Upon listening to Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder, I get a sense of the Sigmond Freud posture of the late 19th century, as it shows up in much of the orchestration throughout the set. Haunting chromatic passages seeping up and down the texture make one think about that dreadful object or event that is just around the corner from them. One never knows when it shall strike, but it will strike when we least expect it. I can see in this music how one’s psyche can be effected by the music itself. It is at points unsettling, questioning of life and death’s sorrows and at points grandness. I like how Mahler draws out the orchestral accompaniment to sometimes portray bitter-sweet moments contrasting those with the darkest tinges of dissonance. The melodies are often soft and colorful, perhaps just like the nature of children. Kindertotenlieder is not just about the death of children, but in some glimpses of the orchestration, the memory of when the children were living, and that those memories, often demonstrated in a major sounding tonality, ultimately bring back the saddest assurances that the children are no longer living. Hence, the dissonant and minor sounding contrasts.
The various pieces in the set contrast from a bittersweet, almost joyful mood to the saddest, most tearing and heart-wrenching pieces as in In diesem Wetter from the set. Upon hearing the beginning of the piece with its marching strings going chromatically downward gave way to the thought of something of a march, as if death calls for the children. Death has struck. The low strings start the chromatic, downward movement while the upper strings and high woodwinds do this riff of fourths in a pizzicato style (A-D-D, A-D-A) in a triplet motion.
The English horn starts this melodic figure D-E-F, D-E-F that is carried by resounding repeats and chromatic movement in the brass, as to signal a death knell on its way. My observation leads me to think that Mahler is associating cloudy, thunderous weather, as if in the dead of winter is when the death of these children had occured. After much fretting about how death has struck, there is yet a softer side in this piece alone. A pinging light striking the key of A calms down the swelling of the orchestration from a more chromatic to a more traditional sounding harmonic conventions, as if to say the chaos is over and we must move on.The texture goes from A major to narrow orchestration in a D major-centered tonality that ensures the close of a chapter of life and that the end may be bitter but the memory will always stay with the person suffering the loss of the children.
I like how this music causes one to think about dread and varying degrees of sadness greeted by a subtle warmth. It means more to have these images painted in our heads by the lush orchestration that Mahler demonstrates here rather than the music put up on someone’s youtube video after the death of child. All of the tribute videos I’ve seen of tragedies throughout America’s history don’t have the same depth of expression as Mahler’s music has. His music has greater depictions. Pop music doesn’t do the same for this purpose. It doesn’t have quite the sensibility that the classics do.
This set of pieces also teaches important lessons in orchestration to composition students. I believe that listening to sets of important musical literature is more important than sitting in an orchestration class being taught in the tactile format of how to score a piece for different groups. Listening to powerful examples such as this gives the young composer ideas for how to more tastefully orchestrate his own works.
