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Old 2007.04.04, 01:59 AM   #4
frecklegirl
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Loire, you know there are quite a few errors in your descriptions for the background of each song. I corrected them for the thread but you should consider making those changes on the website as well (you can find the information on my site).

Translations of some of the blurbs about each song that were once found on Ringo's old site (gone now):

Nobara [Heidenroslein] (found here)
Goethe is known as the novelist who wrote “The Sorrows of Young Werther [Die Leiden des jungen Werther],” but he was also a poet, playwright, and overall German artist. In 1770, while a 21-year-old law student at Strasbourg University, he was visiting Sesenheim, a village in the eastern part of France when he met an 18-year-old girl, Friederike Brion, and fell in love with her, putting those feelings into the poem he wrote, “Nobara [Heidenroslein].” In regards to these poems, many composers have added music and made them into well-known songs, most notably Schubert (just beginning to adapt from Werner), Schumann, and Brahms, who all set “Nobara” and other Goethe poems to music, resulting in a total of over 150 songs. Furthermore, here in Japan the famous piece “Maou [Erlkoenig]” and the rest that we know as the Viennese king’s songs came from Schubert’s version of “Nobara” (Schubert’s work he wrote at 18 on August 19, 1815).
Kimi o Aisu [Ich Liebe Dich]
Andersen, known as Denmark’s writer of children’s books, also wrote poems. In setting these to music, the Norwegian composer Grieg’s most famous song was created. In the summer of 1830, Andersen visited a friend of his and met the friend’s older sister, Riborg Voight. He began to harbor feelings of love towards her which he channeled into his poetry, though the feelings continued one-sided. The composer Grieg, in 1864, at the age of 21, was setting Andersen’s poems to music at about the time of his engagement to his sweetheart, the singer Nina. These circumstances were the driving force leading him to create “Kimi o Aisu.”
My favorite part of Utaite Myouri is that it's pretty much her biography. Sooo much is revealed about her early years and her parents' taste in music through this album.

Her mother's influence: Classic Japanese pop songs like "Momen no Handkerchief," "Shiroi Kobato"
Her father's influence: Jazz songs like "Jazz a go go," "The Onion Song" (and later with Tokyo Jihen "The Lady is a Tramp")
Influence from her classical ballet training: Classical music like Chopin's Op.34 No.2
Influence from songs she had to learn in school: Heidenroslein
etc...

It's all in that unauthorized biography thing of hers. Just fascinating! Everything lines up!!
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