Write an essay commenting on harmony, motive, thematic development, orchestration (and anything else you can think of) in Mahler's Nun will die Sonn' so hell aufgeh'n.

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0308201                08/05/07

Romantic Song: Assignment Four

Write an essay commenting on harmony, motive, thematic development, orchestration (and anything else you can think of) in Mahler’s Nun will die Sonn’ so hell aufgeh’n.

Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) was a great admirer of Wagner, and when he came to write his Kindertotenlieder in 1901-1904 he created chromatic harmony indicative of post-Wagnerian trends. He was haunted by superstition and myth; for example, he believed he would die after writing his ninth symphony because Beethoven did, and postponed writing it, calling it Das Lied von der Erde in an effort to avoid the ‘curse’ as he saw it. When he wrote his Kindertotenlieder, his wife actively discouraged him from the undertaking as she was under the superstition, influenced by her husband, that life imitates art. Surely enough, soon after the completion of the cycle, Mahler’s children drowned in an unexplained accident. His wife never forgave him, as she blamed him for tempting fate and writing the cycle.

The text is by Friedrich Rückert, and tells of the pain over the death of the singer’s child. The first song, Nun will die Sonn’ so hell aufgeh’n, is sung during sunrise the morning after the child’s death. The text is eight lines long, arranged in four equal stanzas of rhyming couplets. It jumps constantly between light and dark, happiness and misery, in the text; in the first stanza, the first line is the positive and the second line the negative. We begin with the ‘Sonn’ so hell aufgeh’n’, the sun which shines so brightly, contrasted with the ‘Unglück’ unhappiness of the child’s death. This continues throughout the poem, with contrasts such as ‘Unglück’ and ‘die Sonne’, coupled with ‘allein’ and ‘allgemein’ in lines three and four. The poet is clear that this is a private pain that he does not want to share, perhaps even burden the rest of the world with. The fifth and sixth lines are much more positive; the poet does not want to sink into darkness and despair: ‘Du musst nicht die Nacht in dir verschränken’, the pointed use of ‘Du’ as if he is giving advice to you, the addressee. He wants the darkness within to be ‘ins ew’ge Licht versenken’, drowned in everlasting light, demonstrating clearly this connection with pain to darkness and joy with light. The final stanza shows us that he thinks his pain and suffering is insignificant compared to the rest of the world and its overwhelming joy; ‘Ein Lämplein verlosch in meinem Zelt’. The use of a small light, indicated by use of the diminutive, as a metaphor for his misery, declares that he considers his situation unimportant compared to the ‘Freudenlicht der Welt’, the joyous light of the world. The little light could also represent the fact that the child was the light of the poet’s life, or even the life of the child that has been put out.

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The structure of the song is A from bar 1-29, A2 from the upbeat to bar 30-40, B from the upbeat to bar 41-63, A3 from the upbeat to bar 64-77, and a coda from 77 beat four to the end. It is in D minor, although it is very chromatic; extensive use of chromaticism is employed, but there is no definite modulation to any other key. The poet’s arrangement of the text is maintained, i.e. there are four stanzas of two lines each. The song opens with an oboe solo, marked klagend, meaning lamenting, that recurs at the beginning ...

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