The Opera Mahler Never Wrote

At this week's performances of Mahler's 8th Symphony in Toronto, the program reproduced a newspaper interview with Andrew Davis (then the Toronto Symphony's music director) at the time of the first Toronto performances of the 8th in 1983.  Davis said that Part 2 of the Symphony was the closest Mahler ever came to the opera he never wrote.

I respectfully beg to differ with Maestro Davis.  Mahler got closer right at the beginning of his career, with an intensely dramatic cantata entitled Das klagende Lied.  The German verb klagen has two meanings, so the title can be translated as "The Song of Lamentation" or "The Song of Accusation" -- and both meanings are implicit in the libretto.

The story, drawn from the brothers Grimm, tells of a proud and haughty Queen who will marry the first man to bring her a certain rare flower from the forest.  Two brothers, one fair and one dark, set out to search.  The fair-haired brother finds the flower, then lies down to sleep.  The dark-haired brother kills him and takes the flower back to the Queen.  She agrees to marry him.

A minstrel finds the bones of the dead brother in the forest, and carves a bone flute for himself.  When he plays it, the flute speaks, telling how the fair-haired knight died.  The minstrel appears at the wedding feast and plays his flute.  The new king seizes it from him, and plays it himself.  The flute accuses him directly, brother to brother.  The wedding guests flee in horror, the Queen faints, the castle collapses.

The music Mahler composed for this gruesome legend stretches across a huge emotional gamut, from gentle quiet forest sounds to the roaring turmoil of the end of the wedding feast.  The poetic libretto, which he wrote himself, does not include speaking parts for any of the characters except the bone flute, but the main characters are so clearly drawn in the narration that the net effect is as much of an opera as a concert work.  There are extensive parts for four vocal soloists and choir, and the standard late Romantic orchestra is used.  This sounds pretty conventional, but the elements of psychodrama found in this material by Mahler are so effectively expressed in music that you can come away with your hair standing on end after listening to it.  An excellent example is the depiction in music of the King's rage when the minstrel plays the bone flute -- and the contrasting eerie stillness right before the King begins playing the flute..

The alto voice provides the song of the flute when the minstrel plays.  However, when the King seizes the flute the voice instead becomes a soprano, singing a more extended and florid version of the song, the literal "song of accusation" indicated by the title.  Motifs from throughout the cantata come thick and fast as the story rushes to its climax.

Another memorable moment, and a clear foretaste of the mature Mahler, comes at the beginning of the wedding scene where an offstage brass band provides celebratory music in alternation with the onstage orchestra.  Many times in his symphonies Mahler would use the element of distance and space in his music, separating instruments, placing them offstage or "at a distance".

After a first performance,  Mahler suppressed the first part of the cantata (which depicts the murder) for reasons which remain unclear.  Thus, Das klagende Lied was published as a two-part work and played that way for years.  The manuscript of the original first part was finally published in the 1960s, and I would not recommend any performance that does not include it.

I have a CD copy of the first recording to include Part 1.  That was made for Columbia (now Sony) Records in London by Pierre Boulez.  Curiously, it has a different soloist in Part 1 because he got permission to record that after the other 2 parts had already been set down.  On LP it was always a bit fuzzy, but the CD remaster has been all benefit, the sound now clear and firm throughout.  A more recent EMI digital recording was made in Birmingham by Simon Rattle, also good, but I give Boulez the edge on 2 counts.  First, his performance seems to me more raw-edged in its emotions, a most necessary condition.  And second, the EMI engineers placed the offstage band in part 3  too far away from the microphones, making it hard to hear unless you turn the volume up -- in which case, the next entry of the full orchestra will just about blow through your eardrums.

I hope the Toronto Symphony management will soon be persuaded to stage a complete performance of Das klagende Lied -- I've been waiting a long time to hear this rarity live.  In the meantime, I am now going to go and listen to the Boulez recording again!