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Wenn dein Mutterlein
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

11.

When your dear mother
comes in the door,
and 1 turn my head,
to look at her,
my glance falls first
not on her face
but on the place
closer to the threshold,
there where your
dear little face would be
if you, bright with joy,
came in with her as usual,
my little daughter!
When your dear mother
comes in the door
with her candle's glimmer,
for me it is as always
when you would enter with her,
slip into the room
behind her as usual!
You, too quickly,
too quickly extinguished gleam of joy
in your father's cell.

credits

from Ach, des Knaben Augen, released June 12, 2013

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Ludwig Recordings Delta, British Columbia

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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