MAHLER'S MOST PERSONAL WORK
Mahler composed Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth) during the summer of 1908 at Toblach (Tyrol) surrounded by the marvellous landscape of the Dolomites.
Since 1892 Mahler had been in the habit of spending his vacations in the mountains where he found the peace and quiet to compose which he never had during the period of the concert seasons, since he was the director of the opera.
The composer took advantage of these days in the country, taking long walks or bicycle trips into the very heart of nature. Then in 1907 in was suddenly found that he was suffering from a heart disease that forbade all strenuous physical effort. The lack of exercise was a real affliction to him and he went as far as writing to his friend, Bruno Walter, that he found it impossible to compose without his accustomed long walks.
Nonetheless he became attached to a volume of old Chinese poems entitled Die chinesische Flote (The Chinese Flute), translated and adapted by Hans Bethge, from which he selected the six that comprise Das Lied von der Erde, or Symphony of six songs. The work, which is both a symphony and a song cycle, represents the summit of the interaction between the two genres that is always present in Mahler's work. The first and the last of the songs are large-scale symphonic movements like the outer movements of most of his symphonies. The last one is a long Adagio in the same vein as the final movements of the Third and Ninth Symphonies.
The middle movements (the second to the fifth) are more like brief and delicate character pieces in the nature of intermezzi.
Mahler selected poems imbued with a sense of nature: a certain, almost imperceptible uneasiness develops into a resigned acceptance of man's mortal condition, finding consolation in the intimate contact with nature - the very same that he had experienced every summer and was now forbidden him for reasons of health.
In order to express the resigned mood of the poems, Mahler makes use of a transparent and extremely refined orchestration, which endows the work with its intimate character. It is true that Mahler had already used the symphony orchestra as if it were a chamber ensemble in his earlier song-cycles (e.g. Ruckert Songs), but the shades of color he succeeds in creating here (especially in the last movement) are quite new. After finishing it he confided to Bruno Walter that this "Song of the Earth was probably his most personal work".
- after DIEDERIK VERSTRAETE
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