Nun seh' ich wohl, warum so dunkle Flammen
Kindertotenlieder - Songs of the Deaths of Children
by Gustav Mahler
The music of Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) can be heard as a bridge between the musical traditions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Audiences of today can hear in Mahler's music a surprisingly modern voice which speaks to them in terms they understand. It is a voice of great romantic feeling and profound sensibility, but also one of doubt and of relentlessly probed subconscious fears.
Mahler’s greatest song-cycle is Kindertotenlieder ("Songs of the deaths of children"), composed between 1901 and 1904. It uses as its texts five poems by Friedrich Rückert, who was driven to write 428 poems on the death of two of his children. Although at this time Mahler had not yet experienced the death of any of his own children, he was apparently moved to set these poems by the fact that one of Rückert's sons was named Ernst, the name of Mahler's beloved younger brother who had died in 1874. Although certainly very sombre, the song-cycle is not sentimental or morbid. In fact, Mahler chose his poems with great care, creating an underlying sense of lightness. There are mentions of the rising sun, the source of all light, sunlight on the hills, and in the last song, God's hand protecting the children from a storm. Remarkably, Mahler transforms an almost unbearably painful topic into an experience that is ultimately ennobling and transcendent, ending in a mood of serene acceptance.
lyrics
10.
Now indeed I see why you shower
such dark flames on me at many a moment
O eyes! O eyes!
As if it were, in a glance,
to concentrate utterly all your power.
Then I did not suspect, since mists
enveloped me,
woven by beguiling destiny,
that the beam would already be returning home
to the place whence all beams come.
You wanted to tell me with your radiance:
We would like to stay near you,
but it is denied us by fate.
Only look at us,
for soon we will be far away from you!
What are only eyes to you in these days,
in coming nights will be for you only stars.
Ludwig Recordings is a Record Label specializing in the music of composer Christopher Ludwig and its artists.
Ludwig Recordings has an especially strong focus on Art Song.
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