Songs gave rise to symphonies throughout Gustav Mahler’s “Wunderhorn years.”
This was the interval from 1887 to 1904 when Mahler composed his first 4 symphonies, all of that are rooted in nature and music. In some cases, songs supplied the seeds for symphonic actions. The texts for Mahler’s twelve-song cycle, Des Knaben Wunderhorn (“The Boy’s Magic Horn”) have been primarily based on a set of nameless German folks poems of the identical title, compiled and printed in 1805 by Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano.
Composed in July of 1898, the ninth Wunderhorn music, Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen (“The place the Truthful Trumpets Sound”) begins with distant (offstage) navy fanfares. Pianist Roger Vignoles describes the music’s haunting drama:
…a lady is visited by her lover, or by his spirit, on the eve of battle. Whether or not he’s already useless, or has a premonition of demise subsequent day, just isn’t completely clear, however in both case the rapt tenderness of the encounter, and its foreboding, is unmistakeable, contrasting the tight-laced 2/4 of navy responsibility with the lilting, dreamlike 3/4 of the lovers’ embrace.
The soldier urges the lady to cease weeping, promising that they are going to be collectively inside a yr. The promise turns into a prophecy of the lady’s impending demise.
The music unfolds as a ghostly nocturnal dream. Ominous shadows, and the sting of the dissonant tritone, give strategy to visions of celestial magnificence and the mild repose of a lullaby. The concord slides unpredictably between main and minor. As with a lot of Mahler’s music, there’s a skinny, blurred line between torment and exultation.
This 1989 recording options soprano Lucia Popp with Leonard Bernstein and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra:
An English translation of the textual content by Richard Stokes:
Who stands exterior and knocks at my door,
Waking me so gently?
It’s your personal true dearest love,
Come up, and let me in.Why go away me longer ready right here?
I see rosy daybreak seem,
The rosy daybreak and two shiny stars.
I lengthy to be beside my love,
Beside my dearest love.The lady arose and let him in,
She bids him welcome too.
O welcome, dearest love of mine,
Too lengthy have you ever been ready.She offers to him her snow-white hand,
From far off sang the nightingale,
The lady started to weep.Ah, don’t weep, my dearest love,
Inside a yr you shall be mine,
You shall be mine most definitely,
As nobody else on earth.
O love upon the inexperienced earth.I’m going to battle, to the inexperienced heath,
The inexperienced heath so distant.
There the place the sumptuous trumpets sound,
There’s my house of inexperienced turf.
Recordings
- Mahler: Des Knaben Wunderhorn: Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen, Lucia Popp, Leonard Bernstein, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Deutsche Grammophon
