2010 Alternative.
Here’s an interesting mix, more than harmony, of a female group doing a cover of Lola. Liked it more than I thought I would.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QufDdHzWhgw
Richard Aubrey,
“First heard of him on Karl Haas’ syndicated radio program Adventures in Music…”
That brought back something I hadn’t thought of for years! I have no idea what he really looks(ed) like, but when I listened to his program I would envision a guy similar to the Sergeant Schultz character on “Hogan’s Heroes.” Chubby with an especially fat face, always a little sweat above his lip. Thin, straight, dark hair in a comb-over.
Freshman year of College I discovered Classical music helped with my Calculus homework. Enough sound to drown out distractions but not distracting like rock, blues or jazz. So I would schedule my Calculus homework for the time of day the local, NPR station rebroadcast Haas’ program. For years his voice made me think of Calculus.
neo,
I stumbled onto this recent recording by Herr Dieskau:
Mac, I just watched the clip you linked to “2,000 Mules.” Fascinating! Dinesh D’Souza’s name gives it some credible, in my book*. A very forensic approach, which is good, and footage like that lady stuffing a mailbox then ripping off and disposing of rubber gloves is very damning. Hard to explain why random folks would be doing that, then photographing the location to get a location and time stamp. Almost as if they were using some type of phone app that would then wire them payment.
Interesting indeed.
*Although the cornball ending he tacked onto, “Hillary’s America: the Secret History of the Democratic Party” just about negated the 85 minutes that came before it. That film could have been something one could recommend to fence-sitters and Independents, especially young people, to learn about the racist past (is it really passed?) of the Democratic Party, but the way he ended it would turn most of them off. A great opportunity wasted.
Beautiful baritone voice….I was introduced to him through the famous recording of Wagner’s Ring made in the 60s. The BBC made a documentary of the studio recording conducted by Georg Solti. During a break, the performers have coffee and Fischer-Dieskau is happily puffing away on a cigarette. I couldn’t believe it!
I know several singers who smoke at least a little bit. They say it adds a little edge to their voices, make certain timbres easier to produce. I believe Fred Astaire smoked occasionally for this reason.
Rufus
Haas was on Detroit’s WJR, an AM station with a big reach. Clear up to Flint and further.
Ten in the morning. Not drive time for commuters. But if you were on the road for one reason or another…beat any alternative.
Since this is an open thread: I’ve been checking the PowerLine blog. Mirengoff last posted an addition on a post by Hayward, I think last Friday. His addition was removed, and he hasn’t posted anything since. I suppose the battle is ongoing behind the scenes, or maybe they’re done and Mirengoff departed.
Really disappointed I missed out on neo’s “missing J” post. I love stuff like that!
It was sort-of covered by others on the post, but I don’t think anyone specifically mentioned the four letters often displayed above crucifixes depicting the death of Christ; INRI. (Those “I’s” both correlate with neo’s “silent J” post.)
Tradition has it that a banner in the Latin vulgate reading, “Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum” was placed above Jesus’ head when he was crucified as a mocking definition of his crime. The first letter of each of those words gives the acronym, INRI and it is that shortened form that is commonly displayed.
“Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum” translates to, “Jesus of Nazareth King of the Jews.” Both “Iesus” and “Iudaeorum*” have the “J” sound and we use the letter “J” in modern times to depict that sound but Latin produced that sound by placing the vowels “I” and “E” or “I” and “U” together.
Julius Caesar in Latin was, “Gaius Iulius Caesar.” There’s that “I” “U” diphthong again, producing a “J” sound. Or, maybe more of a “Y” sound, as others in the post discussed. Think of the pronunciation of Spanish “Diego” or Portuguese “Tiago” or “Diogo” for English, “James.”
*For you grammar nerds, Nazarenus and Iudaeorum are both the genitive case indicating possession, negating the need for the participle “of.”
@Hubert:
The Wunderlich is indeed not too shabby. An die Musik and im Abendrot are my two favourite non-cycle Schubertlieder — selected by the scientific method: I listened to a DG compilation of Fischer-Dieskau singing *all* of them whilst doing various chores and took notice when something really jumped out.
@Rufus:
Indeed nothing says Christmas like Bertolt #@$%ing Brecht. Mind you, he’s handy to keep in the back pocket for when new people’s are being elected. But that’s it for me.
To confute the Lieder are Syrupy Brigade:
Der Leiermann
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIIS-UgixGE
This one with Quasthoff and Barenboim is magnificent:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pze4NxCOjg0
And the Two Creepy Homos Version (Pears, Britten):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHFiRia1ySE
This is one of the best Amazon reviews I’ve ever encountered:
“If I had to make a short list of “Winterreise” performances that I think every serious listener should hear, Pears/Britten would be on it. It seems to cast an entirely different light on the cycle than any other performance I have ever heard. It is sui generis, alien and profoundly “other,” and it works in a bizarre way that I don’t really understand, but which I find very intriguing. From the very beginning, Pears and Britten are in a different place, markedly distant from the “Winterreise” tradition that I have become familiar with. Every “Winterreise” performance (by a male singer)that I find persuasive, be it Hotter, Huesch, Fischer-Dieskau, Schmitt-Walter, or Anders, seems to move from a state of more or less normalcy into varying degrees of darkness and alienation. Pears and Britten, on the other hand, are alien from the first moment you hear them. You can well imagine why Mom and Dad are happy to find a more suitable husband for their little girl– this guy is a geek, a weirdo, an outsider, not someone you could ever feel comfortable with. It’s the quality of the voice, the strangely-flavored German, the little hitches and twitches in the rhythms, the occasional odd emphases. It’s as if this protagonist is from another planet and the text and the music are being filtered through the Universal Translator. It’s recognizable, yes, but everything is just that little bit “off,” so that you are constantly off-balance and on edge. The expected progression away from what is comfortable and accustomed to a state of profound loneliness and alienation doesn’t quite happen. When Pears sings “Fremd bin ich eingezogen, fremd zieh ich wieder aus,” it seems exactly true: he was weird when he came and he is still weird when he leaves, and somehow, thanks to Britten’s playing, the whole outside world reflects his weirdness. When I try to imagine this fellow, I think of Heine’s “Der arme Peter”– the people who see him say that he looks as if he has just stepped out of the grave, but he is actually on his way to the grave. And he has had a “kick-me” sign on his back since birth. This “Winterreise” protagonist seems very similar, someone who could never fit in and has nowhere to go but down to destruction. If I follow Fischer-Dieskau and Gerald Moore through “Winterreise,” as I have done countless times, there is a mounting anxiety and uneasiness, as the wanderer feels himself drifting further and further away from life as everyone else lives it and finally realizes that he can never get back, that he will be isolated for the rest of his life. There is an underlying horror in “Der Leiermann,” as if the wanderer is looking in a mirror and seeing his own face and realizing that this is what he has become. With Pears and Britten, on the other hand, it’s almost as if he is going home to where he belongs. It’s eerie. The cycle never resolves itself, you don’t reach catharsis. Maybe it’s what Schubert had in mind, I don’t know. I just know that it makes me profoundly uncomfortable and I’m glad I have experienced it.” (Celia A. Sgroi)
If you want to cheer yourself up on a cold, wet, miserable day when you’re tormented by existential angst… well the Winterreise is just the thing for you.
@Xylourgos:
Got to Track 3 of the drinking songs and got a surprise with ‘Ich bin der Doktor Eisenbart.’ Heard this before as something else!
Ein Mann, der sich Kolumbus nannt – Singen, Tanzen und Bewegen || Kinderlieder
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zw-4fTKzCHM
Wisely this one has comments off so there’s no deluge of woke bile about casting or lyrics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CXCvB90g08
“Ständchen”
zaphod,
Brecht did have a hit with, “Mackie Messer,” https://youtu.be/uiGFZUnJgqU
but it’s more fitting for the Feast Day of St. Isidore than Christmastime,
https://mafiagenealogy.wordpress.com/2016/05/09/labor-and-the-mafia/
https://www.takimag.com/article/the-all-powerful-leviathan/
“…This is something that the paleocons never anticipated. They saw the administrative state as a leviathan that served the interests of the managerial elite. The network of people at the top had control of the system. Instead, it seems to have evolved into an organism that has agency of its own. ***The people at the top are not masters of the universe steering the system, but captives hanging on for dear life.***
This is what we see with the Ukraine crisis. The American actions thus far are like programmed moves that were based on an assumed set of facts on the ground that do not exist or have rapidly changed. Anyone pointing this out is attacked as a tool of Putin and anyone trying to work from the facts on the ground is viewed as the enemy. It is not particularly clear right now that anyone is actually in control of American foreign policy.
***What all of this points to is that managerialism has evolved beyond what the paleocons imagined back in the last century. Technology has allowed the system to overtake its masters, integrating them into the whole. The Global American Empire is operating upon rules that the people nominally in charge do not fully understand. Managerialism has become a narcotic that controls the people within it.***
That means the media is just a collection of drones without agency that serve the interest of the managerial collective. Journalism has become just another activity in service to the system. In this light it is not activism in service to its own interests but a defense mechanism. It is one of the parts of the creature we can see from the outside that helps us understand the overall mood of the creature.”
@Rufus:
Good point. Hadn’t thought of Mack the Knife in yonks. For some weird reason have a bit of amnesia about Threepenny Operas, Isherwoods, Cabarets, and all that. Still trying to figure out why :).
Manuel Fischer-Dieskau (DFD’s third son) is a very accomplished cellist.
https://youtu.be/yUMFM0LMFAo
Connie Shih is an excellent accompanist here. They have collaborated on at least two other albums.
His Erlkonig always gives me chills. Four different people portrayed in the song. Read the story of the song before you watch the video.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erlkönig_(Schubert)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaBNUzVSnj8
@ Zaphod & Rufus > Brecht’s “Mackie Messer”
Our high school did a production of “The Threepenny Opera” and 3 of our sons were in it, one of them playing Mack the Knife.
He stepped in 2 weeks before opening, on my recommendation to the director, having not been active in the theater classes at all before then, when the previous actor just decided he didn’t want to do it.
Everyone was amazed but me – sometime parents do know things – and he did a great job. However, since he is also the MOST introverted of our very introverted family, we were all amazed at how well he convinced the audience that he really could “get the girls” — that personality aspect did not transfer into real life!