Programme — Lieder, Frühlingsmorgen (c 1883), Serenade aus Don Juan (?1887)

5 Lieder

Frühlingsmorgen (c 1883)

Nicht Wiedersehen (1888-91)

Das irdische Leben (1892-93)

Serenade aus Don Juan (?1887)

Selbstgefühl (1888-91)

The date of Mahler’s discovery of Achim and Brentano’s epoch-making collection of German folk song is disputed and the dates of composition of many of his own early Lieder are uncertain. Frühlingsmorgen must, however, have been written before the revelation of the language and the musical implications of Des Knaben Wunderhorn had transformed his style and thinking. Mendelssohn - one of whose favourite subjects for vocal and piano pieces was spring - seems to have been the initial influence here, even though the hint of Ländler rhythms in the second stanza and the piano’s increasingly assured imitations of bird song clearly anticipate later developments.

There can be no doubt, on the other hand, about Nicht Wiedersehen, which is one of the first Wunderhorn settings and already inhabits the characteristic Mahler sound world of alternations of major and minor harmonies, of funeral-march rhythms and melodic material clearly derived from folk song. Das irdische Leben is one of the five of the ten Wunderhorn songs with orchestra that exist in piano versions in Mahler’s hand. With its tragic outcome implicit from the start in its Lydian minor harmonies, it sets what the composer described as “the tortured and anguished cries of the child” and “the slow monotonous replies of the mother” against an accompaniment that “roars and whistles like a storm” - so memorably in fact that it found its way into the Purgatorio third movement of the Tenth Symphony seventeen years later.

Stylistically, Serenade aus Don Juan, like its companion Phantasie aus Don Juan seems to be at least as early as Frühlingsmorgen. Realistically, however, they must both date from 1887 when Tirso de Molina’s play, from which the texts are taken, was given its first German performance in Leipzig. Certainly, unless these two short and uncharacteristically simple songs were written for that performance - and Mahler was in Leipzig at the time - it is difficult to explain their existence. An unpretentious Ländler inspiration, Selbstgefühl was chosen by Mahler to end his first set of Wunderhorn songs with a comic flourish.