Every Schubert Song, Ranked: Listening to 40 hours of Lieder | Hacker News Reader

Every Schubert Song, Ranked: Listening to 40 hours of Lieder

van-magazine.com

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An die Musik: no modulation to flat VI. Didn't like it.

An die Leier: no modulation to flat VI. Didn't like it.

Der zürnende Barde: no modulation to flat VI. Didn't like it.

Das Weinen: no modulation to flat VI. Didn't like it.

Der Wallensteiner Lanzknecht beim Trunk: no modulation to flat VI. Didn't like it.

Der Winterabend: modulation to relative minor then changing mode to major-- judges? Buzz. Sorry, we are looking for a flat... wait a minute, wait just one minute... bass after the cadence in the new key is descending from the tonic by whole-step... and another whole step...

and we have a modulation to flat-VI.

I liked it.

Professional classical baritone here. I've had the pleasure of singing Schubert's songs for...around 37 years now. (Oh dear, I'm getting rather old.)

Other than Bach's cantatas, this is probably my favorite body of work for the classical singer. The other exemplars are Schumann, Brahms, Wolf, and Mahler, but Schubert still reigns supreme in the realm of the Lied.

I've listened to probably nearly all of Schubert's output by now, and have sung, oh, perhaps half of them.

Overall, I find these rankings apt and mostly accurate. Really the best is left for last; Schubert's 3 monumental song cycles are all put in the "transcendent" category at the very end, but the songs in them (24 for Winterreise alone) are left unevaluated on an individual basis. This was probably wise.

The transcendents are truly that. But, I'm more into symphonies than vocals (no offense). I've heard all of the biggies many times. And if I had to pick one for the desert island, it'd be the Unfinished and Great. (Two in one jacket.) Why? because: how did he do that?

I was taking voice lessons, and I didn't yet know any of the standard Musical Theater Audition Songs (now I have A Wandering Minstrel, I or at least I had it at one point).

So I went to audition for Iolanthe with Das Wandern ist des Müllers Lust. The director said "Are you really going to sing lied?"

I always kick myself for not answering, "Well, I'm not going to sing backup!"

I'll show myself out now.

Thank you for whoever wrote this, and whoever posted this. This is what makes HN special. Just spent a wonderful hour listening to Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Alfred Brendel in the Winterreise: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0Rry-ahcHM

Simply sublime.

Die Forelle (the Trout) is the only one I know, very catchy:

https://youtu.be/NF9DrUXowBo

Also adapted as a quintet:

https://youtu.be/HwbWvGtaZGo

(completely off-topic, but commenters on this thread likely to know)

Anyone know a good recommendation system for classical, or even better, cross-genre recommendations? E.g. a project/product that is hosted and ready to use / subscribe to. Where I could put in "I like pieces composed by Ravel and Holst, and I also like things performed by Remy le Beouf", and it would actually give me sensible recs..

Spotify seems to rely on popularity too much, which doesn't really work here (I get a bunch of Best Piano for Chill Work compilation albums and not much else). Is Pandora's rec system any good here or does it fall into the same trap? Any other projects people have seen?

You might want to try out idagio. Unfortunately primephonic got acquired by apple so they are out of the game these days.

You can go to classical music focused forums or Reddit and ask for recommendations. As far as I’ve tried, no recommendation system beats human enthusiasts when it comes to music discovery.

The youtube algorithm can do alright here. The key is a recommendation system that actually segments you into the right sort of place, spotify doesn't really work properly for me in this way.

Other than that I have no idea. I find stuff through some of the more obscure music subreddits (often by literally asking people what else is similar to XYZ). There are undoubtedly blogs around but nobody really uses the internet like that any more...

Side note Spotify and other streaming platforms are awful for even searching for classical music.

The trick for Spotify is to start from something obscure that you like. Anything popular will have the problem you describe Don't know how it would work for classical, but it works great for jazz.

Make friends with a professional classical musician, and ask them! We're reasonably fun people. ;)

Gramophone has a 'What Next' feature that starts with some well known piece and gives a sort of decision tree of suggested pieces based on various criteria.

https://www.gramophone.co.uk/features/article/after-tchaikov...

The digital subscription allows you to search the archive, although I'm not sure how long they have written 'What Next'.

I wish someone would do some Schubert arrangements in a more modern vein, like Cole Porter-style jazz ensemble, to make his songs more listenable to modern ears.

Classical composer Howard Goodall called Schubert the last really gifted melodicist before the Beatles showed up, it's a pity his work isn't more accessible.

There is a lot of pop music that take melodies from classical pieces, they sound just like any other pop song. There is more to Schubert, or the Beatles for that matter, than a talent for melody.

By the way, Chopin, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Johann Strauss, and a few others born after Schubert were at least just as good melodists as Lennon and McCartney.

Rachmaninoff heavily influenced Eric Carmen and others:

https://www.cmuse.org/you-cant-believe-how-much-rachmaninoff...

>> As far as derivative works are concerned, the adagio theme (the second movement) appears in the ballad All By Myself (1975) by Eric Carmen, who subsequently explained that Rachmaninoff was “his favourite music.” The following year, he released Never Gonna Fall in Love Again, which, in turn, was based on the third movement from Rachmaninoff’s Symphony n.2. >> >> Little did Carmen know, however, that Rachmaninoff’s music, which he quoted extensively, was not in the public domain, as the Rachmaninoff estate informed him after the release of his album. The two parts, however, managed to reach an agreement: the estate would receive 12% of the royalties both from “All by Myself” and “Never Gonna Fall in Love again.”

I think that went beyond 'heavily influenced'. He just made a song on top of an existing melody.

Plus Rossini, Dvorak, Bizet, Saint-Saens, Puccini... even Wagner's wedding march from Lohengrin is probably second only to Happy Birthday in terms of ubiquitous melodies.

And of course there's Schumann's Träumerei from Kinderszenen, a long lyrical melody which hulks out from the very beginning to break free from barline jail. Guess what Horowitz chose for his final encore when he returned to Russia after 50 years for a concert in Moscow in 1986? It wasn't "Back in the USSR." (Hee hee.)

Chopin, especially, in my opinion. His Nocturnes are sublime. He was an absolute master of melody.

His opus 28 preludes are also particularly excellent imo

Yes, so good. I often listen to both the nocturnes and the preludes as a sequence.

I like a bunch of his other stuff, too, but if he only wrote the nocturnes and preludes, that would be enough for me.

Oh that's too generous. 'At least' is surely a bit strong. How about nearly as good? I'm wondering if folk like Bach, Mozart and Verdi might be considered to make the grade? One or two good numbers, possibly? Anyway in a couple of hundred years we'll see how the works of Lennon and McCartney are faring versus the classics crowd.

(Or is the laugh on me for having a defective irony detector)

What makes his works inaccessible? I'm curious, because his song repertoire is really very approachable by any measure I understand. It's straightforward in harmony, tuneful, but expressive in a way that sits smack in the middle of the western tradition. I can't think of a more accessible entry point to classical song unless you count Stephen Foster.

Schubert Winttereise with Sax:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqWZ___E2tQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4X8eJqnluDc

https://www.gramola.at/en/shop/produkte/jazz/gramola/i%20dio...

This would be much better as a collection of sharable playlists. Not text titles...

Just get on Apple Music and listen to it all sung by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. That's all you need.

Apologies for the quality of the recording but allow yourself to be transported to the 1950's:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tjstsWoQiw

I adore the author's description of Erlkonig.

> A naked major second is resolved upwards (wrong!) to a unison (wrong!!!!).

This is one of the best things I've ever seen on HN. Thank you to whoever wrote it.

POV: Skip the list and immediately search for Erlkönig...

Found it under Transcendent, Erlkönig: Never loses its power, no matter how many times you hear it.

OK, I endorse this list.

I just read this piece, linked to from the list: https://van-magazine.com/mag/strange-dissonance/

Just...wow.

The Youtuber Sideways has a fun video on the music theory behind Erlkönig - very cool.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcnSX319OhI

(The second half devolves into a rant, still fun though).

I strongly disagree with Mr. Brown regarding 'Alinde' (D. 904). It is transcendent. I invite him to step into the alley with me so that we can discuss this further.

"Like mediocre Mozart." Oof, that one hurts..

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