Das Lied von der Erde: Der Einsame im Herbst

Program notes

About the Work

“Der Einsame im Herbst” (The Lonely One in Autumn) is the second of the six movements of Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth), the symphony for two voices and orchestra that Gustav Mahler wrote in the summer of 1908. It is heard here on its own, as a single orchestral song.

The year before had been the worst of Mahler’s life. In 1907 his elder daughter, Maria, died; he was diagnosed with a heart condition; and, after a hostile press campaign, he gave up the directorship of the Vienna Court Opera and moved the centre of his conducting career to New York. When he returned to Europe in 1908 and settled into a new summer house near Toblach, he wrote to the conductor Bruno Walter that he had lost at one stroke all the clarity and composure he had ever achieved, and had to learn to walk and stand again like a beginner. Two months later he wrote again, about a new piece: “I believe that this may be the most personal thing I have written so far.”

The words came from Die chinesische Flöte (The Chinese Flute), a volume of German poems that Hans Bethge published in 1907. His poems are free adaptations of earlier German and French translations of classical Chinese verse, and Mahler altered them further as he composed. The poem behind this movement is usually traced to the Tang dynasty poet Qian Qi, though the attributions in Bethge’s book have been much debated. Mahler never heard the work. He died in May 1911, and Bruno Walter conducted the first performance in Munich on 20 November that year.

Mahler called the piece a symphony for tenor, alto (or baritone) voice and orchestra. The score gives the second, fourth and sixth movements to the alto, and at the alto’s first entry, in this movement, Mahler adds a note that the part may if necessary be sung by a baritone. That is the option taken in these concerts.

What to Listen For

The poem is an autumn landscape that turns inward. Mist drifts over a lake, the grass is covered in frost, the scent of the flowers has gone and the lotus leaves will soon be floating on the water. Then the speaker turns to himself: “My heart is tired. My little lamp has gone out with a crackle.”

Mahler marks the opening “somewhat dragging, exhausted”. Muted violins keep up a murmuring line that hardly ever stops, and over it a solo oboe plays a thin, drooping melody before the voice enters, almost in a monotone. The scoring is sparse, closer to chamber music than to a symphony orchestra, with solo woodwinds spinning long independent lines.

Listen for the one moment when the restraint breaks. Near the end the singer asks, “Sun of love, will you never shine again and gently dry my bitter tears?”, and for a few bars the music swells. It does not last, and the song sinks back into the exhaustion in which it began.