fischer-dieskau was born in 1925 in berlin. he started singing lessons at the age of 16.fter serving in the german army in world war ii and spending time in american prisoner of war camp, fischer-dieskau began his singing career. in 1951, he made his debut at the salzburg festival. after he retired from singing in 1992, fischer-dieskau painted, wrote, and continued to teach. >> i learned more from my students than i could ever have taught them. during my luggage during our lessons, and a new discoveries, not only of local problems, but also issues of interpretation -- during our lessons, i made new discoveries. it proved that the study of music continues until you die. >> that wraps it up for this edition of the "journal." we will be back at the top of the hour. >> thanks for watching. do stay with dw. captioned by the national captioning institute --www.ncicap.org-- @÷yxzy

fischer dieskau dominated that area as no one else probably before or since.came his calling card but that's a little unfortunate in that it keeps us from appreciating the range of his musical ability which did go beyond the art song. i don't think i fully realized until quite recently what a formidable opera singer he was even of italian opera which we don't associate with him at all. i think fischer dieskau was the voice of the german music to many people who don't realize that he could also do italian and french and even english. >> brown: whether in opera or in those art songs, more recordings than any artist ever. that's what i read. that kind of stunned me. >> i believe that's true although as one of my editors said some motown record recording artist from detroit is going to come and say... >> brown: he's at least up there. >> he made something like 1,000 lps. there was an article in the "new york times" in 1980 when he was still very, very active pointing out he had recorded almost 3,000 songs and recorded 59 complete operas, 117oratorios. i hope i'm g