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THIS ARTICLE WILL FOCUS ON Reynaldo Hahn's compositions, with emphases on his life, training, career, vocal repertoire, influences, and compositional traits. The poets and poems that Hahn chose to set will be discussed, along with poetic translations of selected verses. In addition, appraisals of Hahn's importance in the development of French art song will be rendered by imminent authorities.
BIOGRAPHIC AND COMPOSITIONAL OVERVIEW
Reynaldo Hahn, composer, pianist, singer, conductor, critic, and writer, was born in Caracas, Venezuela on August 9, 1874.1 His father, son of a German father and Venezuelan mother, was Don Carlos Hahn, a German Jew who converted to Roman Catholicism upon his marriage, and his mother, Elena Maria Eschenagucia, was from a wealthy aristocratic Venezuelan family of Spanish lineage on her father's side, part Dutch and English on her mother's. Reynaldo was the youngest of twelve children. Don Carlos had moved from Hamburg to Caracas in the 1840s, and established there a very successful mercantile business. The composer himself admits an early affinity for music.
I am quite sure that when I was three years old, and barely as tall as my keyboard of the piano, I already knew how to place my fingers on the keys. At the age of five, I remember that precisely, I played to the delight of my family, and to my own deep satisfaction. At the age of eight, I began composing. An Italian lady, a pianist, taught me how to write music when I was still very young. Thus, as tunes and melodies began to sing through my little brain, I wrote them down, proud of putting something lasting on a piece of paper.2
The Hahns moved to Paris when Reynaldo was not yet four years old. The young Hahn made his musical debut at the age of six when he sang for Princesse Mathilde, niece of Napoleon I and cousin of Napoleon III. Reynaldo also performed for Queen Victoria of England, and later for the royal family of Monaco, King Alphonse of Spain, and King Edward VII of England. The child prodigy caught the attention of Charles Gounod and studied composition with him for a short period of time. At age eleven, in October, 1885, young Reynaldo entered the Conservatoire National Supérieur de...