Songs and Sonnets:bilingual songs from the reign of Queen Victoria: EM Records CD054

Owen Norris, David, Williams, Belinda and Wilde, Mark (2019) Songs and Sonnets:bilingual songs from the reign of Queen Victoria: EM Records CD054.

Abstract

William Sterndale Bennett was the first to publish sets of songs where the originals were variously in German and English (translations into the other language being provided in each case). This innovation preceded the widespread practice of providing existing German songs (by Schubert or Schumann, for example) with subsequent English translations: notable exponents of this branch of poetry were Maria X. Hayes, Natalia MacFarren, & A.H. Fox-Strangways. This CD, however, traces a purer path from WSB’s innovation. Battison Haynes’s Vier Lieder continue the theme of German poems being set by an Englishman (published with English singing translations). Astonishingly enough, Parry’s settings of four Shakespeare Sonnets were originally made to Bodenstedt’s unmetrical translation, with the vocal line subsequently entirely re-written to carry Shakespeare’s original – a perfectly unique procedure whose implications my liner-note discusses in detail. We recorded both versions of Parry in full, Battison Haynes only in the original German, and the Sterndale Bennett songs in a mixture of original and translation, so that in the course of a single CD we could give samples of each possibility of original tongue and singing translation. This is the only complete recording of WSB’s songs (four songs are recorded elsewhere, all in English), the only recording of the Battison Haynes, and the only recording of Parry’s German original.The instrument used dates from the time of composition of the Parry & Battison Haynes songs. The liner notes discuss this in the context of period performance style.

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Contributors

Artist: David Owen Norris

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