Des knaben Wunderhorn

Influenced by a burgeoning spirit of nationalism and the quest to locate a German cultural ancestry, Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano gathered folk poetry into a collection entitled Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Youth’s Miraculous Horn). Published in 1806 and 1809, the collection includes material reworked from medieval sources as well as texts newly-written in an antique style by Arnim and Brentano. Gustav Mahler discovered the poems during his mid-twenties and relied heavily on them for most of his song texts written between 1887 and 1901. Something in the imagery and fairy-tale ethos resonated deeply with Mahler. As he himself put it, the Wunderhorn poems were “boulders from which anyone could carve whatever he wanted.”
The vibrant spirit of “Wer hat dies Liedlein erdacht” (freely translated: “Who came up with this little ditty?”) hardly ever clouds over. When the text speaks of being wounded by the beloved’s beauty, it is only metaphorical, of course, and a far cry from the actual pain and loss explored in other Wunderhorn songs. It is the shortest work in Mahler’s collection, relying largely on buoyant melismas and ebullient, upward skipping melodic motion. Even the basic motive of the A theme, a simple mi-fa-sol gesture, conveys a certain resolute confidence. Mahler contrasts the B section by using chromatic motion and key changes, at which point the protagonist speaks from his “wounded heart.” During the return of section A, we learn about the origins of the “little ditty” (Liedlein) that our hero sings: it was brought across the waters by three geese.
What a different world is inhabited by the characters in “Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen” (“Where the lovely trumpets blow”). The text tells the poignant story of a young soldier and his lover. He is either doomed or already dead when the song begins—I prefer the latter interpretation—for the specter of death hangs over his grim knocking. In her grief the young lady imagines her beloved has returned home for one more embrace. Much like Schubert’s famous song “Erlkönig,” Mahler sets the roles apart with divergent music: the soldier’s theme is grim and austere in D minor, hers is in major and triple meter, lush and lithe with mostly stepwise melodic motion. Eventually the nightingale’s call signals the imminent return of harsh reality. The maiden begins to weep, and the soldier promises to be with her again in just one year, when it seems her life, too, will end. He will wait for her there, where the trumpets sound in his home under the green grass. The poetry of the moment and Mahler’s treatment of it are touching. The slightest inflection, a turn from major to minor, reinforces the grim double meaning of his leave-taking.
The text for “Das himmlische Leben” (“The Heavenly Life”) is more overtly religious than most in the Wunderhorn collection, and it inspired Mahler to write evocations of sacred music at key points. For instance, where Saints and Angels are mentioned, you’ll hear a sudden hymn-like slowdown in chord rhythm. The most memorable melody of the piece—lyrical and simple with a kind of hiccupping ornament—appears at the very outset. Seeming jocular, Mahler is nevertheless in earnest. When he used the same material again near the end of his Symphony No. 4, Mahler wrote into the score his own assessment of its character: “A singing voice with a happy, childlike sound, but entirely free from parody.” The song’s middle section is far more agitated, darker and dissonant. Even the vocal line has exchanged its sensuous contours for disjunct motion. Throughout there are moments of programmatic depiction: the high florid sound of angelic voices (as in the first theme) or the minor-mode shift at the mention of “earthly turmoil” that happens just moments later. Particularly satisfying is the way Mahler reprises the opening melody at the end to set the poem’s most daunting couplet:


“Kein’ Musik ist ja nicht auf Erden,
Die uns’rer verglichen kann werden.”
(No music on earth
can be compared to ours.)


To write the music of angels would seem to be a composer’s greatest challenge, and Mahler succeeds far better than most. If you would like to hear more of this serene theme, you’ll find it permeating his Symphony No. 4.
As these three songs demonstrate, Mahler manages to express in music feelings of the greatest magnitude: beauty and sorrow, expansiveness and intimacy, and a palpable “Alpine” charm that remains his most individual feature. There are moments in listening to Mahler when one feels that spring will never end, that the optimism of youth will never fade.

(c) Jason Stell