Program Eight • Literary Romanticisms

Among his peers, Berlioz was by no means the only eminent writer on music. Robert Schumann, whom he befriended in Germany, was a similarly influential critic with a comparably vibrant literary style; Ferdinand Hiller, Berlioz’s close friend for 40 years, corresponded with all the leading musicians of Europe; American pianist-composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk was another early memoirist; and Fanny Mendelssohn, as her correspondence reveals, was an astute commentator on musical life in Berlin. Felix Mendelssohn, with whom Berlioz made friends in Italy, was a true man of letters who met and impressed Goethe as a child, became a skilled amateur poet, and wrote some 8,000 letters in German, French, and English.

Program Eight brings these and other composers into focus through works including Mendelssohn’s posthumously published Second String Quintet and Berlioz’s Les nuits d’été. Set to poems by Berlioz’s friend Théophile Gautier, the cycle—a jewel of the art song repertoire—will be heard in its first incarnation, with each song sung to piano accompaniment by a different vocal soloist.