I stand here in wait of my friend; 

I wait to bid him a last farewell.

O friend, I long to relish

The beauty of this evening at your side.

Where do you tarry?  You leave me so long alone!

The words were put to music and first performed this third weekend of November, in the year 1911.   The music's composer did not hear the performance.  He had died six months earlier in his Vienna home.  Most of the words were written centuries before by several ancient Chinese poets.  Gustav Mahler took the ethereal verses and altered them slightly, even writing the final lines himself.  Then he applied the words to his intensely dramatic musical score.  The result was one of the greatest symphonic masterpieces of the twentieth century, Das Lied von der Erde, in English The Song of the Earth.

He alighted from his horse and offered his friend

The drink of farewell.

He asked him where he was heading

And why it had to be so.

Mahler was dying as he put the words to music.  He knew it.  But he also sensed that much more than just his fragile body was nearing its end.  His beloved city of Vienna watched over a decaying and anachronistic empire that would cease to exist before the end of the decade.  The octogenarian emperor, sad, lonely, and embittered, looked to his authoritarian neighbor to the north as a possible savior.  Instead, its bellicose Kaiser was absorbing Austria into his growing network of client states, a bridge to the wealth of the Middle East and the Lebensraum of Eastern Europe.  Incredibly, the great Hapsburg Empire had evolved into nothing more than a Prussian puppet.

I walk to and fro with my lute

On paths swollen with soft grass.

O beauty!  Flush with love, with life

Unending -- O drunken world!

Ironically, while political and economic institutions across Europe nervously teetered on the brink of collapse, the old continent was blossoming in a great burst of fin de siecle creativity.  In France, what had begun as a visual artistic movement, Impressionism, found new expression in the music of Debussy and Ravel.  An exciting young artist named Pablo Picasso wandered between Madrid and Paris, and in the process invented cubism.  German speaking  artists in Central Europe went in a different direction.  These Expressionists looked at the world in decidedly harsher tones than their Latin counterparts.  Mahler was a part of this group, his music forming a bridge from the romanticism of Wagner and Brahms, to the avant garde atonality of Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern.

Weary people head toward home

To learn once more in sleep

Forgotten happiness and youth!

The birds perch quietly on the branches.

The world falls asleep!

This great cultural flowering was accompanied by political corruption and decay.  Such had been the case before, in places like seventeenth century Venice, and fourteenth century Constantinople.  Anyone who cared to look could see that Vienna's fate was no less dire than those once great centers of culture. Still, the dying empire gave birth to a nervous splendor.

I seek peace for my lonely heart.

I wander to my homeland, my abode.

I will never roam in the distance.

My heart is quiet and awaits its hour!

As a result of political intrigues and anti-semitism, Mahler was forced to resign his post as Director of the Vienna Court Opera in 1907.  At about the same time, his daughter died from scarlet fever and diptheria.  Mahler himself learned that he was suffering from a terminal heart condition.  These last years of his life were difficult and lonely. Thoughts of death consumed him.  Still, the music swirled in his head.  He had to get it out, and he had to do it quickly.  

Mahler's end of life burst of creative energy produced some of the most sublime and heartbreaking music ever composed.  Both Das Lied von der Erde and his Ninth Symphony are gigantic works, each consisting of well over an hour of music, always complex, at times exquisitely beautiful, at other times dark, discordant, and foreboding. 

Years ago, I read an essay by Leonard Bernstein in which he holds up Mahler as the perfect representation of early twentieth century music. His late works predicted the catastrophe of the two world wars, and offered a sense of resolution, some might say resignation, to the approaching Götterdämerung. 

Perhaps so.  I really don't know.  But I do know this:  Mahler is the apex of fin de siecle Viennese culture.  The beauty of his music leaves me both melancholy and hopeful.  The last "Lied" of the Song of the Earth is called "Der Abschied", or "The Departure."  It contains the most magnificent vocal music that I have ever heard.  The piece ends with no real musical resolution.  It fades way, with the singer almost imperceptibly uttering "ewig...ewig...", "forever...forever...", the orchestra answering in equally hushed tones while the harp and celesta evoke an otherworldly ascendance.   The message of death and eternal life carries a shattering emotional resonance.  Ultimately, there is hope.

Everywhere the dear earth

Blossoms into spring, and turns green anew.

Everywhere, forever, blue light shines in the distance!

Forever...forever

Forever...forever

Forever...

 Mahler:  Das Lied von der Erde

"Der Abschied", final 5 1/2 minutes