For mezzo-soprano and orchestra, these melancholic songs express the grief of a father whose beloved daughter has recently been lost to sickness. The text comes from poems by Friedrich Ruckert, and here Christa Ludwig with Herbert von Karajan bring out the mood with a special rare degree of poinancy, which is why I chose this recording to set the English translation on the screen.
When first performed in Vienna in 1905, the composer’s wife Alma was outraged: « Ruckert did did not write these harrowing elegies solely out of his imagination … for heaven’s sake, don’t tempt providence! » But providence was tempted. Within three years, Mahler had lost his eldest daughter to diphtheria, adding one more grief to a life already tainted with personal loss. From childhood, he possessed a heightened consciousness of death and the evanescence of beauty, crossed by a strong awareness of the strange co-existence of love and pain. Like many a philosopher before him, he came to see love as the motivating force, striving for re-union with those things from which, in the unsettling flux of life, we have become tragically estranged. The songs were writtten over a period of three years from 1901 to 1904, whilst Mahler was busy with his tragic 6th Sympnony which depicts the three « hammer blows » of fate which can fell a man down.
The recording dates to 1975 and was issued by DGG coupled with the 5th symphony, played by the the Berlin philharmonic. The translation is credited to L. Salter, and these introductory notes are mainly extracted from comments by Richard Osborne.
Now the sun wants to rise as brightly »
Now the sun wants to rise as brightly
as if nothing terrible had happened during the night.
The misfortune had happened only to me,
but the sun shines equally on everyone.
You must not enfold the night in you.
You must sink it in eternal light.
A little star went out in my tent!
Greetings to the joyful light of the world.
« Now I see well, why with such dark flames »
Now I see well, why with such dark flames
in many glances you flash upon me
O Eyes: as if in one look
to draw all your strength together.
I didn’t realise, because a mist surrounded me
woven of tangled destinies
that your beam was already returning homewards to the place
from which all rays emanate.
You would tell me with your brightness:
We would gladly stay with you!
Now that is denied to us by Fate.
Look at us, soon we will be far away!
What are only eyes to you in these days,
in the coming night shall be your stars.
« When your mama »
When your mama
steps in through the door
and I turn my head
to see at her,
on her face
my gaze does not first fall,
but at the place
nearer the doorstep,
there, where your
dear little face would be,
when you with bright joy
step inside,
as you used to, my little daughter.
When your mama
steps in through the door
with the glowing candle,
it seems to me, as if you always
came in with her too,
hurrying behind her,
as you used to come into the room.
Oh you, of a father’s cell,
ah, too soon
extinguished joyful light!
I often think: they have only just gone out »
I often think: they have only just gone out,
and now they will be coming back home.
The day is fine, don’t be dismayed,
They have just gone for a long walk.
Yes indeed, they have just gone out,
and now they are making their way home.
Don’t be dismayed, the day is fine,
they have simply made a journey to yonder heights.
They have just gone out ahead of us,
and will not be thinking of coming home.
We go to meet them on yonder heights
In the sunlight, the day is fine
On yonder heights.
In this weather »
In this weather, in this windy storm,
I would never have sent the children out.
They have been carried off,
I wasn’t able to warn them!
In this weather, in this gale,
I would never have let the children out.
I feared they sickened:
those thoughts are now in vain.
In this weather, in this storm,
I would never have let the children out,
I was anxious they might die the next day:
now anxiety is pointless.
In this weather, in this windy storm,
I would never have sent the children out.
They have been carried off,
I wasn’t able to warn them!
In this weather, in this gale, in this windy storm,
they rest as if in their mother’s house:
frightened by no storm,
sheltered by the Hand of God.
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