6 Lieder von Gellert, Op. 48: No. 4, Die Ehre Gottes aus der Natur
Ludwig van Beethoven
Recording
Stephan Genz (baritone), Roger Vignoles (piano)
- Album
- Beethoven: Songs
- Year
- 1998
- Length
- Period
- Classical era
- Listen
Painting
Caspar David Friedrich
Two Men Contemplating the Moon, ca. 1825–30
The piece
Beethoven set six poems from Christian Fürchtegott Gellert's Geistliche Oden und Lieder (1757) for voice and piano before March 1802, and they were published in 1803; this fourth song, beginning “Die Himmel rühmen des Ewigen Ehre,” paraphrases Psalm 19. At “Ihn rühmt der Erdkreis” the harmony moves from C to E major, then slips into E-flat major at “Wer trägt der Himmel unzählbare Sterne.”
The recording
Baritone Stephan Genz and pianist Roger Vignoles recorded it in 1998 at Tonstudio Teije van Geest in Sandhausen, Germany, restoring two of Gellert's verses that Beethoven left out of the first printed edition. The album won a Gramophone Award, and Gramophone called it “an instant classic.”
Other recordings
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Jörg Demus recorded the Gellert songs for Deutsche Grammophon in 1966.