Talk of flogging a dead horse. At times, life just likes to knock you down, spit on your face, and trample over your body. But even this metaphor cannot come close to what occurred to Gustav Mahler in the summer of 1907.
The growing spirit of antisemitism forced him to resign as Director of the Vienna Court Opera, despite his long and glorious career. His eldest daughter Maria died after suffering from scarlet fever and diphtheria. To add insult to injury, the composer himself was diagnosed with a congenital heart defect.
It’s not surprising that Mahler, enduring the worst period of his life, turned to the arts for salvation – and to seek some form of transcendence – some form of escaping and emerging out of the abyss he found himself in – in the depiction of beauty. He was inspired by Hans Bethge’s Die Chinesische Flöte (The Chinese Flute) which was also published in 1907. He adapted six of Bethge’s poems and set them to music in his Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth).
The symphony incorporates Mahler’s typical uncomfortable style. I don’t mean that in a negative sense: Mahler composed in a transitionary period between High Romanticism and (very) early Modernism. Consequently, in his music we constantly feel the pressure of modernity, the growing uncertainties regarding tradition, and the onslaught of the inevitable collapse of the Romantic spirit.
Unlike his previous symphonies, however, Erde doesn’t only contain a sense of cultural pressure, but also a spirit of personal tragedy. The six songs explore themes such as living and dying, parting, salvation and solitude. Indeed: Li Bai – the Chinese poet of the Tang dynasty from whom Bethge derived many of his poems – was an expert at writing about those themes, which we can also see in Ezra Pound’s volume of poetry Cathay.
The first movement in A minor, the ‘Trinklied vom Jammer der Erde’ (‘The Drinking Song of the Earth’s Sorrow’) is a heart-wrenching piece depicting a depressed drunkard drowning his sorrow in wine. Rather than suffering in solitude, however, he halts the drunken exaltations and announces his resentfulness at the world.
For your pleasure, here is the text of the song, quoted from Lieder.net because I’m lazy, with my own translation; the text is still under copyright in the EU by YinYang Media Verlag:
| Das Trinklied vom Jammer der Erde Schon winkt der Wein im gold'nen Pokale, Doch trinkt noch nicht, erst sing' ich euch ein Lied! Das Lied vom Kummer soll auflachend in die Seele euch klingen. Wenn der Kummer naht, liegen wüst die Gärten der Seele, Welkt hin und stirbt die Freude, der Gesang. Dunkel ist das Leben, ist der Tod. Herr dieses Hauses! Dein Keller birgt die Fülle des goldenen Weins! Hier, diese Laute nenn' ich mein! Die Laute schlagen und die Gläser leeren, Das sind die Dinger, die zusammen passen. Ein voller Becher Weins zur rechten Zeit Ist mehr wert, als alle Reiche dieser Erde! Dunkel ist das Leben, ist der Tod! Das Firmament blaut ewig, und die Erde Wird lange fest steh'n und aufblüh'n im Lenz. Du aber, Mensch, wie lang lebst denn du? Nicht hundert Jahre darfst du dich ergötzen An all dem morschen Tande dieser Erde! Seht dort hinab! Im Mondschein auf den Gräbern Hockt eine wild-gespenstische Gestalt -- Ein Aff'ist's! Hört ihr, wie sein Heulen Hinausgellt in den süßen Duft des Lebens! Jetzt nehmt den Wein! Jetzt ist es Zeit, Genossen! Leert eure gold'nen Becher zu Grund! Dunkel ist das Leben, ist der Tod! | The Drinking Song of the Earth’s Sorrow Now the wine beckons in a golden cup, But don’t drink yet, first I’ll sing you a song! The song of sorrow shall laughingly sound in your soul. When sorrow nears, the gardens of the soul lie waste, The joys and the songs wither and die. Dark is Life, dark is Death. Lord of this house! Your cellar holds the wealth of the golden wine! Here, this lute I call mine! To play the lute and to drain the glasses, These are the things that go so well together. A filled cup of wine at the right time Is worth more than all the kingdoms of this Earth! Dark is Life, dark is Death. The heaven’s blue lasts forever, and the Earth Will stand for long and blossom in Spring. But you, human, how long do you live? Not a hundred years may you regale In all the rotten baubles of this Earth! Look down there! In the moonlight on the graves Squats a wild and ghostly figure – It’s an ape! Hear you, how its howling Consorts in the sweet scent of Life! Now take the wine! Now it is time, my friends! Drink your golden cups to the drain! Dark is Life, dark is Death! |
The song opens with the bombastic sound of the full orchestra, as the speaker relishes in the chance to drink to his heart’s content. But before indulging in his pleasures, he tells his friends to halt for a moment: ‘first I’ll sing you a song!’. As the listener awaits to hear what the drunkard will sing about, the music’s harmonies still indicate that it will be a song of joy.
The speaker, however, announces that it will be a song of sorrow – which will ‘laughingly sing in your soul’. At this moment there is a change both in key and tone, indicating the dark nature of the song. This is developed in the following lines:
When sorrow nears, the gardens of the soul lie waste,
The joys and the songs wither and die.
The speaker concedes that sorrow is the ultimate cause of suffering, and that it completely wastes any form of development or joy we might have had at any point in our lives – all joys and even songs come to an end. This is culminated in the song’s refrain, ‘Dark is Life, dark is Death.’
In a clever twist, Mahler returns to the song’s opening harmonies at the beginning of the second stanza. With major cords and an elongated version of the melody from the start, the speaker tries to distract himself from his sorrows:
Lord of this house!
Your cellar holds the wealth of the golden wine!
Here, this lute I call mine!
To play the lute and to drain the glasses,
These are the things that go so well together.
At this point, the drunkard seems to be indulging in decadence – in excessive pleasures. But the unspoken sadness of these lines is this: he only ever plays the lute and sings when he is getting drunk. What follows is the acknowledgement that when he isn’t drinking he also isn’t singing. The change in harmony to minor keys in the following lines suggest that view. Although still praising the joys of wine-drinking, the music repeats the depressing tone of the wasted gardens of the soul from the first stanza:
A filled cup of wine at the right time
Is worth more than all the kingdoms of this Earth!
In other words, the speaker cannot experience any kind of joy while sober. These lines aren’t a celebration, but an utterance of bitter defeat and growing resentfulness. As he concedes after these lines again, ‘Dark is Life, dark is Death’.
As though this wasn’t depressing enough, the speaker doesn’t join in the somewhat-uplifting harmonies in the following instrumental section. Instead, the orchestra does its own thing until he utters his discontents in a new section with a new melody. And his outrage at the world is at its clearest here:
The heaven’s blue lasts forever, and the Earth
Will stand for long and blossom in Spring.
But you, human, how long do you live?
Not a hundred years may you regale
In all the rotten baubles of this Earth!
The speaker contrasts the never-ending natural world and how it seems to proceed without human intervention, whereas the sad reality of humanity is that they die eventually – not even one hundred years are we allowed to live. And what do we do in that comparatively short amount of time? ‘Regale in all the rotten baubles of this Earth!’ In other words, life’s a shit and then we die.
This also provides us with the only slight hint at what has happened to the drunkard: since he is bemoaning the shortness of human life, it might be that he has lost a loved one – and life without anything that offers transcendence only leaves him with insufficient pleasures. But at this stage, he is particularly resentful, seeing his fellow humans as little more than animals:
Look down there! In the moonlight on the graves
Squats a wild and ghostly figure –
It’s an ape! Hear you, how its howling
Consorts in the sweet scent of Life!
In this state of utter cynicism, the speaker sees us all as apes who squat on graves in the moonlight. There is nothing beautiful in it. The only – admittedly very slim – sense of hope comes from the fact that this ape is at least enjoying the ‘sweet scent of life’. But given all that has come before, this is hardly good consolation. No: the final lines, too, reek of depression. Having uttered his tragedy – as detached and impersonal as he possibly can – the speaker finally invites his friends to drink with him.
Now take the wine! Now it is time, my friends!
Drink your golden cups to the drain!
And, finally, he repeats the refrain for the last time.
Dark is Life, dark is Death!
Depression is a face that wears a mask. Those who endure it know how hard it can be to speak about issues that plague the soul; in such cases, intoxication often leads to outcries of the calibre Mahler demonstrates in this haunting song.
A recording of the entire Das Lied von der Erde, conducted by the great Leonard Bernstein; ‘The Drinking Song of the Earth’s Sorrow’ runs from 0:00-8:30:
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