Category: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  • Little Wild Rose in the Heather

    (The manuscript of “Heidenröslein.” Schubert’s marking is “lieblich,” i.e. charming or lovely.) Read through the score here: IMSLP09270-SchubertD257_Heidenroslein The song starts almost without starting: the voice and piano begin together, without any introduction. Although the song is a setting of a poem by the great German poet, playwright, novelist, and scientist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,…

  • He Who Knows Longing

    Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in a traveling robe on a trip to Italy. In 1795, Goethe published his novel Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship), a Bildungsroman (novel concerned with the growth of the individual human spirit) about a young merchant who, dissatisfied with his life in business, goes off to join a group of traveling street…

  • The Waiting is the Hardest Part

    The legend of Dr. Faust — a scholar dissatisfied with his life, who sells his soul to the devil in exchange for renewed youth, strength, and vigor — is an ancient one. The first literary adaptations of the Faust legend began to appear in the sixteenth century, and every age since has reinterpreted the story…