Ernst Krenek
Die Nachtigall
(1931)
for coloratura soprano and piano
Duration: 8'
Text von: Karl Kraus
Solos:
soprano
Instrumentation details:
piano
Krenek - Die Nachtigall for coloratura soprano and piano
Audio preview
Work introduction
Karl Kraus turned to Aristophanes’ comedy The Birds for his play Wolkenkuckucksheim only a few years after Walter Braunfels had set the same Greek drama to music; the poem set to music in the aria Die Nachtigall originates in that work. Written while working on his twelve-tone opera Karl V, Die Nachtigall has Romantic touches, although it is atonal.
But Krenek also used tonal melodies (some of them approaching quotations) in fashioning a piece of virtuosic, technically extremely demanding music, which he presented to Lucy Siegrist, who commissioned it.