Mahler - Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen

Before I can dive into Mahler’s Symphonies, I need to go over two important song cycles whose music makes a few reappearances throughout the first four symphonies. This song cycle, “Songs of a Wayfarer”, and “Youth’s Magic Horn”. These symphonies are sometimes called the “Wunderhorn” symphonies because of their influences. Des Knaben Wunderhorn [Youth’s Magic Horn] was a collection of german folk songs and poems that were collected in the first decade of the 1800s. They comprise of love songs, soldier’s laments, children’s fantasies, and wandering figure, all of which where hugely influential to German nationalism and Romanticism in the 19th century. Mahler had fallen in love with the collection, and set several of the poems to music in a handful of early song cycles. Inspired by the poetry, Mahler wrote his own texts to be set to music in this short work, Songs of a Wayfarer, and it seems to be inspired by the pain he felt at a failed love affair with a soprano Johanna Richter. The first song opens mysteriously, a hushed pattern opening to a depressing song where the narrator laments about how their true love is getting married to someone else, and this pain makes them weep at night. The second song is at the complete opposite end of the spectrum, almost a naïve gassenhauer where the narrator is walking in the country side and is very cheery and is talking to a happy Disney bird singing about how it’s such a beautiful morning and how great it is to be alive. Though despite that the song is almost comedically saccharine, it ends with a bit of an ironic twist, where despite the joyful music and conversation, the narrator admits they won’t ever truly be happy, and that happiness is only a temporary state. We are then thrown into an unexpectedly dramatic song in which the narrator is in such pain, it’s as if there is a knife in their heart, and how they yearn for the eternal sleep of death. The ending is a nocturnal poem, and is a bit ambiguous. It seems that, in the confusion between sunshine and joy against heartbreak and depression, the narrator cannot tell what is real anymore, and to them it seems life is a convoluted dream. The work shows a side of Mahler that many of his critics don’t care for: he wears his heart on his sleeve. To paraphrase Leonard Bernstein, Mahler writes almost like a child. When he’s sad, nothing can comfort him. And when he’s happy, he’s happy all the way. Not to say that Mahler is a childish composer, but rather he values the innocent and raw emotion of childhood, a simplicity that once lost can never be regained.

Movements:

1. "Wenn mein Schatz Hochzeit macht" (“When My Sweetheart is Married”)

2. "Ging heut Morgen übers Feld" (“I Went This Morning over the Field”)

3. "Ich hab’ ein glühend Messer" (“I Have a Gleaming Knife”)

4. "Die zwei blauen Augen von meinem Schatz" (“The Two Blue Eyes of my Beloved”)