Mahler Foundation

A listening guide of Des Knaben Wunderhorn -  Urlicht with Lew Smoley from ClassicalPodcasts.com.

Gustav Mahler score Klavierquartett, piano quartet, Movement 1: in A.
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A listening guide of Klavierquartett with Lew Smoley.

The final movement culminates in a resolution. The music, also reused in the First Symphony (in the Scherzo “Funeral March in Callot’s manner”), is subdued and gentle, lyrical and often reminiscent of a chorale in its harmonies. Its title, “Die zwei blauen Augen von meinem Schatz” (“The Two Blue Eyes of my Beloved”), deals with how the image of those eyes has caused the Wayfarer so much grief that he can no longer stand to be in the environment.
He describes lying down under a linden tree, allowing the flowers to fall on him. He wishes to return to his life before his travels. He asks that the whole affair had never occurred: “Everything: love and grief, and world, and dreams!”  

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A listening guide of Lieder Eines Fahrenden Gesellen – Die Zwei Blauen Augen with Lew Smoley

A listening guide of Kindertotenlieder – Nun will die Sonn’ so hell aufgeh’n with Lew Smoley.

Kindertotenlieder (Songs on the Death of Children) is a song cycle for voice and orchestra by Gustav Mahler. The words of the songs are poems by Friedrich Ruckert (1788-1866).
The original Kindertotenlieder were a group of 428 poems written by Rückert in 1833-1834 in an outpouring of grief following the illness (scarlet fever) and death of two of his children. Karen Painter describes the poems thus: “Rückert’s 428 poems on the death of children became singular, almost manic documents of the psychological endeavor to cope with such loss. In ever new variations Rückert’s poems attempt a poetic resuscitation of the children that is punctuated by anguished outbursts. But above all the poems show a quiet acquiescence to fate and to a peaceful world of solace.” These poems were not intended for publication, and they appeared in print only in 1871, five years after the poet’s death.

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A listening guide of Kindertotenlieder – Intro with Lew Smoley.