Mahler’s Song of the Earth

Throughout his career, Arthur Honegger consistently explored themes of a religious, philosophical, or moral nature in his works. This could be partially ascribed to his family background. Born and raised in France to a German-speaking Swiss family, Honegger was unique among 20th-century composers in uniting the French and German artistic approaches, which had historically been considered antithetical. For this reason alone, he always felt uncomfortable about being included in the French composer group “Les Six,” which rebelled against the serious, Germanic tradition that Honegger always held dear. 

Honegger composed a series of large-scale vocal works early in his career — including the oratorios King David and Joan of Arc at the Stake — but later turned increasingly to symphonic music, a genre which had never been at the center of his interests. Once he began composing his Third Symphony in the aftermath of World War II, he wrote an extended commentary to accompany it, the longest discussion he ever devoted to any of his works. In it, he made his intentions explicit to prevent any misunderstandings:

My intention in this work was to symbolize the reaction of modern man against the morass of barbarism, stupidity, suffering, machine-mindedness, and bureaucracy that has been besieging us for some years now. I have reproduced in musical terms the combat that is joined in man’s heart between yielding to the blind forces that enclose him and his instinct for happiness, his love of peace, his apprehension of a divine refuge. My symphony is, if you like, a drama played out between three characters, whether real or symbolic: misery, happiness, and man. These are everlasting themes. I have tried to give them new life. 

To express this universal struggle, Honegger chose liturgical mottos for each of the three movements. The first movement is Dies irae (“Day of wrath,” from the Requiem Mass), the second De profundis clamavi (“Out of the depths I cry to you,” from Psalm 130), and the third Dona nobis pacem (“Give us peace,” from the Ordinary of the Mass). All three movements have themes to which the respective Latin words could be sung, although the composer did not write them into the score. 

Honegger’s commentary continues: 

In the Dies irae, I was concerned with depicting human terror in the face of divine anger, with expressing the brutal, unchanging feelings of oppressed peoples, delivered to the whims of fate and seeking in vain to escape the cruel snares of destiny. … The violent themes crowd in on one another without leaving the listener a moment’s respite. … Then finally, at the end of the movement, a bird makes its appearance. ... 

De profundis clamavi: The sorrowful meditation of humankind abandoned by God; a meditation that is already a prayer. What tribulation this movement cost me! … [How] hard it is too, to put a prayer without hope into human mouths. … Toward the end of this movement, I have repeated the bird theme more obviously … the promise of peace … amid disaster. 

Dona nobis pacem: … There is nothing so stupid as barbarism unleashed on a civilization. What I wanted to express at the beginning of the third movement was precisely this increase in collective stupidity. … It’s the march of the robots against the bodies and souls of men. … But now a feeling of rebellion surfaces among the victims. The revolt takes shape and grows. Suddenly, an immense clamor … escapes from the lungs of the oppressed: Dona nobis pacem! And then, as though the cup of suffering were full … [the] clouds part and, amid the glory of the rising sun, for the last time the bird sings. In this way, the bird hovers over the symphony, just as once the dove hovered over the immensity of the waters. 

What are the musical means by which Honegger expressed this artistic vision of good versus evil? 

The Dies irae is evoked in the first movement. This performance instruction calls for the notes to be played marcato, or sharply accented. We hear march-like, angular rhythms and melodies with wide leaps and dissonant sonorities. But Honegger’s movement later takes a softer turn as he introduces the voice of happiness, expressed by long-breathed melodies played legato (with the notes smoothly connected to one another). These characteristics are strongest in the melody Honegger referred to as the “bird theme,” which appears at the very end of the movement, played by flutes, English horn, trombones, and tuba. 

The De profundis second movement, which was so hard for Honegger to write, is the longest of the three. It presents the third, and most important, character in the symphonic drama: after misfortune and happiness, it is humankind itself that speaks. The musical language is lyrical, similar to the first movement’s “bird theme,” and the numerous solos of wind instruments help create an atmosphere of intimacy. 

The third movement intones the Dona nobis pacem very differently from the way it traditionally appears. As the conclusion of the entire Mass, it is usually sung to a quiet, lyrical melody. But Honegger turns his version into a desperate cry, making it the center of the revolt against barbarism. Rather than praying for peace, humankind demands it, having suffered the terrors of war for far too long. The outcry is preceded by a group of themes that again embody the duality of misfortune and happiness. At the end, the tempo suddenly slows down to a solemn Adagio, the strings play a soothing chorale, and “for the last time the bird sings.” Impersonated in turn by the flute and piccolo, the bird “hovers” above the hymnlike music of the strings as the symphony ends in a mood of peaceful contemplation. 

— adapted from a note by Peter Laki 

Peter Laki is a musicologist and frequent lecturer on classical music. He is a visiting associate professor of music at Bard College. 

“The Song of the Earth” is a somewhat misleading translation of Gustav Mahler’s great symphonic song cycle Das Lied von der Erde. Rephrasing it as “Song About the Earth” might be more precise. The Earth doesn’t do the singing here; rather, it is humans who sing of what it feels like to live on this beautiful but deeply troubled planet. Ultimately, however, this piece does become a “song of the earth” in the sense that it strives to sum up the entire terrestrial experience of being human, of our existence as individuals and in relationship to our families, communities, and nature. 

Das Lied von der Erde unfolds in a succession of six movements, each of which concentrates on one particular aspect of life on earth. The first and last of these constitute, in the words of scholar Donald Mitchell, a “majestic frame surrounding a group of movements of diverse character and tempos.” This “majestic frame” consists of Das Trinklied vom Jammer der Erde (The Drinking Song of Earth’s Sorrow), in which the dramatic poles of celebration and tragedy are established, and Der Abschied (The Farewell), which is filled with resignation. The intervening movements — evoking the changing seasons and the transience of youth and beauty — represent a full life cycle, thus depicting all the things to which we will have to say farewell at the end of our lives. 

While the work was technically Mahler’s ninth symphony, he had a superstitious fear of that number. Since the premiere of Beethoven’s own gigantic Ninth Symphony, this number could not be taken lightly; few composers after Beethoven had been able to complete more than nine symphonies before their death. According to the oft-repeated story (whose truth is now questioned), Mahler tried to “fool Fate” by making Das Lied von der Erde a song symphony before composing his next “real” symphony, the Ninth. But Fate would not be fooled. Mahler’s Tenth Symphony remained incomplete when the composer died on May 18, 1911. 

Certainly, if anyone had a reason to fear death in 1908, it was Mahler. The previous year, he had seen his oldest daughter die at age 4, and he himself was diagnosed with potentially fatal heart disease. 1907 was also the year Mahler resigned as director of the Vienna Court Opera — a post he had held for a decade — to quell the mounting hostility toward him and his work there. 

It was during this traumatic period that a friend presented him with a volume of poetry by Hans Bethge titled Die chinesische Flöte (The Chinese Flute). This was a book of free renderings into German of classic Chinese poems — or perhaps more accurately, a collection of German poems loosely based on Chinese originals. Mahler introduced his own changes and, with a real stroke of genius, built a large-scale symphonic structure out of the short poems he selected from the book. 

The six movements run as follows: 

1) Das Trinklied vom Jammer der Erde (The Drinking Song of Earth’s Sorrow) is probably one of the few toasts that says “to death” instead of “to life.” Before we can enjoy our wine, we are reminded of the misery of our existence, the brevity of life, and the horrors of the world (symbolized by the howling ape). It is a most unsettling world that appears in this music, only to be brushed aside when it is finally time to drink. The movement exudes high energy and defiance; the only quiet moments are the three utterances of the line Dunkel ist das Leben, ist der Tod (Dark is life … is death), each repeated a half-step higher than the previous one. 

2) Der Einsame im Herbst (The Lonely One in Autumn): The long oboe solo that opens this movement sets a plaintive tone for the baritone soloist, who sings of chilly winds and a weary heart. The lethargic feelings know almost no respite throughout the movement, except at the end, at the brief mention of the Sonne der Liebe (sun of love). 

3) Von der Jugend (Of Youth) is the happiest movement in the work. The subject of this peaceful idyll prompted Mahler to use the pentatonic scale (playable on the black keys of the piano), which stereotypically holds associations with the music of China and other East Asian cultures. This is the only movement where he resorted to this kind of “local color”; it is, therefore, ironic to find that the “porcelain pavilion”— the recurrent, dominant image of the poem — never existed in the Chinese original. It arose from a misinterpretation of a Chinese character by Judith Gautier, one of the French translators whose work was used by Bethge. 

4) Von der Schönheit (Of Beauty) tells of a fleeting encounter between a group of young girls and some handsome horsemen riding by. The heart of one of the girls begins to beat faster at the sight of one of the young lads, but she is ultimately left with nothing but memories. The movement contains two instrumental interludes in a march tempo, marking the arrival and the departure of the horsemen. At the end, the excitement subsides and the main theme is broken into small fragments as the happy vision fades. 

5) Der Trunkene im Frühling (The Drunken One in Springtime): A last glimmer of hope is offered by a small bird singing in a tree, heard by a man who is determined to drink himself into oblivion. The man, who has long since given up on life, hears the bird promise a new spring, but it is too late. He asks: “What do I care about the spring?” and the innocent voice of the bird — represented by a violin solo — is silenced by the coarse drinking song. 

6) Der Abschied (The Farewell), the final movement, lasts about half an hour (about as long as the other five movements put together). Here we enter a world that is completely different from what we have heard previously. On a structural level, the clear symmetrical forms of the earlier movements are abandoned in favor of a freer, more rhapsodic unfolding of the music. Sometimes Mahler even dispenses with barlines and allows the vocal and instrumental lines to evolve free from any metrical constraints. 

The text combines two separate Bethge poems, offering a vague hint at a storyline. Two characters — one who is waiting and one who announces that he is leaving forever — share the same sadness and nostalgia, but in Mahler’s musical setting, they seem to merge into one person. 

The movement takes us from a lugubrious opening (with its ominous tam-tam strokes) to a gradually unfolding vision of the whole world going peacefully to sleep. The music soon grows more passionate before, in an extensive orchestral interlude, Mahler reiterates some of the melodic material of the first section. It is a funeral march of massive proportions, where march-like features are combined with melodies of high lyrical intensity. 

Once the baritone re-enters, the most significant event is the switch from the tragic C-minor tonality, which has prevailed since the beginning of the movement, to a bright and soothing C major. At this final farewell, the text speaks of flowers, springtime, and eternal blossoming. The well-known ewig, ewig (forever, forever) that ends Mahler’s work conjures up a vision of timeless, unspeakable beauty, which is the last thing the traveler beholds before leaving this earth forever. 

— Peter Laki