Mitchell, Das Trinklied Von Der Erde (Discovering Mahler 2007)

7/28/2019 Mitchell, Das Trinklied Von Der Erde (Discovering Mahler 2007)

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Das Trinklied von der Erde?7[, O!iZJer Km1S5ell, 12.l'i.2002 (op. 50)

~ : 2 0 0 2

'Every parting gives a foretaste of death.'Schopenhauer

Before moving on to what might be termed the 'Chinese connec-tion', in an effort to define how, and in what ways, it is meaningfulto attribute to an authentic Chinese influence certain features ofDas Lied FOil der Erde - Mahler's symphony for tenor, alto andorchestra, composed in 1908 - I should like to spend a fe\v min-utes on his choice of poems from Hans Bethge's Chinesische Flote(T11e Chinese Fl11te). I believe that serious consideration of whatprompted Mahler's choice can lead to a fuller understanding of theoverall form of Das Lied and above all, perhaps, to bring final clarification to a narrative that we find Mahler to have pursued withexemplary rigour, virtually from first note to last.

For heaven knows hmv many years, discussion of the work'sform was clouded by endless attempts to describe the work interms associated with the 'classical' symphony: i.e., first movement,slow movement, scherzo, finale. This was clearly an absurdity fromthe start, and especially vvhen trying to give a meaningful accountof'Der Abschied', of both its form and its formal function. Nonethe less even today one still comes across approaches to the vvorkthat regard 'Der Einsame' as a kind of slmv movement and the succeeding movements ('Von der Jugend', 'Von der Schonheit', 'DerTrunkene im Friihling') collectively representing a 'scherzo'. As for

Lecture given at a contCrenct" on Dus Lied 1'011 dcr Erdc at Th e Hague. May 2002. andpublished originally in Robert Becque and Eveline Nikkds (eds.), Die liehc Erdc all-

i ~ b m l l l , Procccdill,'(.S 40as Lied von der EnJe Symposi11111, Dfll H , 1 , ~ g . 2002. I

!H S TRINKLIED VO!'\ DER ERDE?

HANS B E T H G E ~ D I ECHINEfiJCHEFLOTE

LEIPZIG-1M JNJELVERLAGMDCCCCXIX

The title page of Hans B ~ t h g e 's Die chincsische Fltitc

457


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'Der Abschied', well, that came last - which was about all thatcould be said about it from a perspective rooted in fallacy.

It was when thinking about what to say about Das Lied in a pre-concert talk I gave at the great Mahler Feest in Amsterdam in I995that for me a glimmer of light began to dawn. On e aspect of it wasthe speculation that, had Mahler lived to perform the work himselfand see it through the press for publication, it was more than pos-sible - a belief I still hold - that he \vould have followed his ownsymphonic precedents in dividing the work into Part I and Part II,the first comprising the first five movements, the second, 'DerAbschied'. To spell this out to myself I put together this simplediagram:

PART I PART III 2 3 4 5 6 II CODAI

Ia A c c I a/ Ca a/C

If nothing else this crude little 'map' confirmed my guess that itmade sense to think that the first five movements comprised oneself-contained part which, having run its course, could the moreeasily embark on another, no less self-contained unit. (To the specific 'otherness' of Part II I shall certainly return.)

But let me first finish of f my comments on Part 1. My diagramindicates that tor me the middle three movements of Part I are con-tained within a 'frame', a frame that is then itself framed by theoverarching trame of the whole work, a trajectory that is initiatedby the first movement, the first 'Trinklied', 'Das Trinklied vomJammer der Erde', the title of which Mahler at one time consid-ered using as a title for the entire work, and concludes only whenthe final, long sustained chord of'Der Abschied' has been reached.

The vvork's similarly overarching tonal scheme precisely reflectsthe dichotomy of its form. Th e five movements of Part I are built

T!f-,

I

DAS TRINKLIED VON DER ERDE' 459

around A: the first, in A minor, the key often associated withMahler's darkest and bleakest thoughts and feelings, while the fifi:h -seemingly - affirms A major. But as I shall try to make clear. this isa desperate A major that if anything is even more dismaying, moreundoing, than the tonic minor.

Hmvever, if A is unequivocally the tonic of Part I, it is C, \Viththe minor very much in the lead until the fmal culmination of'DerAbschied' in the major, that is the tonic around which Part n, in allits complexity, is constructed. Thus it is that in terms of its tonalorganization Das Lied is bitonal, though no t quite in the sense thatwe customarily use that term. On the other hand, it is one of themany miracles in which this symphony abounds that the famouslast chord with which 'Der Abschied' concludes combines bothtonal centres. What vve hear is what the young Benjamin Brittenunforgettably described in a letter written in June I937 He hadbeen listening to the Bruno Walter recording, and was over\Vhelmed by the \vork's coda ('Ewig ... ewig!' ('Eternally ...eternally')). I cannot understand it,' he \Vrites, 'i t passes over me likea tidal wave - and that matters no t a jo t either, because it goes 011 forel'er, eue11 !fit is 1/CFcr p e ~ j ; m n c d again- that_{i11al chord is pri11ted 011 theatmosphere.' [My italics.]

What of course haunted Britten was that final chord of 'DerAbschied' in which the \vork's double tonics are vertically conflatedto form an added sixth, a chord incidentally that \Vas ahvays toremain tor Britten one of exceptional significance; and it is on thatchord that 'Der Abschied' blissfully and wellnigh inaudibly expires('Ewig . .. ewig!'), with the very inspiration, so to say, on its lips thatgave energetic birth to the \vork in its first bars (see Ex. I). For methere is no more brilliant and arresting instance of Mahler's long-term powers of organization of his materials than the horizontalarticulation of the work's basic motive which opens the first move-ment and the vertical conflation of those very same pitches whichwas to provide him at its en d \Vith the perfect sonorous equivalentof eternity. I hope my two music examples claril) what I've beensaymg:


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Ex. 1 'Der Trinklied vom Jammer der Erde'Allegro pesante~~ ~ v I '

-;------..

, )'I e J" .0) f f

. [IEx. 2 'Der Abschied'

G- I' h I b dnz 1c es er en eel s ~ - - 1~ f l . ob pp !:;

: :-- _:-_ ~ , . . ..:::::pppStr. ! I J Itbn.-6-: ~ ....:- ... - - - - . - i - - ~~pp harp

[! ' [i

On this occasion, I am particul arly aiLxious to draw your attention to a fact, perhaps still little appreciated, of the extraordinarilyclose scrutiny to which Mahler subjected his texts. Th e rigour andintensity of imagination he brought to bear are immediatelyapparent the moment \ve begin to understand hmv fundamental tothe work is the complex organization of its poetic and symbolicimagery. It is my belief that it is precisely in this sphere that wecome to comprehend the most subtle and most profound thinkingthat informs and shapes Das Lied and, above all, guides its narrative.

Recognition of Mahler's introduction of images of spring inboth the first and fifth movements as clear and calculated anticipa-

DAS TRINKLIED DE R ERDE'

tions of the renewal of the earth that 'Der Abschied' finally celebrates, has now become part of even the most modest of commentaries on the work. All I would wish to add here, and I address no tso much passive audiences or students as pelj(mners - those wh obear the responsibility of re-creating in the concert hall what wemust assume Mahler wanted to be heard - is the crucial importance of ensuring that those images are given the emphasis andarticulation, from the singers, from the orchestra, that guaranteetheir resonating on in ou r memory, so that when they confront usagain in their final guise, 'Die Iiebe Erde alli.iberall bli.iht au f imLenz . . .' ('The dear Earth everywhere blossoms in spring'), wecome to realize that the symphony has at last reached its goal, thegoal that \Vas targeted \vay back in the two drinking songs thatframe Part 1 (see my diagram above). Hm v fervently I long fromtime to time for singers in Das Lied to take as much trouble withtheir words as Mahler did in choosing- and sometimes \CVTiting! -themIt must be of quite special significance that the image of springis crucially released in both of the drinking songs, the first and fifthin the cycle of movements. Spring, in fact, has no place in the intervening songs: we have autumn in 'Der Einsame . . .' (No. 2) andwhat must surely be regarded as high summer in 'Von derSchonheit' (No.4). However, what is no less important to recognize is the differences that characterize Mahler's use of his symbolicspringtime imagery. While in the first drinking song spring isinstalled - and remains - as a symbol of possible hope amid thesong's pessimism, in the fifth, which concludes Part I, a comparableimagery is released only to be violently rejected, wholesale. Th eprotagonist finds his only means of warding off reality- intimationsof mortality? - is to resort to the bottle. 'Was geht mich denn derFri.ihling an!?' ('For what does spring matter to me?'), he howls.'Lasst mich betrunken sein!' ('Let me be drunk!') In short, we'reback to drinking again; and that this fifth movement culminates ina seemingly exuberant A maior makes the pain of it the moreintense. We are witnessing a moment of disconcerting self-delusionand self-destruction.

Thus ends Part I, and if we are allowed a real pause here before


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embarking on Part II - something I believe Mahler himself wouldhave welcomed (introduced, even) - then it becomes impossible toavoid acknowledging the unique importance that the act of drinkin g has accumulated in Part I; as we shall see, 'Der Abschied' will

i d e n t i ~ r an act of 'intoxication' to which, guilt-free, we may allaspire. (Drinking, I know, is a feature also of 'Von der Jugend', butthere it is doubtless Chinese tea that the poet and composer had inmind.)

When 'Der Abschied'- Part II - opens, we find ourselves someplace else. (Hence the importance of my suggested pause.) Th estroke of the tam-tam alone, together with the onset of the newtonal centre on C, establishes that we are no longer where we were.Th e gong ma y also assert what we ma y tlnally come to recognizeas the genuine 'Chinese' dimension of Das Lied, a sense, that is, ofan 'otherness' that was essential to Mahler's purpose, and no\vheremore so than in 'Der Abschied', a point to \vhich I shall return. Bu twhat is certain is that we are no longer in a familiar world of love,Nature, human beauty, rage, despair, of recourse in sorrow tointoxication: the gong stroke cleanses th e slate an d propels us on ane w JOUrney.

Mahler, as I have so often remarked, was an inveterate, ceaselesstraveller through numberless varieties of landscapes and humanexperience, through time, through musical history itself. So it cameas no great surprise to me , years ago, when I realized that it \vas hisknowledge ofBach's Passions and cantatas that helps us to comprehend the peculiar form of'Der Abschied', the sixth and final movement of Mahler's symphony. With that knowledge in mind we can,I suggest, begin to understand that it is in fact an innovatory solocantata that brings the \Vork to its conclusion, a cantata, if yo u like,which '\Ve might justifiably regard as Mahler's own Passion, his solitary exercise (i f that colourless word ma y be forgiven) in this form.

In this context, the recitatives, three of them, so astonishing intheir impact, so totally unheralded, speak for themselves. Each, beit noted, defines a different stage in the protagonist's - the soloist's -journey. I use that \vord advisedly because it is now, with the onsetof'Der Abschied', that we realize that, as distinct from Part I, sealedoff as that is by its tonal scheme and the framing function of the

DAS TRINKLIED VON Df R fRDE?

two Tri11klieder, a journey is what we ourselves are to undertake,along \Vith the protagonist. And the vehicle for that journey will bethe great funeral march in C minor, which begins to assemble itselfin fragn1entary form in the brief orchestral prelude to 'DerAbschied' which precedes the first recitative.

There is much that might be said about the recitatives alone.However, I must content myself \Vith remarking briefly on howMahler chooses to compose them, tor example that in the first twothe singer-narrator is accompanied by an elaborate obbligato forthe flute, improvisatory in character (though no t in notation) andthereby reflecting in its deliberate irregularity the irregular sound,rhythms and patterns of Nature. This first recitative, indeed, marvellously depicts the \Vorld at sunset and prepares us for the sight ofth e rising moon and a \vorld asleep. By the time we reach the secon d recitative the narrator, still accompanied by the flute, has beentransformed into th e protagonist whose journey we are about toshare. Responses to and descriptions of Nature give \vay to exclamations of an altogether pro ounde r identity '\Vith the Earth. In the'aria' that succeeds this recitative its vocal climax is reached towords that summon up an image of spiritual intoxication generatedby th e earth's capacity ever to renev,; itself: '0 Schonheit! o ewigenLiebens, Lebens trunk'ne Welt!' ( '0 beauty! 0 eternal-love-andlife-intoxicated \Vorld!') Now it is the \vorld that is the source ofintoxication.

It is no accident that the liberating ecstasy of this passage clearlyanticipates the character of the coda which brings the movementto a close. (Or, rather, it doesn't, because as the youthful Brittenperceived in 1937 the final moment, that final chord of the addedsixth, is 'printed on the atmosphere', 'goes on to r ever'.) But, as weshall see, the calculated recall at this critical point of imagery central to the concept of Das Lied takes on additional significance,especially in the light of th e path that th e narrative is just about topursue. (To the ultimate act of drinking I shall return below.)

I have already touched on the narrative concept that underpinsDas Lied and suggested that with the onset of 'Der Abschied' \Vetlnd ourselves no t only somewhere else (both sonically and in location) bu t going somev,;here else. It is to r that last reason, I believe,


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that after the second recitative (and ensuing 'aria') Mahler interpolates a funeral march in C minor for the orchestra alone, in whichall the fragmentary 'march' elements we have been aware of fromthe start of the movement are developed, cohere, into an impassioned, extended lament.This is not, hmvever, a stationary momentof ritual but on the contrary an unequivocal rite 4 passage. Whenwe arrive- accompanied by climactic ~ f o r z a ~ ~ d o strokes on the tamtam, the very sonority that has initiated the movement pia11issimo inits first bars - \Ve have indubitably passed over, passed to the otherside. (Mahler himself in his short score designates the strokes on thetam-tam that mark the beginning of the funeral march, 'Grabgelaiite' (funeral bells).)

I am reminded here inevitably of the narrative sequence weencounter in Mahler's Second Symphony, \Vhich opens with ahuge funeral march, again in C minor, the Todter!feier. For me, as Ihave argued else\vhere, this represents no t so much a concludingceremony of death as a continuation of the narrative of the protagonist whom we have already got to know in the FirstSymphony. According to the composer himself, the finale of theFirst should no t be 'read' as evidence of his protagonist's triumphover adversity bu t in fact also embodies his defeat and eventualdeath. 'The victory is won only with the death of my strugglingTitan,' Mahler remarked to Natalie Bauer-Lechner in Berlin inr890. It is my vie\v that the funeral march in the Second does no trepresent so much a finite burial as the initiating stage in the selfsame protagonist's journey through the rest of the symphony untilResurrection is attained. In short, there is a continuously evolvingnarrative from the start of the First Symphony, on through deathand into the afterlife, until the culminating en d of the Second.Th elatter symphony's Todter!feier, I believe, different though it is in styleand character, can be regarded as anticipating the comparable journeying function played by the funeral march of 'Der Abschied',which transports us from life to death's door: we have died, andwhen "\Ve get there it is Death wh o receives us.

But what in fact is the clear evidence for believing that in DasLied too, in its finale, at its most critical point, we have made thecrossing to the other side? I believe this rests with a feature of the

DAS TRINKl lED VOK DER ERDE?

third and last recitative, which, again to my mind, has receivedinsufficient scrutiny an d assessment from scholars and performers.I refer first to the conspicuous absence of the flute obbligato thathas previously characterized the first and second recitatives. I commented, it is true, on this absence in my earlier work on Das Lied,*noting that now, in recitative three, it is none other than a distantlytolling obbligato, this time for the tam-tam- the very sonority symbolic of death' - that accompanies the voice. But what I failed todo was to draw the obligatory conclusion that the abandonment ofthe flute had to be so. There was no longer any possibility for theprotagonist to overhear the sounds of Nature or discern their irregularities; he is no\v somewhere quite else, in that silent no-man'sland, awaiting - or awaiting to confront - his final destiny. He isbeyond life. Th e silencing of the flute, and the strokes of the tamtam, tell us that. Furthermore, the momentum of the orchestrallament carries over into the contour and rhythm of the recitative'sopening phrase, 'E r stieg vom Pferd .. . '('He alighted from his horse. . .'). (After all, it is only logical that he should dismount to themusic by which he has arrived.) There is also a purely practicalconsideration that I am certain Mahler would have had in mind atthis critical moment in the narrative, to be as little distracted as wasmusically possible from the voice and - above all - the words.

It is no t my purpose on this occasion to traverse ground that hasbeen pretty thoroughly explored and commented on. I am thinking here of the seeming confusion of identity that Mahler, nodoubt inadvertently - it would surely have been cleared up if hehad lived to conduct a performance - brought on himself bynecessarily substituting the third person ('Er'/'He') for Bethge'spersonal pronoun 'Ich'/'1'. In so doing, however, he created anambiguity that persists to this day. I \Vrote about this at no t inconsiderable length in Songs and Symphonies L!fe and Death (pp.424-32), and since then Stephen Hefting has returned to the topicin his monograph on Das Lied, suggesting that the 'musical persona[my "protagonist"] and the archetypal figure of Death have becomeone, inseparably fused, no longer adversaries'. Hefling puts this* D,\1SSLD, p .j.O I.


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very convincingly, though I think it was the late ChristopherPalmer who was the first to suggest that it is 'symbolically,[Mahler's] old enemy, death, vvho arrives on horseback' and handsthe waiting friend the drink, the draught, the elixir - call it whatyou will - that will enable him to experience, to become part of,the bliss that attends man's recognition of the life that death in factbestows: ou r 'immortality' is embodied in the process by \vhich theearth perpetually renews itself, and thereby its inhabitants. Smallwonder that it \Vas precisely here, for the coda, the work's denoue-ment, no less, Mahler had to ditch Bethge and find his mvn wordsto match the culminating freedom of the music, for which we havebeen prepared by earlier stages in the movement's evolution:

Die Iiebe Erde allliberallBliiht auf im Lenz un d grunt auts neu!Alliiberall und ewig blauen Iicht die Fernen,Ewig . . . ewig!I11e dear Earth eJ'er}'ll'hercBlossoms i11 spring and grofi'S green a.


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TON HALLEMontag, den 20. November, abends 8 Uhr

(Dfrentliche Hauptprobe: Sonntag, den 19. November, vormittags 11 Uhr)

ORCHESTERKONZERTAusflihrende:Dirigent: Hofkapellmeister BR UN 0 WALTER

Soli: MME CHARLES CAHIER (Alt)MARIE MOHL-KNABL (Sopran)WI L L I A M M I L L E R k. k. Hotopernsinger (Tenor)

chor: ORATORIEN-VEREIN AUGSBURGunter dem bohen ProtektorateS. K. Hoheit des Prinzen Ludwig Ferdinand von Bayern

orchester: KO N ZERTVEREI NS-ORCH ESTER(auf 100 Kiinsrler verstirkt)

Orgel: Hoforganist Prof. LUDWIG MAIERI. ABTEILt:,..G: URAUFFUHRUNG

,DAS LIED VON DE R ERDE"Eine Symphonie fi1r eine Tenor und eine A l t ! > t i ~ m e und groGes Orchester

lDichtung aus Hans Bethge's .,Chines1sche FlOte"j -J. Das Trinklied vom Jammer der Erde2. Der Einsarne im Herbst3. Von der Jugend4. Von der SchOnheit5. Der Trunkcne im FriihJing6. Der Abschied

II. ABTEILUNG:ZWEITE SYMPHONIE C-mollft1r grofles Orchester, Soli, Chor und Orgel

1. Allegro moderato2. Andante moderato3. In sehr ruhig flieBender Bewegung4. ,Urlicbt" (Sehr f e ~ e r l i c b und scblicht)5. lm Tempo des Scherzos (Sehr zuriickbaltend)

,Oer Rufer in der Wiiste ' ' , - ,Der groSe Appell''.

Th e programme for the fm t performance of Das Lied !'Oil der Erdcon 20 N oven1ber 19 I I

[FIRST PUBUCATIOI\Oj

DAS TRINKLIED VOt" DER ERDE?

Bu t the question that I find the most fascinating, though no lessteasing and certainly no less complicated, is this: hmv do we discernwhat is undeniably 'Chinese' about Das Lied, purely in terms ofmusic, an d hmv, if we think we have found it, do we go aboutdefining it? And, no less urgent and specific, what precisely \Vas itthat triggered off Mahler's voyage east\vards'

There is no overlooking Bethge, naturally, and I for one continueto be grateful to him for releasing in Mahler the inspiration that gaveus Das Lied. I put some emphasis on 'releasing' because I believe it tobe the case that the inspiration was already there, pre-Bethge, in theperson and poetry of Friedrich Ruckert, himself an orientalist andphilologist of high repute (the language in question was Chinese).

Mahler himself let it be known how much Ruckert's poetrymeant to him during his last years, and it has often struck me asextremely odd that relatively little attention has been paid toMahler's late Ruckert settings, in particular the Riickert-Lieder of1901-2. Th e unique beauty of these songs has long been recognized, and in the case of at least on e of them, 'Ich bin der Weltabhanden gekommen', endless parallels have been drawn bet\veenthe song and 'Der Abschied' of Das Lied, though often the significance of the most striking parallels in compositional technique hasgone unremarked.

In short, the time has surely come when Bethge is no longerthought of as the 'onlie begetter', practically speaking, of Das Liedand for more serious \Vork to be done on the Mahler-Ruckertrelationship, \Vith especial attention being paid to what in fact werethe first stirrings in Mahler of compositional techniques that cannovv be readily identified as themselves articulating his 'Chinese'dimension. And of course it is the existence of Das Lied that enablesus retrospectively to make the identification and perhaps therebydocument an eFolFing process in which Ruckert played a crucialinitiating role. I have no doubt now that this was the case and thatwhen Mahler had Bethge brought to his notice by a friend, thetechniques \Vere already basically in situ. I do no t one bit underestimate the importance ofBethge's contribution, bu t it was no t byhim that Mahler \Vas prompted to acquire the new technical meansthat we encounter in his later masterpiece, Das Lied.


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+70 SCRGTINYFor all these reasons, I continue to harbour substantial doubts

about any direct influence on Mahler supposedly exerted by anumber of wax-cylinder recordings, issued, as I have nmv come tobelieve, in early shellac disc form, and which, as Henry-Louis de LaGrange recounts in the third volume of the French edition of hisbiography of Mahler, p. 341, were discovered bv a fiend the bankerPaul Hammerschlag, in a shop near the S t e f a ~ s d o m in h e n n a an dpassed on to the composer, at a time \Vhen an interest in perhapsvvhat one might term the 'Chinese' dimension \Vas still musicallyactive in his mind. You will remember what I have just said aboutMahler and the late Ri.ickert songs, composed already in 1901.

I shall be returning to all these matters and in the context in particular of highly significant information conveyed to me by PeterRevers. But first I thought it might be helpful to be brieflyreminded that it was Berlin that \Vas on e of the most importantturn-of-the-century centres to pioneer the recording of authenticmusics - my plural is deliberate - from the East, an activity that initself was part of the growing exploration o( and f a s c i n a t i ~ n with,the arts of the East. Bethge \vas part of this powerful cultural trendwhich also included a widespread general taste for the consumption of the exotic. By the way, it is no t only a scholarly or culturalappetite we encounter in these diverse fields but also the appetiteof COIIIIIICI'CC.

Although we may never be able to be wholly confident whichitems of Chinese music Mahler himself might have heard, \vhat wecan inform ourselves about very precisely is the kind of soundMahler would have encountered if he did indeed listen to recordings that first originated on wax cylinders at the turn of thecentury. It is for this reason that I have brought with me todav atypical wax-cylinder recording (transferred to tape) made . inBeijing in I9I2-q (a year or two after Mahler's death) by a fieldresearcher from the Berlin Ethnomusicological Museum, a briefexcerpt of background music to a theatre play, performed on theshenJ;, a kind of elaborate Chinese mouth organ. And please dounderstand my chief reason to r playing this is to acquaint you withthe extreme primitiveness of the sound and the inevitable brevityof the excerpt. Th e point I am making is principally to acquaint

D:\S TRINKLIED VON DER ERDE' 471you with what recording techniques could at best achieve at theearly stage of their evolution (electrical recording did no t beginuntil 1925 or thereabouts):

RECORDED MUSIC EXCERPTTh e recording referred to above

I in no way underestimate the importance of that illustration, northat of the very many other similar recordings that date rom thesame period and earlier. I merely wonder seriously how realisticand meaningful in tact it is to suggest or believe that, if Mahler didfind himself listening to the music represented on wax cylinders atthe technical level we have just ourselves experienced, \Ve couldproperly speak of a subsequent 'influence'. Judged purely from theperspective of information, one surely has to rate the possibility aspretty remote.

None the less, Mahler's, as I now think, probable contact with'live' Chinese music remains of real importance, and it is exactlyhere that Peter Revers. himself a distinguished contributor to thisconference, has come up \Vith some highly significant evidence. Ina ground-breaking text,* he dra\vs our attention in its third andtina! section, 'Uberlegungen zu Mahlers Rezeption fernostlicherMusik' ('Considerations on Mahler's Reception of Far EastMusic'), to a series of recordings issued by Beka, a Berlin recordcompany that made a special feature in I906 (NB!) of a release onten-inch shellac discs of a variety of exotic' musics, from China,Japan and Malaya (as it was at the time), along with many others.

Th e discs of particular relevance to ou r purpose are numbered2086, 2130, 2 I75 and 2176, and represent a transfer of wax-cylinderrecordings to shellac discs. We also learn from Revers that thesediscs tormed part of the 'Phonogrammarchiv der OsterreichischenAkademie de r Wissenschaft' ('Phonographic Archive of theAustrian Academy of Science'). founded in I899- These few tactslend \veight to a point I \Vas making earlier, the spread of investigative scholarship into new areas of technical documentation, from* 'A-;pekte der Osrasienrezeprion Gustav !\-tahlers D1 b Lied !W I dt'r Erdc.


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474 SCRUTINYhis was the remarkable scholar Guido Adler, whom Edward Reillyhas so valuably studied; and I have little doubt that during the yearsthat \Vere to culminate in the composition of Das Lied, Mahler andAdler must have conversed about the topic of'other' musics fromth e East. I am pretty certain, moreover. that Mahler would havefound himself an absorbed and stimulated reader of Adler's text ofI908 entitled 'Uber Heterophonie' ( 'On Heterophony')* - mightno t Adler have shown it to him even before its appearance in print?

What we should never forget is that these topics and the issuesthey raised were vividly alive and the subject of vigorous discussionand debate in the culture of the time. Indeed, the work of pioneerin g investigative musicologists like Adler was, if you like, a comparable response to that being shown in almost all fields of creativeand decorative activity in Mahler's day: the 'exotic' was a conceptin full flovver at all levels. It so happened that Mahler was moreserious than most about finding out what the 'exotic' might, compositionally. have to otTer him.I want to read you a text that I believe to be crucial. Adlerquotes it in his ow n I908 article, a description of heterophony bya fellmv musicologist, Carl Stumpf, to my mind a model of itskind. Th e music he writes about was Siamese in origin:

It is not a question here of various themes being played simultan eously but rather of all the instruments compiling a texture out ofbasically identical materials whilst allmving themselves significantindividual liberties: one instrument proceeds in simple crotchets,another plays around it with all kinds of ornamentation, a thirdresolves this completely into semiquav er passages, triplets and so on ,at the same time as the semi quaver passages of the individual instruments are in utmost cohesion. In some principal motives, they allcome together again in perfect unison.Th e first 'Trinklied' in Das Lied tells us \Vith dramatic energy

that, master of counterpoint though Mahler was, what \Ve are hearin g is something arrestingly nev1r in his polyphony. In fact, if we* Peters Jahrb!lch Il)Ol'l. pp. 17- 27.

DAS TRJNKLIED VON DER ERDE' 475listen to the first 'Trinklied', and after it read Stumpf, then we findourselves reading a precise description of what, contrapuntallyspeaking, we have just heard. Th e lows classiclls, I believe, is thetourth strophe. the critical point of recapitulation in th e first song,'1m Mondschein au f den Grabern . . .' ('In th e moonlight, on thegraves . . .') (the first time incidentally that Ex. I is allotted to thevoice1), where, benveen figs. 39 and 45. we hear Mahler in top-gearheterophonic action, a living example of a 'style' the promotion ofwhich Adler was to call for in his concluding sentence: 'W e arebound to have to acknowledge heterophony . . . theoretically to bethe third category of style besides homophony and polyphony.'What Mahler gives us, of course, is no t theory bu t practice, the firstmajor breakthrough of heterophony in his music, which, afterlong-postponed recognition, can no w be assessed as a moment ofexceptional significance and eventual influence in th e history oftwentieth-century music.

(In this connection I should like briefly to mention my theorythat it is composers who, in the course of their compositionalhistories, have shown a predilection for canon, an d a conspicuousfacility in the use of it, that are the more likely to succumb to theappeal and challenge of heterophony. Both Mahler an d Britten, Iwould like to suggest, support my contention.)

Heterophony, ironically enough, to r all its authenticity, wouldno t necessarily have been heard by audiences (past, present orfuture) as an immediately audible sign or evidence of the informingpresence of the East. Nor, for that matter, I suggest, transparentlypentatonic though the conception of the symphony's basic motiveis from the start (see Ex. I) , I do no t think we can assume that theobligatory sense of 'otherness', of a different location, of embarking on a journey to another world, could have been achieved aloneby the pentatonic and heterophonic features revealed in the firstsong. It \vas to r this reason, I believe - and it was essential, surely,tor Mahler to get the process going before 'Der Abschied' isreached - that he took such care to demonstrate the Chinese connection in a torm that would have been readily recognizable.Hence the overt pentatonicism of, say, 'Von de r Jugend' or 'Von derSchonheit', the Chinese-ness of which was part of the popular


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culture of Mahler's dav, and has continued to be, to our own day.-We might \vel! think that Mahler here was pursuing the merelydecorative, bu t \Ve would be \Vrong on t\vo counts. First and foremost, perhaps, because of the wealth of imagination, the sophistication, subtlery of nuances, and refinement he brought to thesenumbers; and second, because, while the decorative was no t hisobjective- though it seems to me that even here he achieves muchmore than any of his contemporaries - communication was; and itis in fact as a means of communication, of virtually instant accessibiliry to the idea of relocation, to a\vareness that we are no w somewhere else than the world \Vith which we are familiar, that Mahlerputs overt pentatonicism to use. It is a means of preparing us forthe eventual 'otherness' of'Der Abschied', its music and its narrative, in which the 'Chinese' dimension of Das Lied finds its ultimateand most profound musical and philosophical expression.

There is much to be thought about, discussed, contended,debated, decoded; and there are surely tresh approaches still to bemade. Bu t of on e thing I think we can be certain: that in thehistory of the creative relationship benveen East an d West in thenventieth century, 'Das Trinklied von der Erde' must stand as anachievement of genius that has no t been equalled or surpassed. Itrepresents music's O\Vn contribution to the philosophy of ife, deathand- bv wav of that final draught - transcendence, no less.

Mahler and Nature:Landscape into Music

1986I am going to speculate about a possible relationship benveen landscape and music; and about one particular landscape-Toblach, no wDobbiaco, in the Italian Dolomites - and Gustav Mahler. Beforethe First World War the area was part of the Austro-HungarianEmpire and accessible by train from Vienna. It \Vas there, amid thislandscape of forests, lakes and mountains, that Mahler in the lastsummers of his life, from I 90 8 until his death in May I 9 I I, wrotehis last works, Das Lied vorz der Erde, the Ninth Symphony and theincomplete Tenth.Wh y Toblach? To answer that one has to look back to I907,when Mahler spent his summers composing in the only house heever owned, at Maiernigg on the Worthersee. Here, three heavyblO\vs fell on him: it was in this year at Maiernigg that one of hisnvo daughters, Maria, caught diphtheria and cruelly died; at almostthe same time, Mahler's doctors diagnosed a heart condition thatcertainlv caused him amciery, restricted his physical activities,though'no t his creativiry, and contributed to the weakening of hishitherto powerful constitution, which finally succumbed to a viralinfection in I 9 I I. In addition, in the same year, r907, he found himself at loggerheads with the bureaucrats in Vienna; and, frustratedand taxed bevond the tolerable, he resigned as Director of theHofoper- Vienna Court Opera - and signed a contract to conduct at the Metropolitan Opera, Ne w York.

Maiernigg could no longer offer him the serenity of spirit heneeded for composition. He had to find a new place to make a newstart. What was found was a farmhouse near Toblach, at Alt-

Lecture, 'Musik"voche i11 mcmrJriam Gustav Mahler'. Toblach, 22 July 1986: originallygiven with recorded musical illustrations.

Documents

Mitchell, Das Trinklied Von Der Erde (Discovering Mahler 2007)