5.17.19 Graduating Student Recital: Fulfilled Love – Lost Love

In Debussy’s famous song cycle Ariettes Oubliées one can find all the extremes of both fulfilled love and lost love. The poet Paul Verlaine describes these perfectly in the last two songs which surprisingly have the English titles Green and Spleen. The first song C’est l’extase is a truly sensuous setting of the satisfaction of love and love-making. On the other hand, Il pleure dans mon coeur describes the numbness of lost love. Schubert’s Suleika is also a love song in which there is a conncetion between nature’s stirring and the stirring of the heart. The poem was supposedly written by Goethe’s mistress. On a carriage ride as she was visiting her beloved.