The Song of the Earth

Rarely does an artist’s biography offer meaningful insight into the essence of their work, yet in the case of Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth), a few brief but essential biographical notes may serve as an initial gateway into this masterpiece from the transitional period between the 19th and 20th centuries. Composed by a musician who, like other artists of his generation—one might dare, not unjustifiably, to draw a parallel with Marcel Proust—did not transfer the superficial details of his life into his art, but rather infused it with his existential experiences and his vision of life, death, and the world.

Gustav Mahler composed Das Lied von der Erde in 1908, and his biography reveals that the preceding year had brought events of profound and painful significance. His daughter Maria had died at the age of five from diphtheria. He had been forced to resign as director of the Vienna Court Opera due to relentless attacks by Mayor Karl Lueger and a significant portion of the press, driven by antisemitic sentiment. He had also been diagnosed with a then-incurable heart condition, and thus knew his time was limited.

The trauma of these events was eased, at least in part, by Mahler’s communion with nature—a presence often evoked in his music not in a picturesque sense, but as the sonic image of a primordial world untouched by human suffering. This conception of nature as refuge from life’s sorrows finds direct expression in the circumstances surrounding the creation of Das Lied von der Erde. In the summer of 1907, shortly after his daughter’s death, Mahler sought solace in a secluded spot amidst nature, renting an isolated house in the Puster Valley near Dobbiaco. A short distance from the main house, he had a solitary hut built—a single-room shelter equipped with a piano and desk. There, during the summer of 1908, he composed Das Lied von der Erde, which he described as a "symphony for contralto, tenor, and large orchestra."

One might be surprised by this definition, given that the work is a cycle of six Lieder (literally "songs"), while the symphony is traditionally an instrumental form, typically cast in four movements following the classical model of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, and Bruckner. Yet already four of Mahler’s eight preceding symphonies incorporated substantial vocal parts, and their structures varied from two to six movements. For Mahler, the symphony was not a fixed form, but a means to express an entire world through music.

The inspiration for Das Lied von der Erde came from a small volume gifted to him: Die chinesische Flöte (The Chinese Flute), a collection of Chinese poems freely adapted by Hans Bethge, who based his versions not on the original texts—he did not know Chinese—but on French translations. Mahler selected seven poems (the six Lieder include one that merges two) by renowned poets of the Chinese classical era, namely the 8th and 9th centuries CE. The central theme of these Songs of the Earth is human fragility and the transience of all things. The shadow of death looms throughout, though it is explicitly named only in the first Lied. Death recurs often in Mahler’s symphonies and songs, never depicted with horror or dread. In his First Symphony, a funeral march merges with the children's song known in Italy as “Fra’ Martino campanaro.” In the Second Symphony, the Totenfeier (Funeral Rites) of the first movement leads to resurrection in the finale. In the Fourth Symphony, the inexpressible sorrow over the death of children is transfigured in the final Lied, The Heavenly Life, where dead children describe the afterlife as a paradise:
“Our life is the life of angels / and we are truly happy, / we dance and leap, / we skip and sing.”

In Das Lied von der Erde, too, death—depicted in these ancient Chinese verses, untouched by Christianity, not as a terrifying dilemma of salvation or damnation, but as the end of life’s tribulations and the moment when the self dissolves into the whole—is contemplated serenely. There is no fear or anguish, but rather a gentle, penetrating melancholy. Wine, invoked in the first, third, fifth, and sixth Lieder, becomes a metaphor for death: a fleeting and imperfect means to forget and overcome the burden of living. Similarly, the changing seasons symbolize the passage of human life—from youth to old age and death. Nature, a recurring theme in these Lieder, offers comfort against life’s pain, as it had in Mahler’s earlier symphonies, beginning with the First, which opens with a mysterious, enveloping Naturlaut (“sound of nature”) over which birdsong gradually emerges. The only true antidote to death is the sublime beauty of nature, poetry, and music.

Das Lied von der Erde is a journey through life toward death, illuminated by beauty. In the first Lied, the vision of youth and nature makes death appear all the more cruel and unbearable. In the second, nature brings sorrow—it is the melancholy nature of autumn—but also an acceptance of death: “I come to you, my safe shelter.” The third celebrates beauty—of nature and of art—encasing the springtime of life. Beauty is also the subject of the fourth Lied, where youth and spring ally to fend off the thought of death, unspoken but still casting its shadow over transient happiness. The fifth Lied reminds us: “Life is but a dream,” yet not without “toil and torment,” and wine is the sole consolation. A bird sings, nature laughs, but “what do I care for spring? Let me be drunk.”
The final Lied, as long as the five preceding ones combined, is a farewell. The sun sets, “men, weary, return home,” while the poet remains behind, waiting for a friend with whom he shares a final drink:
“I seek peace for my lonely heart. I depart, return to my homeland, my place.”

Though its full performance lasts around an hour—a typical Lied by Schubert, Schumann, or Brahms might last three minutes—these six Lieder are anything but prolix. With flawless precision, Mahler’s music flows through a subject at once concrete and immaterial, everyday and metaphysical, simple and sublime: existence itself. Through the joy of youth—portrayed in the girls picking flowers and the proud horsemen—we journey toward a long voyage, a clear metaphor for death. The poetry of this farewell to the world, both serene and tragic, pierces the soul in ways words cannot describe.

Mahler scored Das Lied von der Erde for a very large orchestra, as in his symphonies, but he employed it with exquisite subtlety, achieving transparency and fine detail. In 1920, Arnold Schoenberg began an arrangement for chamber orchestra, suitable for the modest means of his “Society for Private Musical Performances,” founded two years earlier. He never completed it, and only in 1983 did the musicologist Rainer Riehn finish the task. This arrangement, crafted with deep affection and expert care, preserves all the orchestral colors of Mahler’s original, and in reducing the orchestral density, casts an even sharper light on his originality and genius.

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Mauro Mariani