In his treatise on early melodramas by Jacques Rousseau, Anton Schweitzer, Georg Benda, Christian Gottlieb Neefe, Johann Friedrich Reichhardt, Abbé Vogler, Peter von Winter, Johann Rudolph Zumsteeg, Siegmund von Seckendorff and Carl Eberwein, Edgar Istel (1880-1948) explained: “Today, as we all know, all works of art that combine spoken word and instrumental music (regardless of whether they are dramatic or not) are very incorrectly called ‘melodramas’. But since we use the term to describe everything of this kind, it is no longer applicable to the peculiar genre created by Benda in particular.“ Istel comes to the conclusion: “Our contemporaries caused great confusion, and it is not surprising that things became much worse in the 19th century. Even experts did not know what to do anymore. Encyclopedias (even Grove‘s) and Riemann look quite colorful.“ This release presents true Melodramas for declamation and piano from 19th to 21st century, performed by Peter P. Pachl and Rainer Maria Klaas.