About this Piece

More than a century after his death, Mahler is best known for his universe-encompassing symphonies that confront life, death, and just about everything in between. However, the tradition of the German art song, or lied, was central to his creative output throughout his life. Mahler greatly admired Franz Schubert, whose song cycles such as Winterreise still send chills up spines. By 1890, the year he turned 30, Mahler had published three volumes of Lieder und Gesänge (Songs and Chants), the song cycle Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (Songs of a Wayfarer), and composed several individual songs.  

More than just simple, unassuming works, these lieder would wend their way into subsequent symphonies. For example, the Songs of a Wayfarer are embedded throughout the First Symphony; “Urlicht,” from Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Youth’s Magic Horn), forms the penultimate movement of the Second Symphony; and “Ablösung im Sommer,” from the third volume of Lieder und Gesänge, appears in the Third Symphony. Mahler’s synthesis of song and symphony would eventually culminate in his massive song cycle Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth), which Leonard Bernstein called his “greatest symphony.” 

LIEDER UND GESÄNGE 

The four selections from Lieder und Gesänge included in this program sets texts that Mahler patched together from a variety of anonymous sources. The earliest of these songs, “Hans und Grethe,” was composed in 1880 and inspired by the local postmaster’s daughter, Josephine Poïsl, with whom Mahler was smitten. A cheerful ländler in triple time, it tells of two young lovers engaged in a ring dance.   

“Ich ging mit Lust durch einen grünen Wald” (I walked joyfully through a green wood) and “Ablösung im Sommer” (Changing of the guard in summer) both depict nature scenes. The first is a bucolic stroll past a beloved’s door at dusk, while a solo flute evokes the song of a nightingale. “Ablösung im Sommer” reveals a darker episode: The cuckoo, the herald of spring, has died, allowing Mistress Nightingale her chance to sing. However, the falling cadence of the cuckoo’s call casts an ironic shadow over the tune.  

The galloping tempos of “Scheiden und Meiden” (Farewell and parting) accompany three horsemen as they gallantly ride out of the gates. But the rhythms soften as the riders look back to their beloveds in their windows. The lyrics admit, “Farewell and parting bring pain.” Modulating between major and minor, the singer exudes these conflicting emotions. 

Nearly a century later, Italian composer Luciano Berio, a great admirer of Mahler, would orchestrate several of his lied, providing nuanced shading to these captivating songs through an expanded palette of instrumental color.  

DES KNABEN WUNDERHORN 

Few literary works had as big an influence throughout the 19th century as Des Knaben Wunderhorn, three volumes of German folk poetry published between 1806 and 1809. The collection’s mix of everyday experience, the supernatural, and the bizarre, as well as its connection to German culture, made it a work perfectly attuned to the Romantic movement, which was bringing the same elements to high art. In an age when composers were forsaking operas about Charlemagne’s knights or ancient Romans and their gods for stories rooted closer to the audience’s time and location, poems about peasants and foot soldiers fit right in. 

Wunderhorn had immediate and far-reaching effects. It inspired the Brothers Grimm to begin collecting folk tales. Heinrich Heine found the “heartbeat of the German people” in Wunderhorn. In America, it so captivated Longfellow and Hawthorne that they planned (but never actually published) a children’s fairy-tale verse collection called The Boy’s Wonderhorn. Goethe recommended it as a source of song texts, and Weber, Mendelssohn, Schumann, and Brahms all turned Wunderhorn poems into songs.   

But it was the quintessential Romantic, Mahler, who wholly embraced the quintessentially Romantic anthology. He composed around two dozen Wunderhorn settings, most of them in the 1890s when he was working on his Second, Third, and Fourth Symphonies. There was a steady cross-pollination between the symphonies and the Wunderhorn songs, as the experience of composing the songs enriched the process of writing the symphonies and vice versa. Four Wunderhorn songs, in one form or another, became movements in Mahler’s symphonies. 

This weekend’s programs present seven Wunderhorn songs. 

Mahler considered “Revelge” (Reveille) his greatest composition of the genre. He uses an uninterrupted march to tell the macabre story of a troop of soldiers who face an onslaught against an enemy. After the soldiers are all killed, they reassemble as skeletons to achieve a Pyrrhic victory. In the morning, they stand like gravestones in front of the house of the drummer’s beloved.  

In “Verlor’ne Müh’” (Wasted effort) the vocalist embodies two characters. The “She” of the text tries to entice “He” with food and with her person; “He” is not interested. Mahler’s setting reflects the humor and triviality of the poem.    

Northern European folktales about things that get thrown into rivers, float out to sea, and come back inside fish are remarkably common. In “Rheinlegendchen” (Little Rhine legend), a laborer muses about finding the woman of his dreams by throwing a ring into a river. The peasant, who lives where the Neckar joins the Rhine, is daydreaming about the ocean—about 300 miles from his home—which at the time was impossibly far away. Mahler’s setting complements the carefree idleness of the musings. 

“Das irdische Leben” (Life on Earth) is a dialogue between a mother and her starving child. The orchestra’s churning and surging figures impart a desperate urgency to the story. The mood lightens with “Wer hat dies Liedlein erdacht?” (Who wrote this little song?), a playful tune about a lovesick country lad who has his eye on the innkeeper’s daughter. The simple conceit belies an extraordinarily demanding vocal line.   

The original text of “Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen” (Where the splendid trumpets sound) was a dialogue between two lovers in which the man promises his sweetheart that they will be together within a year. When Mahler finished rewriting the poem, it was about a meeting between a woman and the ghost of her dead lover; his promise that they would be together becomes a prophecy of her death. Horns, trumpets, and strings are all muted at the beginning, giving a sense of distance and mystery to the nighttime scene. The mutes gradually come off by the end, making the sound more immediate as the mystery is resolved, and we learn that one of the protagonists is a ghost. The distant shining trumpets are suggested by all the winds in turn. 

“Urlicht” (Primal light) is about seeking heaven and has more than its share of celestial touches, not least of which is the hymn in the brass that greets the singer’s first line. The song became the fourth movement of the Second Symphony, and it provides a sublime capstone to the concert. —Howard Posner