Kindertotenlieder (Mahler)

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Kindertotenlieder is a song cycle by Gustav Mahler , which he composed between 1901 and 1904 based on texts from a collection of poems of the same name by Friedrich Rückert .

Data

Instrumentation: medium voice ( mezzo-soprano / baritone ) and orchestra

The world premiere took place on January 29, 1905 in Vienna under the direction of the composer with Friedrich Weidemann as soloist. Four of Mahler's Rückert songs were premiered in the same concert. The first edition appeared in the same year.

The performance lasts about 20 minutes.

backgrounds

From 1900 Mahler's songwriting was determined by texts by Friedrich Rückert. He wrote a collection of 428 children's death poems shortly after the death of two of his then six children. Mahler selected five texts from these for setting. Mahler had 11 siblings, six of whom died in childhood. In 1901 he composed songs one, three and four, in 1904 the second and fifth. The first song is composed in D minor, the last in D major. It leads to a solution, so to speak, and rounds off the cycle. The melodic turn of the violoncellos in the aftermath of "In this weather, in this brew" (bars 129-133) echoes the main theme of the finale of Mahler's Third Symphony (1895/96), which the composer wrote with "What love tells me "overwritten. "Musically, this is the last word in children's songs for the dead: that although death may be powerful, it is stronger than love."

His wife Alma could not understand that in 1904, while his two children were playing happily in the garden, he composed his Kindertotenlieder based on texts by Friedrich Rückert, which he had written after the death of his children: »I can well understand that you are like that Composing terrible lyrics when you have no children or when you have lost children. But I cannot understand that you can sing about the death of children if you have given them half an hour beforehand, cheerful and healthy, hearted and kissed! "

In 1907 their daughter Maria-Anna died of scarlet fever - diphtheria .

construction

  1. Now the sun wants to rise so brightly
  2. Now I can see why such dark flames
  3. When your mother walks in the door
  4. Often I think they just went out
  5. In this weather, in this effervescence

Remarks

  1. Andreas Dorschel , 'Consolation for the Inconsolable. Mahler's Kindertotenlieder and Berg's Violin Concerto ', in: Musikfreunde Jg. 25 (2012/13), H. 5, S. 34–37, S. 36.

Web links

Commons : Kindertotenlieder  - collection of images, videos and audio files