Maybe Beethoven's songs are the less known works of all his musical production. His symphonies, concertos and sonatas are known worldwide, even in popular music, and considered as some of the greatest musical monuments of all eras. But, overshadowed by Schubert's huge production in this field, it's difficult to know very much about Beethoven's lieder... Maybe just a little about the song-cycle An die ferne Geliebte, or the immortal Adelaide; anything else is likely to be known by a great amateur, or professional musicians, or music historians. What about the rest of the compositions? Just shadows...

Within the first compositions, as the Variations on a theme by Dressler, or the Kurfürstensonaten for keyboard, we can find two curious rarities... An einen Säugling, and Schilderung eines Mädchens, two songs! By these years Beethoven was studying with his first real teacher: Christian Gottlob Neefe. It was he who made little Ludwig compose the three Kurfürstensonaten for the Archbishop and Elector of Cologne, Maximilian Friedrich, in 1783 (he was only thirteen years old). We can see that Beethoven wanted to practise (with little effort, it's true), so he found in these two little songs material for training... Afterwards he would find in song a powerful, and rather simple way to express emotions... Not just practice... Real music, ignored unfairly until our days.

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