And a heartfelt 'thank you' to you, Ray, for this essay. With your permission, I would like to send it on to a couple of friends and my son. May I have it?
Cheers, Lawry On May 19, 2012, at 10:50 PM, Ray Harrell wrote: > > To the Futurework list. You should know of the passing of the great Artist > Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. Many years ago after a concert I had the > opportunity to meet him in a receiving line. There was only one thing to > say. "Thank you." He smiled and said, "you're welcome." Everyone of > us in the theater felt that he was singing and telling the stories personally > to us. > > There are some people that I want to get to know personally for conversation > and good fellowship. There are some that are like family that I feel that > their person is the reason for knowing them. Then there are the people in > my profession who I learned early on, that the appropriateness of space was > the best way for me not to ruin my experience of their great art. I > deliberately did not cultivate those people, as acquaintances, but let their > art speak solely to me as a reservoir of cultural depth, wisdom and beauty. > They speak for their country, their culture, their family and their heritage. > I worked with them on the stage but knowing them was often not "artistic" > for me personally. I needed to know them though their art as "keepers" > of great traditions, heritages and occasionally as colleagues within stage > productions. There is, for me, always a certain distance required to study > a work of art and take into my own life apart from the life of the artist. > I study them from a distance with respect. They were and are the angels > that balance the demons of history who would destroy the world for a dollar. > Their work is truly to me a matter of life and death. Their stories > deserve my most profound study and relationship as a context for their art > but it is the arrow of the Art that matters to the one encountering it. > > This week the last chapter on my hometown was in the New York Times as they > wrote about the old town of Treece, Kansas, the off reservation town where > people could buy Liquor while it was banned in the Quapaw nation. Amongst > the pictures is a picture of the park that I had helped my father build for > the reservation town of Picher. The environment was a terrible place, but > music made it tolerable and a doorway for us all. That music was fed by > the teaching of exceptionally trained musicians fighting the wounds of > poverty and teaching the kids from home. > > > http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/20/magazine/last-ones-left-in-treece-kan-a-toxic-town.html?pagewanted=all > > Eva Turner, a soul wounded great soprano who lost everything including her > singing in the war, came to Oklahoma to recover after the war and gave us > hope while on the other side of the conflict was the Lieder of Dietrich > Fischer-Dieskau, whose war and personal tragedies fed a younger man's art and > fueled his art with hope of something beyond the misery of the moment. > > Today, that Art has returned to Germany, and England once more has great > singers and a tradition that can feed their culture again. In spite of the > bickering of government politicians and economists, and short sighted > "musicians", who forget that generosity is essential for great art - art is > once more at home in Europe. They will tell you that it is "their > cultural, intellectual property" just like reservation Indians complaining > about Chinese handicrafts being sold at a Powwow. > > The lessons of both Dame Eva and Dieter are that you must find the core of > art for yourself. No great culture can expect another culture to supply > their identity and soul. You cannot expect the English, the Germans, the > French, the Italians or the Russians to supply the soul that is missing in > the center of the American heart. Old Celtic folk songs in the guise of > commercial entertainment, (though moving, enjoyable, entertaining and well > performed), are no competition for the great blossoming of thousands of Art > Songs across Europe from the 19th century, handed to us by the wonderful > Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. > > A great culture must have designers, performers and listeners if its soul is > to be expressed. Only the third group can get away with simple pleasure > and lazy ignorance in the Art. In all of the years of my listening to him, > Fischer-Dieskau never abused his audience and never played down to them. > The Art was always alive and immediate. In all of his concerts, where I > was the listener, he never encouraged me to simply enjoy. As members of > the audience we were driven to the translations of the texts, because we > wanted to know what all of those magnificent skills were expressing. Only > an art work of great importance could be so compelling to an audience that > had little history with German poetry and yet was treated so courteously and > seriously. Great Art is always great storytelling. Thank you Dietrich > Fischer-Dieskau. > > Ray Evans Harrell > > > > May 18, 2012 > Lyrical and Powerful Baritone, and the Master of the Art Song > By DANIEL LEWIS > Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, the German baritone whose beautiful voice and > mastery of technique made him the 20th century’s pre-eminent interpreter of > art songs, died on Friday at his home in Bavaria. He was 86. > > His wife, the soprano Julia Varady, confirmed his death to the German press > agency DPA. > > Mr. Fischer-Dieskau was by virtual acclamation one of the world’s great > singers, from the 1940s to his official retirement in 1992, and an > influential teacher and orchestra conductor for many years thereafter. > > He was also a formidable industry, making hundreds of recordings that pretty > much set the modern standard for performances of lieder, the musical settings > of poems first popular in the 18th and 19th centuries. His output included > the many hundreds of Schubert songs appropriate for the male voice, the songs > and song cycles of Schumann and Brahms, and those of later composers like > Mahler, Shostakovich and Hugo Wolf. He won twoGrammy Awards, in 1971 for > Schubert lieder, and in 1973 for Brahms’s “Schöne Magelone.” > > Mr. Fischer-Dieskau (pronounced FEE-shur-DEES-cow) had sufficient power for > the concert hall and for substantial roles in his parallel career as a star > of European opera houses. But he was essentially a lyrical, introspective > singer whose effect on listeners was not to nail them to their seat backs, > but rather to draw them into the very heart of song. > > The pianist Gerald Moore, who accompanied many great artists of the postwar > decades, said Mr. Fischer-Dieskau had a flawless sense of rhythm and “one of > the most remarkable voices in history — honeyed and suavely expressive.” > Onstage he projected a masculine sensitivity informed by a cultivated > upbringing and by dispiriting losses in World War II: the destruction of his > family home, the death of his feeble brother in a Nazi institution, induction > into the Wehrmacht when he had scarcely begun his voice studies at the Berlin > Conservatory. > > His performances eluded easy description. Where reviewers could get the > essence of a Pavarotti appearance in a phrase (the glories of a true Italian > tenor!), a Fischer-Dieskau recital was akin to a magic show, with seamless > shifts in dynamics and infinite shadings of coloration and character. > > He had the good luck to age well, too. In 1988, at 62, he sang an > all-Schumann program at Carnegie Hall, where people overflowed onto the stage > to hear him. Donal Henahan, then the chief music critic of The New York > Times, noted that Mr. Fischer-Dieskau’s voice had begun to harden in some > difficult passages — but also that he was tall and lean and handsomer than > ever, and had lost none of his commanding presence. Mr. Fischer-Dieskau > described in his memoir “Reverberations” (1989) how his affinity for lieder > had been formed in childhood. “I was won over to poetry at an early age,” he > wrote. “I have been in its thrall all my life because I was made to read it, > because it gave me pleasure, and because I eventually came to understand what > I was reading.” > > He discerned, he said, that “music and poetry have a common domain, from > which they draw inspiration and in which they operate: the landscape of the > soul.” > > A Shy and Private Child > > Albert Dietrich Fischer was born in Berlin on May 28, 1925, the youngest of > three sons of Albert Fischer, a classical scholar and secondary school > principal with relatively liberal ideas about education reform, and his young > second wife, Theodora Klingelhoffer, a schoolteacher. (In 1934 Dr. Fischer > added the hyphenated “Dieskau” to the family name; his mother had been a von > Dieskau, descended from the Kammerherr von Dieskau, for whom J. S. Bach wrote > the “Peasant Cantata.”) > > Family members knew Dietrich, as he was called, as a shy, private child who > nonetheless liked to entertain. He put on puppet shows in which he voiced all > the parts, sometimes for an audience of one: his physically and mentally > disabled brother, Martin, with whom he shared a room. > > Before adolescence Dietrich was inducted into a Hitler Youth group where, he > recalled years later, he was appalled by the officiousness as well as by the > brutality. His father died when he was 12. And he had just finished secondary > school and one semester at the Berlin Conservatory when, in 1943, he was > drafted into the Wehrmacht and assigned to care for army horses on the > Russian front. He kept a diary there, calling it his “attempt at preserving > an inner life in chaotic surroundings.” > > “Poems by Morgenstern,” one entry read. “It is a good idea to learn them by > heart, to have something to fall back on.” > > “Lots of cold, lots of slush and even more storms,” read another. “Every day > horses die for lack of food.” > > It was in Russia that he heard that his mother had been forced to send his > brother to an institution outside Berlin. “Soon,” he wrote later, “the Nazis > did to him what they always did with cases like his: they starved him to > death as quickly as possible.” > > And then his mother’s apartment in Lichterfelde was bombed. Granted home > leave to help her, he found that all that remained of their possessions could > be moved to a friend’s apartment in a handcart. But as early as his second > day home, he and his mother began seeking out “theater, concerts, a lot of > other music — defying the irrational world.” > > Prisoner and Music Star > > Instead of returning to the disastrous campaign in Russia, he was diverted to > Italy, along with thousands of other German soldiers. There, on May 5, 1945, > just three days before the Allies accepted the German surrender, he was > captured and imprisoned. It turned out to be a musical opportunity: soon the > Americans were sending him around to entertain other P.O.W.’s from the back > of a truck. The problem was, they were so pleased with this arrangement that > they kept him until June 1947. He was among the last Germans to be > repatriated. > > Still, he was only 22 when he returned for further study at the Berlin > Conservatory. He didn’t stay long. Called to substitute for an indisposed > baritone in Brahms’s “German Requiem,” he became famous practically > overnight. As he said, “I passed my final exam in the concert hall.” > > Because of his youth, Mr. Fischer-Dieskau had been in no position to make his > own choices in the 1930s and ’40s, so he didn’t encounter the questions about > Nazi ties that hung over many a prominent German artist after the war. (The > soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, his frequent musical collaborator, repeatedly > denied that she had joined the Nazi Party until confronted with evidence in > 1983. “It was akin to joining a union,” she said in an explanatory letter to > The Times, “and exactly for the same reason: to have a job.”) > > Mr. Fischer-Dieskau gave his first professional lieder recital in Leipzig in > the fall of 1947. Success followed success, with lieder performances in > Britain and other European countries, beginning in 1949. He first toured the > United States in 1955, choosing for his New York debut to sing Schubert’s > demanding “Winterreise” cycle without intermission. > > He had made his opera debut in 1948, singing Posa in Verdi’s “Don Carlos” at > Berlin’s Städtische Oper (later renamed the Deutsche Oper), where he was > hired as principal lyric baritone. He also sang regularly at the Bavarian > State Opera in Munich and appeared frequently in the opera houses of Vienna, > Covent Garden, Salzburg and Bayreuth. > > Recording Operatic Roles > > Versatility was not the least of Mr. Fischer-Dieskau’s assets. He tackled > everything from Papageno in “The Magic Flute” — who knew that a goofy bird > catcher could have immaculate diction? — to heavier parts like Wotan in “Das > Rheingold” and Wolfram in “Tannhäuser.” He recorded more than three dozen > operatic roles, Italian as well as German, along with oratorios, Bach > cantatas and works of many modern composers, including Benjamin Britten, > whose “War Requiem” he sang at its premiere in 1962. > > Mr. Fischer-Dieskau was married in 1949 to his sweetheart from his student > days, the cellist Irmgard Poppen. They had three sons: Matthias, who became a > stage designer; Martin, a conductor; and Manuel, a cellist. Ms. Poppen did > not live to see them grow: she died of complications after Manuel’s birth in > 1963. For her husband it was a profound, disorienting loss. > > He was married again, to the actress Ruth Leuwerik, from 1965 to 1967, and > again, to Christina Pugel-Schule, the daughter of an American voice teacher, > from 1968 to 1975. > > His fourth marriage, to Ms. Varady, the Hungarian soprano, in 1977, was a > rewarding match. Like the many artists who studied with him more formally, > Ms. Varady found him to be a kindly, constructive and totally unsparing > mentor. > > Master of Many Trades > > Mr. Fischer-Dieskau’s insistence on getting things right comes through > vividly in scenes of him at rehearsal or conducting master class. In a widely > circulated video at the time, showing him coaching a young Christine Schäfer, > Ms. Schäfer is singing beautifully, or so it would seem to your average > mortal, yet the smiling maestro interrupts time and again to suggest > something better. And it isn’t merely that he is invariably correct; it’s > also that when he rises to sing just a few illustrative notes, the studio is > instantly a stage, and he illuminates it with what seems to be an inner light. > > Even better is a documentary by Bruno Monsaingeon, “Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau: > Autumn Journey,” with archival and up-to-date footage of a master at work in > his many trades. > > Besides making music, he wrote about it: insightful, accessible books about > the lives and music of great composers, including Schubert and Schumann. He > was a widely exhibited painter, too, known especially for his portraits. > > Mr. Fischer-Dieskau retired from opera in 1978. He continued giving song > recitals through the end of 1992 and then, on New Year’s Day 1993, announced > that he would sing onstage no more. > > Of the many tributes he received over the decades, perhaps none was more > heartfelt than that of the British music critic John Amis: > > “Providence gives to some singers a beautiful voice, to some musical > artistry, to some (let us face it) neither, but to Fischer-Dieskau Providence > has given both. The result is a miracle, and that is just about all there is > to be said about it.” > > Mr. Amis continued, “Having used a few superlatives and described the > program, there is nothing else to do but write ‘finis,’ go home, and thank > one’s stars for having had the good luck to be present.” > > > _______________________________________________ > Futurework mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
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