Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen

~ : 1995 : ~
If one were looking for just o11e feature that united all three of
Mahler's orchestral song-cycles, one would not go far wrong in
coming up \Vith the 11arrative idea, i.e. the concept of a cycle that is
something more than a sequence, however carefully ordered that
might be. In Mahler's hands the sequence became a narrative,
beginning at one point, ending at quite another; and in between, a
wide area of experience has been traversed by the supposed pro-
tagonist of all three cycles. It is of course the singer or, in the case
of Das Lied FOil der Erde, singers who impersonate the various roles
that Mahler entrusts to them, though by the time he was compos-
ing Das Lied he had left far behind him the narrative simplicity of
the Gesellm songs: what we encounter in his last song-cycle is some-
thing much more complex than the relatively straightforward history
of a single, simple hero and his frustrated passion (the Gescllm songs
\vere inspired by Mahler's mvn highly charged feelings - they must
have been' -for a singer at the opera at Kassel, Johanna Richter).
In Das Lied, \Ve have a number of roles that the singers imper-
sonate, while, in addition, the composer himself emerges - in the
finale, 'Der Abschied', in particular - as protagonist-in-chief, sum-
ming up, transforming and finally transcending all the varied kinds
of experience that the five previous songs (or movements, better)
had explored; and it is Das Lied, by the \vay, that provides us with
a classic example of ending up somewhere quite different from
where vve started out at the beginning.
More of that later. For the moment, let us stay with the rzarratil'e
idea, which, as I think is incontrovertible, \vas fundamental not
only to the song-cycles but also to the symphonies. Indeed, one of
the most fascinating aspects of Mahler's oeuvre as a whole is the
First published in G,\1WL, pp . .2. I .20-23.
LIEDER EINES FAHRENDEN GESELLEN
113
relationship betvveen the song-cycles and the symphonies, or, as I
prefer to describe it, the overlapping between a song-cycle and the
surrounding (or in the case of the Gesellm cycle, ensuing) symphony.
Of special importance in this regard is the influence the later song-
cycles had on the form of the later symphonies; here, once again,
Das Lied is a lows classiws, the song-cycle that is a symphony, or,
if you prefer, the symphony that is a song-cycle. The use of either
term requires no adjustment in one's thinking. Above all, as we shall
see, what was, from the outset, a leading characteristic of the nar-
rative idea - i.e. not ending up vvhere one started - was developed
by Mahler across his symphonies; from first to last, into the concept
of the 'frame', where the finale not only lands us up somewhere
else but also resolves, brings to a conclusion, what the first move-
ment had, so to say, left unfinished in terms of narrative; and to the
completion of the narrative Mahler added a further dimension, the
resolution of a conflict, a drama, outlined in the first movement (or
first song in the case of the song-cycles) while the denouement is
kept for the last. The tension between these tvvo poles provides the
thread of continuity throughout the often varied intervening middle
movements and songs.
It is clear already, that no sooner does one start thinking about
the song-cycles than Mahler's symphonies become an integral part
of the discussion; and there could hardly be a clearer case of this
fundamental relationship than that betvveen the first cycle, the
Gescllefl songs, and the First Symphony. Indeed, the first movement
of the symphony is built out of the cycle's second song, 'Ging heut'
morgen i.iber's Feld', \Vhile the symphony's mvn parody funeral
march, its third movement, quotes substantially from the cycle's
fourth and last song, also a march, itself a funeral march of a kind-
certainly the broken-hearted hero of the cycle buries his hopes
beneath the linden tree, if not himself. It is of some significance that
this particular passage derives from an earlier work, Das klage11de
Lied, \vhere in that tale of fratricide, the younger knight sinks to
rest beneath a willow tree, only to be slain by his elder and jealous
brother. The equation sleep = oblivion = death is surely very telling
when one hears the quotation in the last of the Geselle11 songs and
recalls its anticipation in the early cantata.
I 14
SCRUTINY
Inevitablv the Gesellm cvcle does not at this earlv stage in
' . '
Mahler's creative life display every feature that I have touched on
in my preliminary remarks. But one basic feature is there: our hero
starts from and finishes at tonal levels that are emphatically distinct.
His point of departure at the beginning of Song I is D minor; he
makes his exit in Song 4 in F minor.
In between. he 'travels', tonally, i.e. Song I concludes in G minor,
which functions as an upbeat to the opening D of Song 2, vv'hich
in turn closes on F sharp. Song 3 returns us to D minor and ends
in E flat minor, thus initiating a semitonal ascent which, at the
beginning of Song 4, establishes E minor. while it is in F minor that
the song- the tuneral march - comes to rest, as I have pointed out
above. Thus our hero is in a state of perpetual mobility.
The four songs cover a >vide range of preponderantly slow
tempi: there is really only one genuinely fast song, the agitated
third song- 'Ich hab' ein gliihend Messer' (one remembers that it is
with a sword that the younger brother is dispatched in Das klage11de
Lied)- which Mahler marks 'stiir111isch, ltild', and only one extended
stretch of a moderate tempo, i.e. the first three stanzas of the second
song, 'Ging heut' morgens iibers Feld'. The tempi indeed reflect the
generally unhappy narrative that the Gesel/m cycle unfolds, one of
continually disappointed, frustrated love.
This results in fact in one of the cycle's singular features. Not
one of the songs provides relief. There are glimpses of happiness
vouchsafed by Nature, birdsong, especially in the brief E flat
middle part of the first song, for example, or the vision of a beau-
tiful, pastoral world in which the hero exults in the second song.
But the first song returns to the compact motif of sorrow with
which it opens - a motif that itself compulsively returns to the
pitch with which it begins (an image of the lover trapped within
his grief)- while the second, in a slow concluding section (F sharp)
of the greatest poignancy, suggests that the preceding, ecstatic
vision of Nature is all illusion:
Nun fangt auch mein Gluck wohl an
Nein! Nein! Das ich mein'.
mir nimmer. nimmer bliihen kann!
'
liEDER E!NES FAHRENDEN GESELLE"'
!Viii my joy II OIL' _flower too'
l\'o, 110; 1uell I kll<lil'
'trl'ill ncl'cr, lleler bloom aJ;aili.
- it is thus that the vision fades.
Il5
Likewise, the third song. There is a momentary respite from the
reiterated cry of pain, a falling (sobbing) semitone, '0 weh! 0 weh!'
('Woe is me! Woe is me!'), in the middle part - 'Wenn ich in den
Himmel seh" ('When I look into the sky') (a vestigial C major, and
distant, muted horn calls) -but after a few bars, the torrent of grief
returns until it expires in a fragmented, scurrying pi<111issimo coda,
the texture and instrumentation of which anticipate a desperate music
that we encounter in the later symphonies, a case of late Mahler
making an early appearance.
The stroke on the tam-tam that ends this song - virtually a
scherzo for voice and orchestra - is still ringing in our ears as the
fourth song opens, the march, the funeral march, as it must be. (The
last bars of the preceding scherzo, by the way, are the only spot
where Mahler uses the tam-tam; one cannot but look ahead to Das
Lied and the strokes on the tam-tam that initiate 'Der Abschied'.
The single resonating stroke here in the Gcselleu cycle, as I suggest,
provides a kind of sonorous symbolic upbeat to the song, 'Die zwei
blauen Augen', that is also a kind of early 'Abschied', a farev.rell to
life and love.)
A typical Mahlerian march of this period the song turns out to
be, the first indeed of the whole procession of marches that marches
its way through Mahler's works from beginning to end.
We hear the march song t>vice, first in E minor, then in an
unstable C major/minor ('Ich bin ausgegangen in stiller Nacht' ('!
went out at the dead of night')), then a modulation to F (harp
prominent) and a visionary closing episode, 'Auf der Strasse stand
ein Lindenbaum' ('By the \vayside stands a linden tree'), in which
the hero, we must suppose, finds final rest and ultimate peace
beneath the linden tree. The march here - though its rhythm is
never abandoned - is transformed into something altogether
gentler and calmer, a change of character reflected in the instru-
mentation, which departs from the regimental windband model
rr6 SCRUTIKY
that is close to the surface in the setting of the first t\vo stanzas. And
yet, with that characteristic insistence that 'truth' rather than con-
solatory 'art' should have the last word, in the final three bars the
wind-band image returns and rounds off the F major transforma-
tion with a restatement of the basic march rhythm in an unequi-
vocal F minor, thus discharging to the full Mahler's own direction
that the song should be interpreted 'ol111e Smtimentalitiit '.
Thus ends Mahler's first orchestral song-cycle, with a lyric
funeral march. One does not, of course, want to exaggerate the
point; and certainly there is something undeniably Wertheresque
about Mahler's hero, who wears his (broken) heart on his sleeve
without remission. None the less, it remains true that, the Sixth
Symphony apart, the Gcsellm cycle is the most consistently pessi-
mistic of Mahler's works, \\,ithout one song that frees itself of
sorro\v. It is salutary to remind ourselves how often in symphonies
and songs to come he was to celebrate joy and happiness. Further-
more, in his First Symphony he was able, so to speak, to give the
story of his hero a new slant. To be sure, the symphony has a funeral
march which incorporates a recollection of that ultimate peace our
hero finds beneath his linden tree in the Geselletz songs. But in the
ensuing finale of the symphony the hero is marvellously resurrected
and re-emerges, alive and kicking, and though still suffering the
pangs of frustrated love, rides to triumph in a blaze of D major as
the symphony ends. (Our hero was to be buried again in the first
movement of the Second and resurrected yet again, but this time
on a monumental scale, in the symphony's finale.)
As I have remarked, the Gesellw cycle reveals some of the basic
patterns and modes of thinking common to all Mahler's sym-
phonies and song-cycles, while also revealing its own singularities.
But one important structural device it does not fully reveal: the
concept of the framing outer movements. The Gesclle11 songs of
course have their O\Vn unique shape, one determined hO\vever by
the unfolding of the poetic images and events rather than by formal
demands and obligations. The frame is there, very much so, in the
First Symphony; and thenceforth was to be virtually a permanent
feature of song-cycle and symphony alike.When Benjamin Britten,
still a student, heard the Gesellen songs in 193 r in London, he wrote
LIEDER EIKES FAHRENDEK GESELLEN
i.
:'
Gratis.
Montag, den 18. Mllrz 1896
.\behds 7
1
1, Vhr
In1 Saal der 1 >hilharrnonie
II. ORCHESTER-CONCERT
Mahler
unter Mit'"irk'\tnJ; tles Herrn
Anton Siaterman.s
sowle des Pbilbarmonisehen Orehesters.
t 4
PRQGRAMM
I. T ooUenfcicr- (L ;ws der Symphonic in C -moll ffir
grosses Orcbosler:)
2. Lieder ones fahrelldeu c;es.Uen, fUr cine tide Stimme mit
Orcbesterb.:gleitung, gcsunfen von lkrrn AllltM
3 Symphonic in D-dur ffir g.osscs Orcbc:ster.
So. " lilololt""C - A1Jecto _.....to.
No. Sc:1acna.
llo. J. Alia - '-lore; lolerouf .........
No. .. Allqro fitriooo.
117
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The poster for the concert on 16 March 1 X96. with the Lieder cines t:1hrcndcn
Gesellm juxtaposed with the First Symphony and the
liS SCRUTI'IY
in his diary; 'Lovely little pieces, exquisitely scored - a lesson to all
the Strausses and Elgars in the \vorld' (and a lesson Britten himself
was quick to learn, one might add); and indeed the instrumenta-
tion of the cycle is of a clarity and refinement that anticipate the
chamber-musical textures of Ki11dertotmlieder and Das Lied. The
largest orchestra Mahler deploys in the Gesellm cycle is heard only
in the tumultuous third song; the first song uses virtually a cham-
ber orchestra, while the last excludes the brass entirely, but for the
most sparing use of three of the four horns in sixteen bars only,
four of those for horn solo!
There is no doubt that from the outset Mahler envisaged the
Gesellm cycle as an orchestral song-cycle - so much is clear from
the title-page of the earliest manuscript of the work known to us,
for voice and piano. It seems probable, however, that Mahler did
not get dovm to orchestrating the work until there was a possibility
of a premiere for the cycle in its orchestral guise of some impor-
tance. Perhaps the cycle may have had a performance in its voice-
and-piano version before I 896, but if there were one, we have no
record of it; which leaves I 896 as the year in which the cycle made
its first appearance in orchestral guise, when Mahler himself con-
ducted the >vork in Berlin on I 6 March I 896: the other work on
the programme vvas his mvn First Symphony, a fascinating juxta-
position of two works so intimately related. It \vas for this occasion,
I believe, that Mahler at last brought to fruition the orchestration
of the Geselle11 cycle which had always been his creative intention,
helped, no doubt, by the experience he had nmv had of \vorking
on the orchestration of the symphony which itself had undergone
many vicissitudes.
Symphony No. I:
'The most spontaneous and
daringly composed of my works'
1996
In April I 896, when Mahler conducted performances of his First
Symphony and the Geselle11 song-cycle in the same programme in
Berlin, he remarked to his confidante Natalie Bauer-Lechner: 'People
have not yet accepted my language. They have no notion of >vhat I
am saying or \vhat I mean, and so it all seems senseless and unintel-
ligible to them. Even the musicians \vho play my \vorks hardly
knmv what I am driving at.'
What possible relationship could there be between the symphony
and the song-cycle? The bewilderment of Mahler's listeners, of his
players. can be understood. Not surprisingly they missed the whole
point of the exercise, \vhich, I believe, \Vas Mahler's intention to
elucidate - illuminate - his symphony by the so11g-cycle. In
short, the song-cycle was to function as the explanatory note that
was missing from the programme.
When Mahler launched his first big work for orchestra alone in
Budapest in I 889, it was not described as a symphony at all, but as
a 'Symphonic Poem'. in two parts and five (not four) movements.
Apart rom the 'A Ia pompcs _{lmebres' inscription for the slow move-
ment, which in any case only confused the audiences at the premiere
by contradicting its expectations of a dignified tuneral march, there
vvas no programme. Discouraged no doubt by the hostile reaction of
his listeners, Mahler then contrived a 'scenario' by way of elucidation.
For a later performance in I 893 at Hamburg, for example, he
described the first movement as 'Frfihli11g 1111d kei11 E11de' ('Spring
Liner note for the II)()(, recording of Mahler's First Symphony by Riccardo Chailly and
the Royal Concertgehouw Orchestra, Decc.1 44-K-K 13-2.