Das Lied von der Erde - Program Note

Gustav Mahler (1860-1911)
Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth)
Composed 1908-1909

For his “Song of the Earth,” as the title translates, Gustav Mahler chose a series of texts that were quite different from those he had previously set—different in origin, that is, though not necessarily in sentiment. Poetry had always played an important role in shaping Mahler’s music, from his settings of selections from Des Knaben Wunderhorn—a 19th century collection of German folk poems on the great themes of life, nature, and mortality—to his composition of other song cycles and the inclusion of vocal parts in his Second, Third, Fourth, and Eighth symphonies. The melodies and motives from his vocal works resurface in his purely instrumental ones as well, carrying forth their meaning by way of reference and adding layers of psychological content.

For Das Lied, which Mahler conceived and wrote from 1908-1909, he chose to create a six-movement “Symphony for Tenor and Alto (or Baritone) and Orchestra after Hans Bethge’s The Chinese Flute,” as the inscription on the title page reads. Bethge’s book, published in 1907, was a collection of ancient Chinese poems loosely translated into German. In it, Mahler found an echo of the themes toward which he had so strongly gravitated in his prior works. The philosopher Theodor Adorno has suggested that Mahler found in Chinese poetry what he had previously sought in German folk poems: a kind of mask for the sense of “otherness” he felt due to his identity as a Jew in an increasingly anti-Semitic society. Experiences in Mahler’s life over the summer of 1907 are frequently compared to the three famous “hammer blows” found in his Sixth Symphony: His oldest daughter Maria died of scarlet fever, he himself received a virtual death sentence from his doctor’s diagnosis of a hitherto ignored heart condition, and he was forced to resign his post as director of the Vienna State Opera. Even though he had converted to Catholicism in taking the position, it was still rumored that political maneuverings and anti-Semitism were involved in his dismissal. 

Mahler’s increasing obsession with his own mortality not only played into his choice of texts for Das Lied, but also into what his wife Alma described as his concern over the “curse of the Ninth”—he had observed that no major composer since Beethoven had survived the completion of his ninth symphony, and that even though this “vocal symphony” directly followed the composition of his Eighth, he chose not to give it a numbered title. After his completion of another purely instrumental symphony a year later, he felt the curse had passed and published that as his Ninth—but his fears were to prove basically correct. His Tenth remains unfinished, and it was his friend and fellow conductor Bruno Walter who led the premiere of Das Lied in November 1911 after Mahler’s death that spring. Walter called Das Lied “the most personal utterance among Mahler’s creations, and perhaps in all music,” echoing Mahler’s own assertion that “it is probably the most personal composition I have created thus far.” It is the first work to completely integrate the genres of song cycle and symphony into a hybrid form of “song-symphony,” a form that would be copied by Shostakovich, Britten, Stravinsky, and a host of other 20th century composers.

Four of the Chinese poems Mahler selected for Das Lied are by Li Bai, a minstrel poet of the Tang Dynasty period. The text for the second movement is by Qian Qi, and the text for the finale combines poems of Mong Hao-Ran and Wang Wei with lines added by Mahler himself. While the piece is scored for large orchestra, it rarely uses the entire orchestral mass at once (only in the first, fourth, and sixth movements) and in some instances the texture is so light as to suggest chamber music. 

The title of the first movement translates as “Drinking Song of the Earth’s Misery” and its text repeatedly returns to the line “dark is life, dark is death.” As if with added urgency, this refrain appears a half-step higher each time, and the vocal part for the tenor in general is quite demanding. The second movement, “The Lonely One in Autumn,” is of a much more subdued nature, with lyrics that mourn the dying of flowers and the transience of beauty. “Of Youth,” a movement in abbreviated ternary form, describes the singular image of a party inside a pavilion on a lake and its reflection on the water’s still surface. The fourth movement, “Of Beauty,” contrasts the soft music of maidens sitting by a riverbank with brassy interjections that depict a group of young men riding by on horses, and features a long orchestral postlude. “The Drunken Man in Spring” provides a scherzo-like and carefree antipode to the pessimism of the first movement: “If Life is a dream, then why all this work and worry? I drink all day, till I can drink no more!” And in “The Farewell,” Mahler’s choice and combination of texts string together several of the preceding ideas into a meditation on impermanence and leave-taking that is nearly as long as the other five movements combined. Over an extended fade-out with stringed instruments and celesta, Mahler’s self-composed final line repeats until falling silent: “Everywhere and endlessly blue shines the horizon! Endless … endless …” 

~Eric Dudley, D. Mus.