Bob Kasenchak wrote:

>We could, of course, have an entire thread on Alma's effect on 20th century
>Western Art.  She really, uh...how do you say?--got around.

Or as the old Tom Lehrer song went,

   "Alma, tell us,
   All of Vienna is jealous..."

She did get around, and she also was no slouch as a composer.  She wrote
some very individualistic songs, along with a lot of other music in several
different genres.  Alas, all that remains of her compositional output are
about 14 songs which were published with Gustav's help (perhaps as a small
amends-making for his having insisted while they were married that the
house wasn't big enough for two composers).  The rest of her work -- and
evidently there were scores of scores, as it were -- was incinerated when
the house she and Werfel owned was bombed during WWII.

The songs that survived are somewhat uneven in quality, but the best of
them are vivid and memorable, and show a passionate spirit (surprise!) and
an ear that was listening to Strauss, G.  Mahler, and others, but also a
compositional voice whose use of a highly colorful harmonic language and
an innate sense of drama in relating intimately to her text, was all Alma's
own.  One in particular, "Hymne," to a text of the mystic *philosophe*
Novalis, is a steamy comparison of lovemaking to holy communion.  Her piano
parts in the songs are quite challenging, and the harmonic language makes
me yearn to hear what she would have done with an orchestrated piece.
Although she genrally leaves dynamic levels and color to the performers,
the scores carry very detailed and constantly changing tempo markings.

I've sung my favorite four or five Alma songs  in a number of concerts,
and they always elicit a strong and ...fascinated... response.  She still
emanates that perfume through the remnants of her work.

So, to finish that post in a threadlike manner, what would I like to hear
from Alma? A nice, juicy opera on the subject of passionate/brilliant/
star-crossed lovers -- Abelard & Heloise, for example, or Dante and his
Beatrice -- or on a gypsy theme.  Something about her music reminds me of
certain Klimt paintings.  Maybe an opera on a frustrated woman artist!
Alma sure knew the material.  Woodlark

Danielle Woerner
http://www.HVmusic.com/artists/danielle