Revelge

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Revelge is a late romantic art song composed for voice and orchestra by Gustav Mahler from 1899. It is part of his song cycle Des Knaben Wunderhorn and describes in a harrowing way the fate of a dying soldier in battle and his feelings. In addition to the version for large orchestra, the song is also available for voice with piano accompaniment. Individual musical motifs from Revelge can already be found in the first movement of his third symphony , but also at the beginning of his sixth symphony .

background

Gustav Mahler was influenced by the music of the military stationed there during his youth in the Bohemian Jihlava . March rhythms, also in the form of funeral marches, therefore appear in many of his works. However , they find their absolute climax in the song Revelge , Revelge is a previously unheard-of form of an extended dramatic military march with all the timbres that a symphony orchestra of the Romantic era can offer. In addition to the songs The Tambourg'sell , Der Schildwache Nachtlied , Where the beautiful trumpets blow and the song of the persecuted in the tower, it belongs to the group of "Wunderhorn songs", which deal with the fate and death of the "humiliated and insulted" deals. According to the musicologist Mathias Hansen, it plays a special role in the Wunderhorn cycle, because it is not only the "development of a musical linguistic character" in which the "sound tied to the word and the sound tied to the instrument flow into one another" (after Theodor W. Adorno ), but also as a “point of reference for entire symphonic conceptions” with regard to the first movement of Mahler's much later 6th Symphony.

In the summer of 1899 Gustav Mahler was on summer vacation in Bad Aussee . Natalie Bauer-Lechner , his long-time friend, reports that the composer suffered and was in a bad mood because he felt disturbed by the music at the spa concerts . She quotes him with the words: "[...] now I am completely out of the mood [...] to do something if I am not in the full mood and do not feel that a whole and right thing is coming out is painful for me." But then he obviously had a creative boost and composed the song in a short amount of time. He is said to have had the concept of Revelge in mind for years. The exact date of composition of the song is not known, but it must have been finished before July 7, 1899, Mahler's birthday, because on that day, according to Bauer-Lechner, he played it to her.

The song was published in 1905 by CF Kahnt (Nachf.) In Leipzig. The first performance together with other lied works by Mahler took place on May 10, 1905 on the occasion of a meeting of the General German Music Association in Graz. The tenor Fritz Schrödter took over the vocal part , Gustav Mahler was the conductor.

text

The title of the song Revelge is derived from the French word reveille , which means wake-up call . The text comes from the collection of poetry Des Knaben Wunderhorn , which Clemens Brentano and Achim von Arnim published between 1805 and 1808. Gustav Mahler changed the text for his song slightly. In a letter to Nina Spiegler, a Viennese friend from Mahler's circle, Natalie Bauer-Lechner writes: “I am enclosing the text of the song; it is from 'Des Knaben Wunderhorn' again; It is called “Revelge” and Goethe says of it: 'Inestimable for those whose imagination is able to follow it.' ”This suggests that Mahler mainly used the edition of the Wunderhornlieder edited by Robert Boxberger and published by Hempel-Verlag in Berlin in 1883. Because only that is what the quote from Goethe contains.

1. In the morning between three and four,
we soldiers have to march
up and down the
alley, trallali, trallaley, trallalera,
my darling looks down.

2. Oh, brother, now I've shot,
the bullet hit me hard, hard,
carry me to my quarters.
Trallali, trallalei, trallalera,
it's not far from here!

3. Oh, brother, oh, brother, I can't carry you,
the enemies have struck us!
Help you, the good Lord, help you, the good Lord!
trallali, trallaley, trallali, trallaley, trallalera,
I have to march to death!

4. Oh, brothers, oh brothers, you pass me by
as if it were over with me, as if it were over with me!
trallali, trallaley, trallali, trallaley, trallalera,
you step too close to me, you step too close to me!

5. I have to
beat my drum, I have to beat my drum, trallali, trallaley, trallali, trallaley,
otherwise I'll lose myself.
Trallali, trallalei, trallala.
The brothers thickly sown, the brothers thickly sown,
they lie as if mowed.

6. He beats the drum up and down,
he wakes his silent brothers,
trallali, trallaley, trallali, trallaley,
they beat and they beat their enemy, enemy, enemy,
trallali, trallaley, trallaleralala,
a horror beats the enemy, a horror beat the enemy!

7. He beats the drum up and down,
there they are again in front of the night quarters,
trallali, trallaley, trallali, trallaley,
bright out into the alley, bright out,
they pull in front of Schätzlein's house,
trallali, trallaley, trallali, trallaley , trallalera,
they move to Schatzlein's house, trallali!

8. In the morning the bones stand
in a row, they stand like a corpse stone, in a row, in a row.
The drum is first, the drum is first so
that she can see him,
trallali, trallaley, trallali, trallaley, trallalera,
that she can see him!

Instrumentation and musical structure

The instrumentation is complex. Gustav Mahler calls for a large orchestra:

The string section consists of

Revelge is written in the main key of D minor , music publishers such as Universal Edition and Edition Peters provide the sheet music for the piece, also in transposed form, e.g. in C minor or B minor , according to the vocal disposition of modern interpreters . The song extends over 171 bars and takes about six to seven minutes, depending on the interpretation. Gustav Mahler was known for making the highest demands on orchestra musicians. His lecture instructions are correspondingly detailed . Revelge begins with the tempo designation “Marching. On and on. ”A metronome value is not given. In the course of the piece, several playing instructions are noted in the individual instrument parts, for example in bar 29 ( … it's not far from here! ), Where Mahler demands: “Cymbal on the large door. fortified struck by one ”. From bar 90, with increasing drama of the piece ( ... they lie as if mowed ), the composer asks the woodwind several times " Schalltr. up! ”(held up), with the strings“ Suggestions as quickly as possible ”and from the singing voice he demands a“ shouted ”in the Trallali! of the verse they go to sweetheart's house, trallali! . After that the piece becomes quieter, from bar 132 the orchestra is supposed to continue playing “noticeably moderately”. The song has now finally become a funeral march . But shortly afterwards, the oboes suddenly say: “Oboes screaming loudly! Raise the trumpet! "Mahler demands of the strings in bar 139 of the violas and cellos:" The 2nd players quietly put on the mutes and step in imperceptibly! "After this interlude with ghostly timbres in the strings with col legno technique (" Somewhat more measured than at the beginning ”) the singing voice starts again with the last stanza of the song ( the bones stand there in the morning ... ). The singing voice should then present the last words of the song in "Despair". In addition to the main key of D minor, the dialogue between the wounded drummer and the passing brother appear in the second stanza in G minor and in the third B flat major. Then begins a sequence in G major that extends into the fourth stanza. In the fifth verse the key changes to D major , the wounded man seems to take courage, the music is now an almost cheerful marching song. But it soon changes to a hard harmony change to E flat minor , when the voice The brothers thickly sown, the brothers thickly sown, they lie as if mowed , sings. This is followed by a modulation up to F sharp minor , when the drummer is dead and his shouted trallali! has faded away. In the last stanza, in which the singing voice tells of the upright bones, the piece returns to the main key of D minor with small quotations from the motifs.

Revelge is an attractive subject for musicology. Mahler's music is revolutionary, visionary and stands on the threshold of modernity. There are detailed musical analyzes that deal with form, harmony, instrumentation and the intimate penetration of text and sound. The work is not just a song, but, according to the musicologist Mathias Hansen, a symphonic music concept, which he describes as instrumental melody . According to the theory of musical forms , the external form of the piece consists of the well-known sonata movement . Gustav Mahler begins with the exposition , which includes the first four stanzas of the song, i.e. the first 71 bars. Thereafter, a kind appears implementation in bars 72-139 in which the voice presents the fifth to seventh verse. The last stanza forms the recapitulation from bar 140 with the last stanza. The dramatic core of the operatic work are stanzas five to seven, in which, in Hansen's view, “the instrumental style ... assumes that destructive force” that has determined his compositional work since Mahler's second symphony . Theodor W. Adorno described this as musique informelle , as music that was detached from any traditional convention, which already points to the modern age and made possible a musical style of freedom that Ferruccio Busoni had in mind and which Arnold Schönberg believed he had found. Mahler's expanded tonality lays the foundation for this.

While the song Revelge has been the domain of male performers for decades, female singers have increasingly ventured into the piece since the 2010s. The mezzo-soprano Amélie Saadia , who lives in Berlin and performed it in France in 2010, and the American soprano Kerstin Fischer , who performed the song in 2013 in San Francisco, should be mentioned.

literature

Web links

References and comments

  1. ^ Mathias Hansen: Reclam's music guide. Gustav Mahler. Stuttgart 1996, ISBN 3-15-010425-4 , p. 237 ff.
  2. ^ Matthias Hansen: Revelge . In: Bernd Sponheuer, Wolfram Steinbeck (Hrsg.): Mahler-Handbuch . JB Metzler, Stuttgart 2010, ISBN 978-3-476-00357-7 , p. 199 ff . ( books.google.de ).
  3. ↑ Donald Mitchell: Gustav Mahler: The Wunderhorn Years. Chronicles and Commentaries . University of California Press, 1980, ISBN 0-520-04220-4 , pp. 142 ( books.google.de - Date: July 1899).
  4. ↑ Herbert Killian (Ed.): Gustav Mahler in the memories of Natalie Bauer-Lechner. KD Wagner, Hamburg 1984, ISBN 3-921029-92-9 , p. 135 ( books.google.de restricted view).
  5. ^ International Gustav Mahler Society, Vienna (ed.): Gustav Mahler. Complete Works. Critical Complete Edition , Volume XIV, Part 2, Universal Edition, Vienna 1967, p. 347 ff.
  6. ^ International Gustav Mahler Society (ed.): Complete Works: Critical Complete Edition. Volume XIII / 2B, Vienna 1998, p. 179.
  7. ^ Fy Gadiot: Gustav Mahler. Revelge. Poetry interpretation and musical analysis. yumpu.com, p. 7 , accessed April 27, 2017 .
  8. ↑ The “treasure” is the soldier's fiancée
  9. ↑ The come too close is meant literally here and refers to the lying on the ground wounded.
  10. ↑ Fantasies of a dying man, although the enemy has just triumphed, meets the horrors of the battle with their dead on both sides.
  11. ↑ Last hold on to life, nightmarish images emerge before his eyes
  12. ↑ With them the bones of the dead comrades could be meant.
  13. ↑ "The drum stands first". The upright bones of the soldiers are to be understood as a symbol of death. The drummer was human up until now, but has now been replaced by “the drum”, the main character's instrument. Nothing human is now available (text interpretations partly by Fy Gadiot: .. Gustav Mahler Revelge Poetry analysis and musical analysis. Yumpu.com, page 8 et seq. , Accessed on 27 April 2017 . )
  14. ↑ Universal Edition: Gustav Mahler - Revelge. universaledition.com, accessed April 27, 2017 .
  15. ↑ Gustav Mahler: Revelge. Score: Des Knaben Wunderhorn. Universal Edition, Vienna 1905, p. 61 ff.
  16. ^ Gerhard Meyer: Gustav Mahler, Des Knaben Wunderhorn, songs for a voice and orchestra. Information and didactic advice. (PDF).
  17. ^ Mathias Hansen: Reclam's music guide. Gustav Mahler. Stuttgart 1996, p. 237 ff.
  18. ^ Open-air concert in the castle of Saint-Fargeau-Ponthierry
  19. ↑ Performance at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music Recital Hall