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Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (Songs of a Wayfarer) Wenn mein Schatz Hochzeit macht |
Composed: 1883-85; orchestrated in 1890 and later revised Estimated length: |
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Born on July 7, 1860, in Kalischt, Bohemia; Died on May 18, 1911, in Vienna, Austria |
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First performance: March 18, 1896, with the composer conducting the Berlin Philharmonic and Anton Sistermans as the soloist. |
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First Nashville Symphony performance: December 21, 1948, with Williams Strickland conducting at War Memorial Auditorium. |
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Gustav Mahler made a stunning debut in 1880 with his first completed composition, Das klagende Lied (The Song of Lamentation), in which he adapted a macabre fairytale about betrayal and fratricide. It was in this work, he later said, that “I really came into my own as ‘Mahler.’” He proceeded to focus on the two genres that would comprise his mature output: lieder (art songs) and the symphony. Both were closely related in Mahler’s creative imagination.
The song cycle Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen and the First Symphony, for example, share a common root. Written between 1883 and 1885 (Mahler wrote both the words and the music), Lieder also provided significant material for the First Symphony, the first version of which was completed in 1888. Mahler went on to revise the First several times in the following decade and also orchestrated his original piano-vocal version of Lieder in the 1890s.
Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen is conventionally translated as “Songs of a Wayfarer,” though the term Geselle refers to a journeyman, (i.e., a budding professional who is now past apprenticeship but not yet a master; a journeyman typically would travel from one town to the next to acquire experience).
Young Mahler was in the process of doing just that as a conductor. During his post at the Royal Theater in the Hessian city of Kassel—a way station on his path toward Vienna—he fell in love with the soprano Johanna Richter, but the relationship proved to be an unhappy one.
The experience prompted Mahler to write a series of six poems that reflect the sensibility he had discovered in Des Knaben Wunderhorn, a Romantic compilation of (heavily edited) folk poetry that became a key source for later works; its title is usually translated as “The Youth’s Magic Horn.” Mahler even freely paraphrased lines from the collection in the first song. He chose to set four of the original six poems to music for medium voice, which can be performed by a female or male singer.
Because Mahler interweaves two of the songs into the instrumental “text” of the First Symphony, the unhappy love affair of his alter ego is present as a subtext for the later work. In fact, for the belated public premiere of Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen in Berlin in 1896, Mahler made a point to program it alongside the First Symphony.
WHAT TO LISTEN FOR
The cycle traces the reverberations of an unfulfilled love after the beloved has already been lost to a rival. In the opening song (“Wenn mein Schatz Hochzeit macht,” beginning in D minor), the protagonist contrasts his sadness with the happiness of his sweetheart’s marriage and the charms of nature.
“Ging heut’ Morgen über’s Feld” is the only song of the four in a major key, yet even its cheerful music, hopping and springing in its rhythms and colored by the accents of a triangle, is tinged with melancholy at the end. The agitated “Ich hab’ ein glühend Messer,” another song that begins in D minor, turns to violent imagery to express the pain caused by unrequited love. Mahler concludes the brief cycle with the funereal “Die zwei blauen Augen von meinem Schatz,” which comes to rest in a mood of uneasy, resigned peace.
In addition to the vocal soloist, scored for 3 flutes (3rd doubling piccolo), 2 oboes (2nd doubling English horn), 3 clarinets (3rd doubling bass clarinet), 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, timpani, percussion, harp, and strings
− Thomas May is the Nashville Symphony's program annotator.
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