The Carl Loewe Song Companion

Carl Loewe Song Companion is the first book in any language to deal in detail with some 250 songs by Loewe, the texts of which appear in the book in parallel translation. In this pioneering publication, Richard Stokes, the UK's acknowledged foremost translator of Lieder poetry, brings together some 250 of the song and ballad texts set by Schubert's unjustifiably neglected contemporary Carl Loewe (1796-1869), in German and English parallel texts, with illuminating essays on each of the poets. Known as the 'North German Schubert', and rewarded with the degree of success and celebrity in Vienna that was denied Schubert during his lifetime, Carl Loewe composed a huge number of ballads that remain popular in performance throughout Europe and have been recorded many times. Audiences love Loewe as a composer of ballads but are unaware that many of his lyrical songs and comic gems are as entertaining and enjoyable as the ballads. A Carl Loewe Song Companion redresses that imbalance and introduces the reader to some 200 of his less familiar songs. Many of the world's finest singers are Loewe enthusiasts, none more so than the great mezzo-soprano Brigitte Fassbaender, who writes in her Foreword to A Carl Loewe Song Companion: 'The songs of Carl Loewe should feature in every singer's repertoire - not only the ballads [. . .] but also his Lieder which, in their musical and thematic variety, contain some of the nineteenth century's finest examples of Romantic song. [. . .] Loewe is a great song composer and I fail to comprehend why he remains so underestimated and relatively unperformed.'