Farewell: Countryside

Farewell

Countryside
Throughout his life, Mahler returned to the natural environment for inspiration.
“My music is always the voice of nature sounding in tone…”
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VIDEO:MTT on The Song of the Earth

  • The Song of the Earth (Das Lied von der Erde), Mahler’s last song collection, was based on Hans Bethge’s German translations of ancient Chinese poems published in 1907 as The Chinese Flute (Die chinesische Flöt). One of the most charmingly oriental atmospheric touches comes in the timbres and melodies at the opening of the third song of the collection, “Of Youth” (Von der Jugend).

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  • The cycle ends with “The Farewell” (Der Abschied), where Mahler’s nature portraits include birdsongs, as the singer moves us into a poignant scene of darkness and longing:
    “The birds crouch quietly on their branches
    The world falls asleep!
    From the shadows of my firs comes a cool rustling.
    I stand here and await my friend;
    I await his last farewell.”

Mahler's Methods

Soliloquies

Throughout Mahler’s world of invention, instrumental solos modeled after birdsong appear at critical moments.

  • In the Second Symphony, mixed in with the trumpet calls that represent the call to the Last Judgment, a flute solo suggests the smallness of a single bird in the immensity of space and time.

  • Many years later, in “The Farewell” (Der Abschied), from The Song of the Earth (Das Lied von der Erde), Mahler evokes the narrator’s intense loneliness with a desolate flute solo.

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