# Winterreise, Is Female Voice Appropriate



## Open Book (Aug 14, 2018)

NOTE: In the Schubert Composer Guestbook a discussion arose about the appropriateness of a female voice singing Winterreise. The participants suggested moving that discussion into its own thread. The following posts have been moved to this thread, and people are encouraged to continue the discussion here (mmsbls).



SixFootScowl said:


> I got into Winterreise a couple years ago when I saw Joyce DiDonato sing it live. Just a few months ago I got into the symphonies. Wonderful music!


I've never heard a woman sing Winterreise and can't imagine it. Or maybe I should say a (mezzo-) soprano so as not to be sexist.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

Open Book said:


> I've never heard a woman sing Winterreise and can't imagine it. Or maybe I should say a (mezzo-) soprano so as not to be sexist.


You can get it with soprano too!


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Lotte Lehmann recorded it 1940, it is well worth hearing.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Open Book said:


> I've never heard a woman sing Winterreise and can't imagine it. Or maybe I should say a (mezzo-) soprano so as not to be sexist.


Can't imagine it? Here's how you do it: Imagine the voice an octave higher. Mind-bending, huh?


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## Open Book (Aug 14, 2018)

EdwardBast said:


> Can't imagine it? Here's how you do it: Imagine the voice an octave higher. Mind-bending, huh?


It's a story of a certain time, place, and circumstances. Clearly the main character, narrating his story, is male. A baritone or bass-baritone voice works best, not a tenor. Matches the dark quality of the wintry season that is the backdrop of the story.

I'll try to hear a performance by a woman singer and see if it changes my mind. My speakers need replacing right now.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

Open Book said:


> It's a story of a certain time, place, and circumstances. Clearly the main character, narrating his story, is male. A baritone or bass-baritone voice works best, not a tenor. Matches the dark quality of the wintry season that is the backdrop of the story.
> 
> I'll try to hear a performance by a woman singer and see if it changes my mind. My speakers need replacing right now.


It helps if one does not understand the language. But we could imagine a woman singing it about a man, and a few word changes ought to accommodate, not that I suggest messing with the text, but our imagination should be able to manage this.


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## gvn (Dec 14, 2019)

Surely if we can listen to a woman reading the poems of Wordsworth or Tennyson (including those written from a distinctively male point of view), we can also listen to a woman singing the songs of Schubert.

And, for that matter, if we can accept a woman acting Octavian or Cherubino, we can also accept a woman acting the protagonist of _Winterreise_.

Of course an awful lot depends on the quality of the actor. I personally find that someone like Brigitte Fassbaender makes me _believe_ in this story more than 90% of male performers do.

Afterthought: As regards pitch, I find that sopranos and some tenors make me see the protagonist as younger & more naive, scarcely past puberty, whereas contraltos and baritones evoke a more adult & more experienced sufferer. Each situation may have its own kind of poignancy.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

gvn said:


> I personally find that someone like Brigitte Fassbaender makes me _believe_ in this story more than 90% of male performers do.


Fassbaender is one of the best renditions and belongs in everyones' Winterreise collection.

My collection includes

SOPRANOS: Christine Schafer

MEZZO-SOPRANO: Brigitte Fassbaender and Lois Marshall

CONTRALTO: Natalie Stutzmann

TENOR: Jonas Kaufmann

BARITONE: Gerald Finley

BASS: Matthew Rose


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## Rogerx (Apr 27, 2018)

SixFootScowl said:


> Fassbaender is one of the best renditions and belongs in everyones' Winterreise collection.
> 
> My collection includes
> 
> ...


Have you tried Ian Bostridge ? He recorded it several times.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

Open Book said:


> It's a story of a certain time, place, and circumstances. Clearly the main character, narrating his story, is male. A baritone or bass-baritone voice works best, not a tenor. Matches the dark quality of the wintry season that is the backdrop of the story.
> 
> I'll try to hear a performance by a woman singer and see if it changes my mind. My speakers need replacing right now.


How about viewing it as actually being sung by the woman in the story while reflecting on her former lover's thoughts? See the write-up on the back of the new Joyce DiDonato recording. According to *the listing on Prestomusic*,



> DiDonato, however, casts a different light on this beloved cycle of 24 songs in telling their story from the perspective of the woman, the lost love. Nancy Plum, Town Topics writes: "The question of what happened to the woman who sent the narrator on a tortuous journey was not answered in the Wilhelm Müller poetry from which Schubert drew the text, but DiDonato created a scenario onstage of being that woman, reading from the narrator's journal and responding to the inherent despair."


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

Rogerx said:


> Have you tried Ian Bostridge ? He recorded it several times.


I have not. Generally prefer the mezzo version and am strongly eyeing the DiDonato recording this very moment. However, I should check out Ian's recording sometime. I have heard of it and recall it is a very good one.

EDIT: Winterreise was unknown to me until I saw it in December 2018 with Joyce and it was because I wanted to see Joyce that I went. Had I known, I could have seen Ian Bostridge live as he preformed it in February of the same year at the same theater where I saw Joyce. Joyce performed with Yannic, just as on the CD I posted above.

EDIT2: I mistakenly put Lois Marshall as a soprano, but she is mezzo. I fixed it in my post.

EDIT3: Ian is very good on *the sound clips*. But since my favorite is the mezzo voice and I already have a tenor, I will stick with Kaufmann.


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

There is a thread about the voice for Winterreise in another subforum. Tenor works best for musical reasons, I think, but there is of course a huge tradition for baritone and there have been impressive interpretations by higher voices.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

SixFootScowl said:


> It helps if one does not understand the language. But we could imagine a woman singing it about a man, and a few word changes ought to accommodate, not that I suggest messing with the text, but our imagination should be able to manage this.


The way I see it myself, it's about the gap between reality and illusion, what is experienced and what is hoped for, striven for. And that gap creates a feeling of deep and endless loneliness. I don't think it's gender specific in the text except at the most prosaic level. And even at that level, there's no difficulty about the voice of the poem being different from the voice of the narrator, the singer.

I think someone in a post above said that they thought that the mood of the poetry, the desolation, was best suited to a male voice - I can't find the post now. I disagree.

Here, found it!



Open Book said:


> It's a story of a certain time, place, and circumstances. Clearly the main character, narrating his story, is male. A baritone or bass-baritone voice works best, not a tenor. Matches the dark quality of the wintry season that is the backdrop of the story.
> .


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## Open Book (Aug 14, 2018)

SixFootScowl said:


> How about viewing it as actually being sung by the woman in the story while reflecting on her former lover's thoughts? See the write-up on the back of the new Joyce DiDonato recording. According to *the listing on Prestomusic*,


The narrator of the story is a drifter who arrived in a town where he knew no one, fell in love with a woman, almost married into her welcoming family (according to him; can we totally believe him or is he delusional?), lost that woman, and now feels like a stranger again. He goes on a pilgrimage to places that had significance for himself and his former love, in the middle of winter, an aimless wandering. Perhaps he is suicidal, one gets the feeling he would like to just curl up and fall sleep in the freezing outdoors.

How many women are drifters, especially in those days? How many go heedlessly wandering alone on crazy pilgrimages? How many take a romantic loss that severely, feeling that their whole social fabric has been ripped apart?

In these circumstances a woman would more likely share her sorrow with her friends and pick up the pieces, not isolate herself.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

Open Book said:


> The narrator of the story is a drifter who arrived in a town where he knew no one, fell in love with a woman, almost married into her welcoming family (according to him; can we totally believe him or is he delusional?), lost that woman, and now feels like a stranger again. He goes on a pilgrimage to places that had significance for himself and his former love, in the middle of winter, an aimless wandering. Perhaps he is suicidal, one gets the feeling he would like to just curl up and fall sleep in the freezing outdoors.
> 
> *How many women are drifters, especially in those days? How many go heedlessly wandering alone on crazy pilgrimages? How many take a romantic loss that severely, feeling that their whole social fabric has been ripped apart?
> 
> In these circumstances a woman would more likely share her sorrow with her friends and pick up the pieces, not isolate herself*.


Agree, which is why Joyce Didonato's approach works so well. Here is a more detailed description of Joyce's approach from the concert where I saw her perform Winterreise. I don't think she intends that the woman go out and wander too, but to do so mentally as she reads over the poems. Here she she says it maybe was her performing Charlotte in Massenet's Werther that led her to formulate this approach to Winterreise:
https://ums.org/tag/winterreise/


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## Open Book (Aug 14, 2018)

SixFootScowl said:


> Agree, which is why Joyce Didonato's approach works so well. Here is a more detailed description of Joyce's approach from the concert where I saw her perform Winterreise. I don't think she intends that the woman go out and wander too, but to do so mentally as she reads over the poems. Here she she says it maybe was her performing Charlotte in Massenet's Werther that led her to formulate this approach to Winterreise:
> https://ums.org/tag/winterreise/


To me this is a big stretch. It doesn't make sense for a third party to convey the feelings of another, the lyrics are in the first person. And then add her own feelings into the mix.

i don't understand the modern tendency to get into every character's head in a narrative. You see it on TV shows and in books now. We're so obsessed with equality to make up for past injustices that we have to give every fictional character equal opportunity by having them express their point of view. I think it's OK to leave some characters as supporting characters, like the woman here, and not know their feelings.

We don't know anything first hand about the woman, we don't know if she reciprocates his love. I like the mystery of our not knowing. Whether she loved him or not, receiving a journal of that sort would be a shock. If she did not love him she'd feel thankful she dodged a bullet and I doubt DiDonato is taking that point of view. If she loved him she'd suffer to know of his suffering. She'd have to mix in her own feelings with those of his. I find that voyeuristic and messy.

But I guess DiDonato felt she had to come up with some angle to make the story fit a woman singer/narrator. Which shows that she knows it's not a good fit for a woman to be the rejected one.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Open Book said:


> The narrator of the story is a drifter who arrived in a town where he knew no one, fell in love with a woman, almost married into her welcoming family (according to him; can we totally believe him or is he delusional?), lost that woman, and now feels like a stranger again. He goes on a pilgrimage to places that had significance for himself and his former love, in the middle of winter, an aimless wandering. Perhaps he is suicidal, one gets the feeling he would like to just curl up and fall sleep in the freezing outdoors.
> 
> How many women are drifters, especially in those days? How many go heedlessly wandering alone on crazy pilgrimages? How many take a romantic loss that severely, feeling that their whole social fabric has been ripped apart?
> 
> In these circumstances a woman would more likely share her sorrow with her friends and pick up the pieces, not isolate herself.


https://www.gutenberg.org/files/47285/47285-h/47285-h.htm

I can't make any sense of what you're saying. Look, The 1001 Nights is a sequence of stories with a female narrator, Scheherazade. One of those stories is Sinbad the Sailor, it is a first person narrative and Sinbad is a man. What's the problem?



> MY father was a merchant of high rank and rich possessions. He died when I was but a child, leaving me all his wealth. When I reached manhood's estate I used my inheritance with no thought for the morrow, living in a sumptuous manner and consorting with the richest young men of Baghdad. I continued this life for many years until, at last, when reason prevailed with me to mend my plan, I found with dismay that I had sunk to poverty. And then it was that I arose and sold what goods remained to me for three thousand pieces of silver, and girded myself, resolving to travel to other lands and rebuild my fortune by the wit of my mind and the labour of my hands.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

In the Schubert Composer Guestbook a discussion arose about the appropriateness of a female voice singing Winterreise. The participants suggested moving that discussion into its own thread. The following posts have been moved to this thread, and people are encouraged to continue the discussion here.


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## Open Book (Aug 14, 2018)

Mandryka said:


> https://www.gutenberg.org/files/47285/47285-h/47285-h.htm
> 
> I can't make any sense of what you're saying. Look, The 1001 Nights is a sequence of stories with a female narrator, Scheherazade. One of those stories is Sinbad the Sailor, it is a first person narrative and Sinbad is a man. What's the problem?


I'm not very familiar with the Arabian Nights. An oral story within a written story does not have the immediacy of a singer (and pianist) creating a character and the state of that character's mind out of words and music.

When you watch/listen to opera, you want convincing casting, don't you?


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Open Book said:


> I'm not very familiar with the Arabian Nights. An oral story within a written story does not have the immediacy of a singer (and pianist) creating a character and the state of that character's mind out of words and music.
> 
> When you watch/listen to opera, you want convincing casting, don't you?


Cherubino, Octavian


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

But how could the Arabian Nights or Hosenrollen examples be applied to "Winterreise"?
There are no nested levels of narration here or a narrator and different persons (like in Erlkönig where we have narrator, father, child, Erlking but usually use only one singer) 
In Winterreise is obviously a man directly telling his own story. 
I am not saying that this should exclude women singing and a lied cycle is not an opera with singers impersonating characters but there really is no way to get to different levels or third person narration.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Kreisler jr said:


> But how could the Arabian Nights or Hosenrollen examples be applied to "Winterreise"?
> There are no nested levels of narration here or a narrator and different persons (like in Erlkönig where we have narrator, father, child, Erlking but usually use only one singer)
> In Winterreise is obviously a man directly telling his own story.
> I am not saying that this should exclude women singing and a lied cycle is not an opera with singers impersonating characters but there really is no way to get to different levels or third person narration.


My point is much simpler than that. It's that it is not problematic for a woman to tell the story of a man in the first person. The voice of the narrator and the voice of the narration are not identical.

But STOP!!! This approach to the poetry is prosaic to the point of absurdity. To think of Winterreise as a story of a lonely man in the cold is utterly shallow. I would argue that a woman singing it in a deeply felt way is a good thing partly because it jolts the listeners out of that naive and debased relation to the work


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## Open Book (Aug 14, 2018)

Mandryka said:


> Cherubino, Octavian


I don't know what you and others are talking about with these examples. Women singing these roles is the composers' intention. They are never sung by men.

Cherubino is a boy whose voice has barely changed. If he's going to be sung by an adult, it makes sense that it be a woman. It also helps that the singer not be as physically imposing as the adult men in the story, caught as he is between the Count and Figaro.


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## Open Book (Aug 14, 2018)

SixFootScowl said:


> Fassbaender is one of the best renditions and belongs in everyones' Winterreise collection.
> 
> My collection includes
> 
> ...


Not a Fischer-Dieskau fan? He has recorded it so many times you can't have missed him.


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## 1846 (Sep 1, 2021)

I'm listening to Joyce right now. I just acquired the CD a couple of weeks ago and hadn't yet played it, so this is my very first time playing it. I'm on track 3. I like it. She is singing it beautifully, as I expected she would. I don't find the switch in gender bothersome, any more than it would bother me to see a really competent actress play Lear.

The piano player is pretty good, too ...who was he, again? Some French sounding name ...


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## Open Book (Aug 14, 2018)

1846 said:


> I'm listening to Joyce right now. I just acquired the CD a couple of weeks ago and hadn't yet played it, so this is my very first time playing it. I'm on track 3. I like it. She is singing it beautifully, as I expected she would. I don't find the switch in gender bothersome, any more than it would bother me to see a really competent actress play Lear.
> 
> The piano player is pretty good, too ...who was he, again? Some French sounding name ...


Yannick Nézet-Séguin. He's better known as a conductor, has appeared with the Metropolitan Opera several times. So he and DiDonato know each other well.


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## 1846 (Sep 1, 2021)

Open Book said:


> Yannick Nézet-Séguin. He's better known as a conductor, has appeared with the Metropolitan Opera several times. So he and DiDonato know each other well.


Oh, I know very well who he is, I was just trying to be funny. Just not funny enough, apparently.


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## Open Book (Aug 14, 2018)

1846 said:


> Oh, I know very well who he is, I was just trying to be funny. Just not funny enough, apparently.


I frequently ruin people's attempts at humor with my literalness. Sorry.

I think you were trying to imply that the pianist is usually a major artist in his own right and doesn't always get enough credit? I agree.


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## 1846 (Sep 1, 2021)

Open Book said:


> I frequently ruin people's attempts at humor with my literalness. Sorry.


Perfectly all right! I had a good laugh at myself just now, knowing that humor on the internet frequently falls flat! I'm actually a huge fan of Yannick, I think he's fantastic.


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## Open Book (Aug 14, 2018)

SixFootScowl said:


> Agree, which is why Joyce Didonato's approach works so well. Here is a more detailed description of Joyce's approach from the concert where I saw her perform Winterreise. I don't think she intends that the woman go out and wander too, but to do so mentally as she reads over the poems. Here she she says it maybe was her performing Charlotte in Massenet's Werther that led her to formulate this approach to Winterreise:
> https://ums.org/tag/winterreise/


I watched/listened to the first song with DiDonato and Nézet-Séguin accompanying on Youtube.

She's "reading" a manuscript as she sings, acting the role of the woman reading the man's journal. Her face shows various emotional reactions as if she's reading her lover's words for the first time. She overdoes the acting in my opinion, it's too operatic. Vocally it's OK, it works if I don't look at her facial expressions and try to forget the actual words.

It's interesting to hear it sung by a mezzo, it has its beauties. I listened to Fassbaender as well, I don't agree with the person who said that she's more believable than 90% of the men who sing it, but it's sounds beautiful and works on a certain level if you don't care about the words and her embodiment of the character/narrator.


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## Rogerx (Apr 27, 2018)

Schubert: Winterreise D911

1994 (DVD)
with Julius Drake (piano), Ian Bostridge (tenor)

Someone else familiar with this one? I love it .


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

*Winterreise, Is Female Voice Appropriate*

In my opinion, great songs are meant to be sung. If singers come in two sexes (and even maybe more than two) that's okay with me. And ... the greater the song the more it is meant to be sung.

I certainly enjoy _Winterreise_ even in pure instrumental versions or with accompanying instruments other than the pianoforte for which Schubert wrote. I'm especially fond of guitar and voice versions.

I have a couple dozen recordings of the Schubert song cycle in my collection as I've been interested in collecting _Winterreise_ for years.

Here are a couple that my Discogs catalog shows in my collection -- all of these with female vocals:

































I, too, am interested in adding this one, after reading about it in one of the disc catalogs I get in the mail:









And ... for those of you who haven't yet heard countertenor Xavier Sabata's interpretation of the _Winterreise_, you're in for a real treat.


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

A must hear _Winterreise_.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

SONNET CLV said:


> View attachment 159390
> 
> 
> A must hear _Winterreise_.


Countertenor, eh? Well I suppose those who feel it must be sung by a male, should be okay with this one. However, a purist may not care for the countertenor any more than a bass, since it was originally written for a tenor (so says Wikipedia).

Great album art!


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## Tempesta (Sep 2, 2021)

SONNET CLV said:


> View attachment 159390
> 
> 
> A must hear _Winterreise_.


I love Xavier Sabata.


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## Tempesta (Sep 2, 2021)

... and don't dare mess with The Coote!


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

Tempesta said:


> View attachment 159393
> 
> 
> ... and don't dare mess with The Coote!


I like it, will put it on my potential purchase list.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Rogerx said:


> Schubert: Winterreise D911
> 
> 1994 (DVD)
> with Julius Drake (piano), Ian Bostridge (tenor)
> ...


I thought the first CD he released with Andsnes was very affecting. When I was at university I saw him give a Winterreise in a private concert.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Open Book said:


> Not a Fischer-Dieskau fan? He has recorded it so many times you can't have missed him.


There are as you say so many of these things, he clearly influenced for good or for bad many generations of Schubert interpretation, in fact I tend to overlook him though I think that in some of the very early recordings he didn't bark quite as much. I never saw him give Winterreise but I saw him give Schubert when he was in later life.


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

SixFootScowl said:


> Countertenor, eh? Well I suppose those who feel it must be sung by a male, should be okay with this one. However, *a purist may not care for the countertenor any more than a bass, since it was originally written for a tenor* (so says Wikipedia).
> 
> Great album art!


It must be awful to be such a purist. Such an attitude would relegate to nonentities such pieces as Ravel's great orchestration of Mussorgsky's _Pictures_, all those wonderfully effective highlight slices of operatic selections "without words", Leopold Stokowski's soul wrenching Bach Toccata and Fugue, Albinoni's famous Adagio, Pachelbel's famous Canon, Beethoven's own piano transcription of his Violin Concerto ... let alone all that wonderful guitar music (such as _Asturias_ by Isaac Albéniz, the Sonata K. 213 by Domenico Scarlatti, and Bach's monumental suites, partitas and fugues "originally written for a lute". Alas ... so much great music in any sort of transcription must be a sorrowful bane to such a purist. I remain content I am no such purist.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

SixFootScowl said:


> Fassbaender is one of the best renditions and belongs in everyones' Winterreise collection.
> 
> My collection includes
> 
> ...


Exactly. The work is a fantastic vehicle for any singer, and they all can do it wonderfully.

Regarding the specious argument that the text is not suitable for a woman, consider the fact that for centuries, women singers have sung folk ballads told in the voice of a man. When telling a story the narrative is the point, not a literal first person account.


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

I also thought of ballads where I find it a bit silly (or at least superfluous) to adapt the text (as quite a few singers have sung) "gal of constant sorrow" instead of "man..." (but many others like Long Black Veil they sing without adaption, still from the perspective of the dead male) but that's a different case to a somewhat organized cycle of poems. 
I have nothing against women singing this music (the only one here I have heard is Fassbaender and as far as I remember I quite liked her) but I think it is hard to deny that there is a certain tension because unlike some other cycles there is a particular story implied. It's a different case from the isolated episodes in the last part of DLvdE or Schumann's op.39.

There is of course another aspect regardings keys, their relations and transpositions, but I don't know the details here; it might affect baritone versions as much or more than mezzo/soprano.

For some reason it seems far more rare for men to (want to) sing "women's songs". I am not aware of men singing "Ellens Gesang" (Ave Maria) or "Der Hirt auf dem Felsen" (with bassoon for clarinet? ) or "Frauenliebe und -leben" but maybe I am wrong and there are actually tenors or baritones singing some songs more associated with a female persona and a woman's voice.


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

SanAntone said:


> Exactly. The work is a fantastic vehicle for any singer, and they all can do it wonderfully.
> 
> *Regarding the specious argument that the text is not suitable for a woman, consider the fact that for centuries, women singers have sung folk ballads told in the voice of a man.* When telling a story the narrative is the point, not a literal first person account.


Nicely said.

John Lennon's haunting "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)" is beautifully rendered with a new significance in jazz chanteuse Patricia Barber's stunning rendition on her album _Live: A Fortnight In France_. There are many such examples in the musical catalogue. Let us celebrate the glory of song rather than attempt to pigeonhole it. After all, with reference again to _Winterreise_, does it matter if a male or female pianist accompanies the singer? Of course, we can argue that Schubert wrote the accompaniment for a piano. Did he not also set the text for a singer, a "voice"?

To return to the source cited above by SixFootScowl, Wikipedia offers this in the first sentence in its article on _Winterreise_: "Winterreise (Winter Journey) is a song cycle for voice and piano by Franz Schubert...." and a few lines further offers this, referring to both _Winterreise_ and _Die schöne Müllerin_: "Both were originally written for tenor voice but are frequently transposed to other vocal ranges, a precedent set by Schubert himself."

As they say in my part of Montana: if it's good enough for Schubert ....*

______
* Disclaimer: I just want to say, I have actually never heard anyone in Montana, or anywhere else for that matter, render this particular quotation. But you all know what I mean, I hope.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Kreisler jr said:


> I have nothing against women singing this music . . . but I think it is hard to deny that there is a certain tension because unlike some other cycles there is a particular story implied.
> 
> .


Why can't you just think of it as about lesbians?


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

Because lesbians or other females never were travelling laborers or artisans in a early 19th century winter landscapes. Admittedly, this background is even stronger in the Müllerin but it's there nevertheless. This is a not a random single song of love, longing or farewell, I usually would not see such a tension there but it is a whole setting.

I really think it depends on the particular framing. I have almost no problem (and I think there are more female voice recordings) with Mahler's Wayfarer songs sung by a woman, neither with Kindertotenlieder (although only or two make it explicit that it is the father's voice) etc. I have never heard Dichterliebe or Müllerin with a female voice, they might be similarly awkward. 
Admittedly, I tend to prefer male voices in songs with piano only anyway but often prefer female in orchestral songs (I vastly prefer mezzo/alto in LvdE and in the Rückert settings)

But again, am I mistaken or is this almost only in one direction, maybe because three of the most famous cycles have a male persona. Why are some neutral cycles like Sea pictures apparently (almost) never sung by male voices? Because transposition would be too much trouble with a big orchestral score?


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## Open Book (Aug 14, 2018)

SONNET CLV said:


> It must be awful to be such a purist. Such an attitude would relegate to nonentities such pieces as Ravel's great orchestration of Mussorgsky's _Pictures_, all those wonderfully effective highlight slices of operatic selections "without words", Leopold Stokowski's soul wrenching Bach Toccata and Fugue, Albinoni's famous Adagio, Pachelbel's famous Canon, Beethoven's own piano transcription of his Violin Concerto ... let alone all that wonderful guitar music (such as _Asturias_ by Isaac Albéniz, the Sonata K. 213 by Domenico Scarlatti, and Bach's monumental suites, partitas and fugues "originally written for a lute". Alas ... so much great music in any sort of transcription must be a sorrowful bane to such a purist. I remain content I am no such purist.


What a dramatic overstatement.

No, it doesn't follow that because someone prefers a male singer telling a man's story in one specific instance that they dislike transcriptions and other unconventional arrangements.


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## HenryPenfold (Apr 29, 2018)

Mandryka said:


> Why can't you just think of it as about lesbians?


Good question. Many men have issues with lesbians and women in general. I don't. I believe in reincarnation and I sincerely hope to come back as a lesbian.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

Open Book said:


> Not a Fischer-Dieskau fan? He has recorded it so many times you can't have missed him.


No, I am not a fan. Maybe I should be but every time I get to chasing a particular singer it leads to disappointment as I burn out on it and then have a lot of CDs to sit on a shelf. With as many recordings F-D has done of winterreise, there surely are some great ones.

If there was a recording of Winterreise with Rüdiger Wohlers I would buy it in a minute. Great tenor, not much recorded material.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Kreisler jr said:


> Because lesbians or other females never were travelling laborers or artisans in a early 19th century winter landscapes. Admittedly, this background is even stronger in the Müllerin but it's there nevertheless. This is a not a random single song of love, longing or farewell, I usually would not see such a tension there but it is a whole setting.
> 
> I really think it depends on the particular framing. I have almost no problem (and I think there are more female voice recordings) with Mahler's Wayfarer songs sung by a woman, neither with Kindertotenlieder (although only or two make it explicit that it is the father's voice) etc. I have never heard Dichterliebe or Müllerin with a female voice, they might be similarly awkward.
> Admittedly, I tend to prefer male voices in songs with piano only anyway but often prefer female in orchestral songs (I vastly prefer mezzo/alto in LvdE and in the Rückert settings)
> ...


I think you are needlessly creating a rod for your own back with your extreme literal approach. In fact I hadn't ever noticed that the voice of the poem is a travelling labourer - where does it say that?


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## Open Book (Aug 14, 2018)

Mandryka said:


> I think you are needlessly creating a rod for your own back with your extreme literal approach. In fact I hadn't ever noticed that the voice of the poem is a travelling labourer - where does it say that?


So you never bothered to take a good look at the words and you call someone out for being too literal?

The first song reveals the most. The man is a wanderer, came to the town in spring, by May was courting a woman. The master it speaks of is her father. Similar to Die Schöne Müllerin, the narrator was an itinerant laborer who worked for the father and fell in love with the daughter.

Now it's winter and his seasonal work is done, the union with the daughter fell apart, he's no longer welcome in her house, and feels the town is rejecting him, too. It's time to move on anyway.

Speaking of which, it's interesting that there are far fewer performances of Die Schöne Müllerin by women, as someone mentioned. That song cycle exhibits a larger variety of masculine behavior, including romantic jealousy, conflict with a rival, and unrequited affection resulting in a reckless act.


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

SixFootScowl said:


> Countertenor, eh? Well I suppose those who feel it must be sung by a male, should be okay with this one. *However, a purist may not care for the countertenor any more than a bass, since it was originally written for a tenor *(so says Wikipedia).





SONNET CLV said:


> It must be awful to be such a purist. Such an attitude would relegate to nonentities such pieces as Ravel's great orchestration of Mussorgsky's _Pictures_, all those wonderfully effective highlight slices of operatic selections "without words", Leopold Stokowski's soul wrenching Bach Toccata and Fugue, Albinoni's famous Adagio, Pachelbel's famous Canon, Beethoven's own piano transcription of his Violin Concerto ... let alone all that wonderful guitar music (such as _Asturias_ by Isaac Albéniz, the Sonata K. 213 by Domenico Scarlatti, and Bach's monumental suites, partitas and fugues "originally written for a lute". Alas ... so much great music in any sort of transcription must be a sorrowful bane to such a purist. I remain content I am no such purist.





Open Book said:


> What a dramatic overstatement.
> 
> No, it doesn't follow that because someone prefers a male singer telling a man's story in one specific instance that they dislike transcriptions and other unconventional arrangements.


I _do_ know I would much prefer to be such a "purist" as SixFootScowl and I describe and comment upon above than to be one with a certain persnickety nature regarding comments made on an Internet Forum. Alas ....


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Open Book said:


> So you never bothered to take a good look at the words and you call someone out for being too literal?
> 
> The first song reveals the most. The man is a wanderer, came to the town in spring, by May was courting a woman. The master it speaks of is her father. Similar to Die Schöne Müllerin, the narrator was an itinerant laborer who worked for the father and fell in love with the daughter.
> 
> Now it's winter and his seasonal work is done, the union with the daughter fell apart, he's no longer welcome in her house, and feels the town is rejecting him, too.


You're misreading the poem. Here's the Oxford Lieder translation

I arrived a stranger,
a stranger I depart.
May blessed me
with many a bouquet of flowers. 
The girl spoke of love,
her mother even of marriage; 
now the world is so desolate,
the path concealed beneath snow.
I cannot choose the time 
for my journey;
I must find my own way 
in this darkness.
A shadow thrown by the moon 
is my companion;
and on the white meadows
I seek the tracks of deer.
Why should I tarry longer 
and be driven out?
Let stray dogs howl
before their master's house. 
Love delights in wandering - 
God made it so -
from one to another. 
Beloved, good night!
I will not disturb you as you dream,
it would be a shame to spoil your rest. 
You shall not hear my footsteps;
softly, softly the door is closed.
As I pass I write
'Good night' on your gate,
so that you might see
that I thought of you.


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

Mandryka said:


> I think you are needlessly creating a rod for your own back with your extreme literal approach. In fact I hadn't ever noticed that the voice of the poem is a travelling labourer - where does it say that?


I certainly don't have an extreme literal approach (you seem to confusing me with Open Book) and don't need a rod. 
The Miller is a journeyman, we don't in fact know precisely about the person in Winterreise, although the analogy is there. But he is not a lesbian who got on the winter journey getting lost skiing in St. Moritz.

He came travelling as a stranger to the town he leaves at the beginning and is rather poor, otherwise he would not sleep rough occasionally. But he cannot be a mere homeless drifter, otherwise he would not even have been considered as a marriage option. 
Of course I am now taking the text literally, it could be made up in lovesickness (the mother talked of marriage and now the girl is "a rich bride" could be his imagination). So he must have had sufficiently established in society and have had something to offer which must be some kind of skilled labor (in a wide sense, I guess he could be poor poet who worked as a small town schoolmaster). He need not be a travelling laborer, it could be that he just travelled to the girl's town for work and now is travelling away.

I have nothing against abstracting from all these layers of meaning and framings. But to boldly claim that they are mostly or totally irrelevant and anyone who thinks otherwise is an extreme literalist square seems a bit much. My impression is that this framing/setting is particularly strong in some cycles (or some single songs) but not in others, therefore hardly anybody seems to think twice about which voice to prefer in Schumann's op.39 or Mahler's Rückert settings, but many do so in "Winterreise" or "Revelge" or "Frauenliebe und -leben".

And there is of course key, pitch, tessitura etc. They are not irrelevant either (and one reason why I prefer tenor to the more frequent baritone). I find it a bit odd that we nowadays shudder at a baritone for Handel's Caesar (I admittedly do) but don't find a soprano in Winterreise at least a little unusual.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Kreisler jr said:


> I certainly don't have an extreme literal approach (you seem to confusing me with Open Book) and don't need a rod.


Ah, sorry!

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## 59540 (May 16, 2021)

Acceptable maybe, but not optimal.


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

As a playwright I've written scripts for women. I've read some of those scripts, their characters, aloud to directors and cast members. I once had a young actress, following such a reading, ask me: "How do you know so much about how a young woman thinks?"

Had _Winterreise_ been composed by a woman, and if that composer were to sing her song, how might it sound? Right? Wrong? Somewhere in between?

I write this having just received an Amazon delivery, the CD of Joyce DiDonato (with accompanist Yannick Nezet-Seguin) performing Schubert's _Winterreise_. ERATO 0190295284145. The music was recorded on Dec. 15, 2019 at Carnegie Hall in New York City, but I see from a sticker pasted on the back side shrink wrap that this disc was "Made in Germany." Truly intercontinental music.

















I will now sign off from this Talk Classical Forum, carefully unpack the DiDonato disc from its shrink wrap cocoon, perhaps with some amount of trembling in my hands, load the silver disc into my trusty SONY CD deck, close the window shutters, and program for myself a rustic winter journey, here on this final full day of Summer in my listening room currently in eastern Pennsylvania.

I suspect I will enjoy this journey, one I've taken many a time previously, though on different paths and with different companions.

Joyce and Yannick, I stand ready to begin.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

SONNET CLV said:


> As a playwright I've written scripts for women. I've read some of those scripts, their characters, aloud to directors and cast members. I once had a young actress, following such a reading, ask me: "How do you know so much about how a young woman thinks?"
> 
> Had _Winterreise_ been composed by a woman, and if that composer were to sing her song, how might it sound? Right? Wrong? Somewhere in between?
> 
> ...


She takes each song like it's a big solo number in an opera. It's very studied: every vowel has been carefully coloured, the force of every consonant planned.

She's not the only one to treat the cycle like this of course!

Here's an antidote -- from the middle of WW2 -- a real winter's journey there! And you can hear it.


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