Thoughts on what performing Liederabende and art song means to me
KS Michael Schade, tenor
NB: An abbreviated version of this article was published in the December 2024 issue of Art Song Canada.
I have been asked to write an article by Canadian soprano, Sara Schabas, whom I’ve been lucky enough to watch grow as an artist as her university professor, her private teacher, and in masterclasses. I have also had the honour to be allowed to be a bit of a mentor to her; in terms of her professional progress, as she grows as an international artist, as well as forging a wonderful path towards being able to also, perhaps one day, add stints in academia and/or management to her growing portfolio.
The reason I mention Sara Schabas when asked to explain what it means to me to perform art song and Lieder in the context of all my other performing and the many hats that I wear as a vocal artist, a university professor, and as the artistic director of a major international baroque music festival, is perhaps, to explain how I can see, slowly but surely, a torch of passion being passed on. Maybe, better said, is that there seems to have been some fruits to my labour and to my vision of what it means to be a singer! In other words, dear Sara Schabas is what I call an all-rounder in the vocal performance world; that is to identify her as a vocal artist who loves to perform not only opera and oratorio, but who also loves art song of all languages and styles. A singer who loves to explore and to delve into the history of the past, to see how it can influence the present, one who who loves to teach, as she’s out there in the world representing the next great generation of young Canadian artists who have the drive and the interest to be both multifaceted and highly educated.
What makes singing Lieder and recitals so special and different?
It is that you have to be exactly that—a kind of all rounder—to really understand how to pass the passion of this intimate type of performance genre, not only to audiences, but also to the next generations of singers.
My own greatest mentor, the late Austrian historical performance guru and world famous conductor, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, once told me that, “Music is the umbilical cord that connects us with godliness.” I have never met another person in my life that was so dedicated, not only to performing beautiful music, but to basing his performances on the knowledge of what the score asked for, the history of the composer and of what other composers and artists of the same given period were saying (in other words, researching sources), and the historical research on the instruments that a composer had available to him or her at the time. The amazing thing though, for me, has been, that even though he was one of the greatest scholars of music, Nicholas Harnoncourt was the Germans call ein Bauchmusiker. In other words, an instinctive, creative musician, whose music is at the end of the day expressed through the gut feeling of what feels right and what is wrong.
When you truly follow your gut, when you are truly passionate about something and the more you delve into your passion, the more it becomes part of your life as an expression of yourself and your soul.
We musicians have one of the great honours in life: our hobby is our passion, and our passion is our work. The more that passion becomes part of one’s life and the deeper one delves into the history of what it is that we do, the more we can feel and see the music’s relevance to the present and the greater truth comes out of any given piece of music.
I often say that the world needs art song like the world needs prayer or faith. We may think we don’t need it for most of our lives, but we eventually need to be reminded of what is important. There is however, a great generalized exception: faith and the art song go hand in hand. This applies especially when life is born or at the beginning of a budding and loving relationship where you pray that the one that you seek in love actually notices you. When in love, one can write entire poems about a flower or find entire momentous musings about the smallest of things with a great common hope that the loved one may notice you.
Then, as life goes on and on, prayer and Lied aren’t really needed or wanted. Then suddenly, boom!, perhaps there’s a crisis, there’s a tragedy, there is bad news, there’s the impending end, and oh boy, we find our faith again and seek comfort and meaning in music. We find solace in art song and in the quiet musings it shares with us.
One of the most beautiful things in music is how calm, gently and beautifully death is portrayed. For example, when you look at the music of Franz Schubert, who did not live an easy life, you see that he must have eventually found peace as death is peaceful in his music. Juxtaposed with the ever-bubbling brook of life that goes through all of his music and accompanies one towards the inevitable end, death seemingly is almost kind and open-armed, welcoming the traveller to a better world to come.
I think often the professional recital world grapples with the fact that somehow it has to sell itself as a sort of an entertainment entity to audiences. Presenters believe that audiences “want to be entertained” and want to experience something grand or small, or are simply trying to find something to do on a given night.
In my opinion, we are sort of saddling the horse the wrong way around as the Germans say.
The fact is, it is through the intimate, not the grand approach that we shall find the audiences of tomorrow. We need the kind of performances that come from artists who are “all rounders” to help explain and to live and to program recitals that will change people’s lives and to educate their hearts and souls! Yes, sometimes cathartic moments happens with the audiences not even being aware that we’re expanding their palate - much like a great chef will add something to a given dish and when the customer is told afterwards what they just ate, they are at first puzzled and then perhaps impressed with themselves with the old, “What? There was XYZ in there? I didn’t think I liked XYZ!”
The amount of learning and study and dedication one has to undertake to prepare an entire program of art song, is often more work in terms of preparation and memory work, than learning even a whole opera role. Often the pay that one receives for such work is not even a third of what a singer would make work for one performance of an opera run. The audience is smaller and seems less flashy at first. On top of that, the actual work out there is hard to get and rare to find! So, given the pure economy of it all, at first it seems to make no sense to delve so deeply into something that may not make you as much money as something else in the same business. However, every Lied you sing will make you a better opera singer because you become a highly skilled communicator in the world of music.
It has always been my utter conviction that opera, oratorio and art song are in essence three related cousins. You cannot sing the great opera of Wagner, Die Meistersinger, for instance, without knowing what what David (the young student of Hans Sachs) really means in the master world that without knowing what the “rules of singing are based on the rules of art song” (Wagner’s way of saying how metre, poetry, scale, articulation, tessitura, pentameter, diction, and poetry all need to be highly respected). Though Wagner was a self-loving genius madman, he has a point: if you don’t follow those rules in opera you get endlessly sweet, meaningless drama, or acrid intolerable muck! I think Wagner was trying to connect the dots, so to speak.
The fact is, Georg Friedrich Handel, may not have known how to create the great choral oratorios of his late days if not for the success he had in Italian opera that he brought to England from his various trips to Italy. Joseph Haydn, in turn, excelled in giving small-scale recitals with wonderful young singers in England when he was 58 years of age and had left for England to become one of the world’s major musical forces. It is through the so-called salon concert, or the “house concert,” that Haydn was able to connect with some of the wealthy donors of England and thus enjoy incredible support for his various symphony and other concert venues. People were touched by the utter intimacy, darkness, humility, and wonderful genius of his compositions performed in those small salons. In that part of history, perhaps, lies our own spark to fire the future of art song. The intimate setting may be a way to keep art song alive and the way to create the recitals of the future, in viable and intimate settings!
The house concert as a source of inspiration or for a marketing tool to further connectivity is a definite market niche.
For me, grassroots house concert tradition has been a post-Corona lifesaver. When people had nothing left but to hear music in a small intimate setting, they came to my house we discussed and broke bread. My wife and I welcomed them and the dreams were shared together during a time when music seemed doomed and much faith was required to see a future. Many hearts were touched and much greatness was created, with so many projects since that have thankfully been realized; all by virtue of an intimate life-affirming art song and Lieder recital in a home!
I’ve talked a lot here about what it means to be an “all-rounder” as a performer, and about the grassroots movement needed to keep recitals in our lives, along with the fact that opera, oratorio, and the art song are all related. I’ve talked a lot about the business side of it all, I’ve talked a lot about the teaching of it, but what I haven’t talked about is what art song and Lieder truly mean to me as an individual.
When I was a young singer, I used to think of every song that I had to memorize as some sort of humungous hurdle that one had to overcome in order to get somewhere on time, namely, the actual recital date (which always seemed to be rushing in at full speed). The feeling is like learning every page of the Wozzeck score that I’m learning now for the COC this spring—and by the way how just amazingly Lieder-like is Berg’s opera despite all that post World War One twelve-tone Weltschmerz in terms of expression, and being true to the text. Every word expressed and successfully pronounced, each interval learned and sung in tune, every page learned, which at first just seems like some sort of major hurdle that one has to jump over in order to get to knowing it (mastering it is a whole different essay!).
As I have grown into the life of being a singer, I’ve realized evermore that with each of the Lieder I sing, I get to meet a new part of me. I’m learning along the path of life with each of the poems sung and the words are actually my dear, dear friends. I thus get to spend hours and hours with my dear friends, and I need nothing else but a view out the window, a walk-through a park, a train ride, a plane ride, a moment alone, all to realize that I’m not ever alone. I can always call up one of my dear friends - each of which has just incredible insights into life and the ability to gently make me feel humbled and teach me something about the future. They are such awesome friends, that they even take away the pain of missing my children and my wife when on the road, even if only momentarily!
If I can summarize what art song means to me, it is that it’s the essence of singing.
Why? Because it is an art form comparable to making a great sauce in the world of cooking. You start with a lot of goodness and you have to boil it way, way down and reduce it to a minimum to get to the core taste of it and find its real value. The core of humanity is, at the end of the day, the truth which shines through one’s soul.
Being an “all-round” singer means that you have to try to communicate the truth, always! Yes, even in the large scale of opera performances or the concert setting of oratorio performances, and then really hold onto your heart to be able to delve down and make that reduction be something special in art song or Liederabend performances.
I am honoured to have been allowed to live a life of delving into the art, along with the three cousins, and being allowed to have met so many of my Lieder friends.
It is my great hope that other all-rounders like Sara Schabas and the next generations will share the joy of this art format. That they will make friends with the poems and share the ideals and the truth of life in “Liederland,” which at the end of the day, is all about singing from the heart and telling the truth; giving the audience the chance to feel their own hearts and their own truths! That’s what faith is; feeling and seeking your truths.
It is all a bit of a calling and the more you listen to it the more the flutters of the nerves of am I good enough? go away and are replaced with the joy and certainty that you may just help someone achieve a better moment in this world!
Du holde Kunst, ich danke Dir dafür!
©Michael Schade 18.11.2024