Tales of Love and Longing An 18th-century Songbook
Richard Wigmore
Parting, farewell, loneliness––the darker sides of love are at the center of tonight’s recital of rarely heard vocal repertoire from the 18th century, accompanied on a fortepiano. Among the program’s highlights are Herbing’s “dramatic tale” Montan und Lalage (based on a story by Christian Fürchtegott Gellert) and Haydn’s solo cantata Arianna a Naxos, a powerful musical depiction of an abandoned woman. One of three virtually forgotten composers Carolyn Sampson and Kristian Bezuidenhout have chosen, August Bernhard Valentin Herbing began his short career as assistant organist of Magdeburg Cathedral, graduating to principal organist at the age of 29, just two years before his early death. In his lifetime he achieved modest fame with his collections of humorous songs (Musikalische Belustigungen) and his Musikalischer Versuch—“Musical Essay in fables and tales by Professor Gellert.” This consists of nine settings for voice and keyboard of verses by the famous Saxon poet, who took as his model the morality tales of La Fontaine. Each of Herbing’s settings is in effect a miniature opera for one singer, with the keyboard-as- orchestra providing the scenery and stage action—a foretaste here of the ballads of Johann Zumsteeg and the young Schubert. Montan und Lalage is a story of everlasting love with a nasty, admonitory twist. Mingling recitative, song (with the vocal line often pitched perilously high) and keyboard interludes, Herbing
