Notes on the Program By Aaron Grad Das Lied von der Erde [1908-09] GUSTAV MAHLER Born July 7, 1860 in Kalischt, Bohemia Died May 18, 1911 in Vienna, Austria Over the course of the terrible year of 1907, one of Mahler’s daughters died, he lost his dream job at the Vienna Court Opera, and he was diagnosed with a dangerous heart defect. He soon left Europe for a fresh start in New York, where he made his conducting debut at the Metropolitan Opera on January 1, 1908. Mahler’s busy schedule as a conductor meant that he had to do most of his composing during summer vacations, when he would retreat to the Austrian Alps. In the summer of 1908, he used that time to draft Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth), an orchestral song-cycle that was his Ninth Symphony in all but name. Half of his previous symphonies had involved singing in one form or another, expanding on the tradition of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and its culminating “Ode to Joy” with chorus and soloists. Mahler’s new hybrid of a symphony and song cycle went even further by using a vocalist in each of the six movements, with tenor and mezzo-soprano soloists appearing in alternate movements. Superstition played no small part in Mahler’s resistance to labeling Das Lied a symphony, considering that his symphonic heroes from the last century, Beethoven and Bruckner, both died before they could crack double digits. Mahler did end up composing a Ninth Symphony in 1909, but as fate would have it he died with his Tenth unfinished, felled by an infection in his heart at the age of 50. The first performance of Das Lied came six months later, led by Mahler’s former assistant conductor in Vienna, Bruno Walter. The version heard here began in 1920 as a project for the Society for Private Musical Performances, a members-only concert series in Vienna spearheaded by Arnold Schoenberg. His aim was to present outstanding performances of recent music to discriminating audiences, and to make the venture cost-effective he and his associates arranged large works for scaled-down chamber ensembles. Funds for the series eventually dried up, and Schoenberg abandoned his transcription of Mahler’s enormous score before it could be performed, but his efforts had progressed far enough that the German conductor Rainer Riehn was able to complete it in 1983. In Schoenberg’s reduction, four woodwind players do the work of Mahler’s fifteen, aided by a harmonium that produces a woodwind-like tone by blowing air over tuned reeds. That keyboard player also doubles on celesta, and a second keyboardist plays piano, filling in essential harmonies and textures. With a single horn replacing the elevenmember brass section, and with five individual strings representing sections that add up
to sixty players or more in a symphony orchestra, this streamlined orchestration honors its source material while transforming into something wholly different, substituting intimacy and transparency for the lush saturation of Mahler’s oversized orchestra. Mahler’s initial inspiration for Das Lied came from a recent volume of poetry, Die chinesische Flöte (The Chinese Flute), in which Hans Bethge rendered ancient Chinese verses in German. In light of recent tragedies, Mahler resonated with the mournful messages in the old poems, as in these lines adapted from the Tang Dynasty poet Li Po: “The song of sorrow will echo through your souls, laughing out loud. When sorrow nears, the soul’s gardens wither; joy and song die. Life is dark, as is death.” This “Drinking Song of the Earth’s Sorrow” became Mahler’s first movement, alternating with inebriated fervor between rowdy and maudlin moods. The mezzo-soprano first appears in the second movement, “The Lonely Man in Autumn,” based on a poem by Qian Qi (incorrectly attributed in Begthe’s volume to another Tang Dynasty poet, Chang Tsi). Here the tone becomes more introspective, growing out of a contemplative oboe solo in the introduction supported by murmuring violins, to set the scene in which “Blue mists of autumn float over the lake” and “the grasses are covered with hoar-frost.” The third movement, “Of Youth,” diverts away from the cycle’s heavy emotions into another Li Po drinking song, this one celebrating a joyful gathering of friends. With pentatonic melodies and an orchestration that highlights piccolo and triangle, this movement features the most overt references to Chinese musical traditions. The next selection, “Of Beauty,” takes another nostalgic look at a happier scene as captured by Li Po. To begin, “young maidens pick flowers,” depicted in music concentrated in the ensemble’s upper range. Later in the movement, the “handsome young men” gallop in to proud, bombastic music. The tipsy triptych within the center of Das Lied concludes with one last Li Po drinking song, although it begins to acknowledge a more sobering reality by asking, “If life is just a dream, why are we tormented with troubles?” The end of that question is punctuated by the tenor’s leap up to a stabbing A-note. All that has come before serves to prepare the tragic final movement, The Farewell, which accounts for nearly half of The Song of the Earth. After a haunting introduction filled with ritualistic incantations from the oboe, the mezzo-soprano is instructed to deliver her first lines “in a narrator’s tone, without expression,” accompanied by freeflowing flute and a whisper of cello. The text in this movement combines verses by Mong Kao-Jen and Wang Wei, friends and contemporaries who addressed each other in their respective poems, each meditating on the other’s absence. Tellingly, Mahler replaced the closing lines from Begthe’s translation with his own new final stanza. Originally, the text concluded, “The Earth is the same everywhere and forever, forever, the white clouds …” Mahler expanded upon these lines so that the cycle
would end, “Everywhere, the beloved earth blooms in the spring and is newly green! Everywhere and forever the distances are blue and bright! Forever … forever …” This emphasis on renewal is reflected in a musical form that comes to rest, again and again, and restarts on some version of the opening music. In the end, the mezzo-soprano clears away the dark thoughts as she sings a final ode to spring and eternal renewal, fading away with repetitions of “forever.” © 2020 Aaron Grad.