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About this Piece

Austrian composer Joseph Marx was born to write song. A romantic at heart, he followed steadfastly in the footsteps of his great predecessors Franz Schubert and Hugo Wolf. His style is that of a cross of late Romanticism and Impressionism with a little Mahler and Reger thrown in for good measure. His songs display a poetic sensitivity to his chosen texts that merges with a natural lyricism. “Selige Nacht,” a setting of a poem by Otto Erich Hartleben, is a paean to post-coital bliss, though the on-going hand-crossing figures in the piano maintain the glow of lovemaking. “Hat dich die Liebe berührt” is another love song on a poem by Paul Heyse.