![]() ![]() “Das Trinklied vom Jammer der Erde” (“The Drinking Song of the Earth’s Sorrow”)-The poet is Li T’ai‑po, born in Szechwan in 701. But the gods were not taken in by Mahler’s bookkeeping, and death claimed him as he was at work on the symphony he called No. 9 he triumphantly told Alma that it was of course “really the Tenth” and that the danger was past. He thought to put one over on the gods by not assigning a number to the symphony after the Eighth, and when he finished the symphony he called No. ![]() It would be his ninth, but, with Beethoven and Bruckner in mind, he was superstitious about ninth symphonies and convinced that he would not be granted the time to go beyond that freighted number. But Mahler expressed no clear preference, and in fact when the poems’ speakers are referred to, the references are masculine.ĭas Lied von der Erde is not, however, among Mahler’s numbered symphonies. Bruno Walter recalled Mahler’s describing the work as “a symphony in songs,” and Mahler did in the end head the score “a symphony for tenor and contralto (or baritone) and orchestra.” Ever since Bruno Walter chose a contralto when he conducted the first performance in 1911, most performances have followed Walter’s lead. It was clear to him from the beginning that he was writing no ordinary song cycle but something larger and more cohesive, something, in fact, symphonic. He began sketches, and the songs were his chief project for the following summer. Those melancholy verses spoke to Mahler with singular urgency. In July, his daughter Maria, four‑and‑a‑half, had died of scarlet fever and diphtheria, and he had learned that he himself suffered from a severe heart condition. Late that summer, when he came across the gift again, he was worse than overworked. Mahler, distracted and overworked, put the book aside. These notes are used by kind permission of the estate of Michael Steinberg and are taken from the complete notes in his Oxford volume “The Symphony”.Įarly in 1907, Gustav Mahler was given a newly published verse collection of German translations from the Chinese, Hans Bethge’s Die chinesische Flöte, The Chinese Flute. ![]()
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