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Three Song Cycles in Vocal Score: Songs of a Wayfarer, Kindertotenlieder and Das Lied Von Der Erde
This convenient volume contains Mahler's three great song cycles in piano-vocal score, reprinted from authoritative German and Austrian editions. All three complete scores offer singers and musicians the opportunity to study and savor the compelling musical qualities of these famous works at the piano.
Songs of a Wayfarer ( Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen ), the composer's first song cycle, is considered by many the masterpiece of his early period. A setting of his strongly autobiographical text, this is a revealing self-portrait of a young man. The haunting musical imagery of Songs of the Deaths of Children ( Kindertotenlieder ), Mahler's setting of five poems by Friedrich Rüchert, embodies the chromatic harmonies typical of his late work.
In The Song of the Earth ( Das Lied von der Erde ), Mahler combines the forms that most obsessed him — song and symphony — into a masterpiece that epitomized his musical genius and the very spirit of late Romanticism. Based on six poems translated from Chinese, the songs merge from passionate evocations of the pleasures of youth to dark and foreboding expressions of loneliness, sorrow, and farewell.
Songs of a Wayfarer ( Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen ), the composer's first song cycle, is considered by many the masterpiece of his early period. A setting of his strongly autobiographical text, this is a revealing self-portrait of a young man. The haunting musical imagery of Songs of the Deaths of Children ( Kindertotenlieder ), Mahler's setting of five poems by Friedrich Rüchert, embodies the chromatic harmonies typical of his late work.
In The Song of the Earth ( Das Lied von der Erde ), Mahler combines the forms that most obsessed him — song and symphony — into a masterpiece that epitomized his musical genius and the very spirit of late Romanticism. Based on six poems translated from Chinese, the songs merge from passionate evocations of the pleasures of youth to dark and foreboding expressions of loneliness, sorrow, and farewell.
160 pages, Paperback
First published January 14, 1992
3 people want to read
About the author
Gustav Mahler
545 books30 followersGustav Mahler was a late-Romantic composer and one of the leading conductors of his generation. He was born to a Jewish family in the village of Kalischt in Bohemia, in what was then the Austrian Empire, now Kaliště in the Czech Republic. His family later moved to nearby Iglau (now Jihlava), where Mahler grew up.
As a composer, Mahler acted as a bridge between the 19th-century Austro-German tradition and the modernism of the early 20th century. While in his lifetime his status as a conductor was established beyond question, his own music gained wide popularity only after periods of relative neglect which included a ban on its performance in much of Europe during the Nazi era. After 1945 the music was discovered and championed by a new generation of listeners; Mahler then became a frequently performed and recorded composer, a position he has sustained into the 21st century.
Born in humble circumstances, Mahler displayed his musical gifts at an early age. After graduating from the Vienna Conservatory in 1878, he held a succession of conducting posts of rising importance in the opera houses of Europe, culminating in his appointment in 1897 as director of the Vienna Court Opera. During his ten years in Vienna, Mahler—who had converted to Catholicism to secure the post—experienced regular opposition and hostility from the anti-Semitic press. Nevertheless, his innovative productions and insistence on the highest performance standards ensured his reputation as one of the greatest of opera conductors, particularly as an interpreter of the stage works of Wagner and Mozart. Late in his life he was briefly director of New York's Metropolitan Opera and the New York Philharmonic.
Mahler's oeuvre is relatively small; for much of his life composing was necessarily a part-time activity while he earned his living as a conductor. Aside from early works such as a movement from a piano quartet composed when he was a student in Vienna, Mahler's works are designed for large orchestral forces, symphonic choruses and operatic soloists. Most of his twelve symphonic scores are very large-scale works, often employing vocal soloists and choruses in addition to augmented orchestral forces. These works were often controversial when first performed, and several were slow to receive critical and popular approval; exceptions included his Symphony No. 2, Symphony No. 3, and the triumphant premier of his Eighth Symphony in 1910. Some of Mahler's immediate musical successors included the composers of the Second Viennese School, notably Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg and Anton Webern. Shostakovich and Benjamin Britten are among later 20th-century composers who admired and were influenced by Mahler. The International Gustav Mahler Institute was established in 1955 to honour the composer's life and work.
As a composer, Mahler acted as a bridge between the 19th-century Austro-German tradition and the modernism of the early 20th century. While in his lifetime his status as a conductor was established beyond question, his own music gained wide popularity only after periods of relative neglect which included a ban on its performance in much of Europe during the Nazi era. After 1945 the music was discovered and championed by a new generation of listeners; Mahler then became a frequently performed and recorded composer, a position he has sustained into the 21st century.
Born in humble circumstances, Mahler displayed his musical gifts at an early age. After graduating from the Vienna Conservatory in 1878, he held a succession of conducting posts of rising importance in the opera houses of Europe, culminating in his appointment in 1897 as director of the Vienna Court Opera. During his ten years in Vienna, Mahler—who had converted to Catholicism to secure the post—experienced regular opposition and hostility from the anti-Semitic press. Nevertheless, his innovative productions and insistence on the highest performance standards ensured his reputation as one of the greatest of opera conductors, particularly as an interpreter of the stage works of Wagner and Mozart. Late in his life he was briefly director of New York's Metropolitan Opera and the New York Philharmonic.
Mahler's oeuvre is relatively small; for much of his life composing was necessarily a part-time activity while he earned his living as a conductor. Aside from early works such as a movement from a piano quartet composed when he was a student in Vienna, Mahler's works are designed for large orchestral forces, symphonic choruses and operatic soloists. Most of his twelve symphonic scores are very large-scale works, often employing vocal soloists and choruses in addition to augmented orchestral forces. These works were often controversial when first performed, and several were slow to receive critical and popular approval; exceptions included his Symphony No. 2, Symphony No. 3, and the triumphant premier of his Eighth Symphony in 1910. Some of Mahler's immediate musical successors included the composers of the Second Viennese School, notably Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg and Anton Webern. Shostakovich and Benjamin Britten are among later 20th-century composers who admired and were influenced by Mahler. The International Gustav Mahler Institute was established in 1955 to honour the composer's life and work.
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