Episode 35

This week we're covering German diction again, with baritone Christoph Pohl and vocal coach Michael Schütze, focusing on the texts to "Mondnacht" and "Die Mainacht". The episode started off being about open and closed Ü, and ended up branching out in a few different directions, including double consonants and open and closed U and I. The text to Josef von Eichendorff's poem "Mondnacht" can be found here. It has been set by many composers, but the version most people know best is by Robert Schumann in his Liederkreis Op 39. Our second text is "Die Mainacht", a poem by Ludwig Heinrich Christoph Hölty. You'll notice that the text contains 4 verses, but we used the Brahms setting (which is probably the most famous) which only uses Verses 1, 3 and 4. We mention the ß in passing in this episode. If you need a refresher on that, check out episodes 8 and 22, where that topic is covered a little more in-depth. The University of Iowa website that I referred to is here. You can see the side-view tongue diagrams that many diction books contain here in motion, in English and Spanish as well as German. Please feel free to contact me with questions, comments or suggestions here, at the Facebook page or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com