by Kenneth Woods | Jan 18, 2007 | A view from the podium, Mahler
If this is your first visit to this thread, you may wish to start from the first song of the cycle, which you can read about and listen to here. One of the recurring literary themes of Kindertotenlieder is the notion of haunting. Wenn dein Mutterlein is the poem that...
by Kenneth Woods | Jan 10, 2007 | A view from the podium, Mahler
Finally, on to the emotional heart of the cycle, “Wenn dein Mutterlein.” If the text of the second song is the most intense, the music of this song is probably the most overtly funereal. Mahler even marks the tempo as schwer (heavy) and dumpf (dull or muffled). If...
by Kenneth Woods | Jan 10, 2007 | A view from the podium, Favorite posts, Mahler, Nuts and bolts
Music, even vocal music, is ultimately an abstract art form. Musical ideas, even those attached to words, are inherently abstract. Nevertheless, we all find ourselves searching for the meaning of musical ideas. Wagner went so far as to assign meanings to themes...
by Kenneth Woods | Jan 9, 2007 | A view from the podium, Mahler, Nuts and bolts
There are some pieces of music which are widely misunderstood because they’re too popular. I had a “teacher” in grad school who taught the History of Opera course who thought Puccini was an idiot because he was popular, and that we should all be listening to Pfitzner...
by Kenneth Woods | Jan 7, 2007 | A view from the podium, Mahler
On to the second song now, and back into the capable hands of Mitch Friedfeld. From a purely subjective point of view, I find this is in many ways the most anguished of all the songs. This poem contains the most intense imagery and the most stylized and heightened use...
by Kenneth Woods | Jan 7, 2007 | A view from the podium, Explore the Score, Mahler, Nuts and bolts
As promised, I would like to try to backtrack to the time this film was shot and just throw in a bit of a performers perspective on the first song of the cycle. It’s quite common for non-musicians to say things along the lines of “you must feel so lucky to get to do...
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