“When My Sweetheart Is Married,” “This Morning I Walked Over the Field,” “I Have a Gleaming Knife,” and “The Two Blue Eyes of My Beloved” comprise the song cycle known as Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen. The premise of the cycle stems from the Romantic tradition where a young man is betrayed by his lover who rejects him and marries someone else. As a result the protangonist wanders the countryside aimlessly. Mahler wrote this work while at Kassel in 1883 during his unsuccessful love affair with the soprano Johanna Richter.
Song Descriptions and Progressive Tonality
Songs of a Wayfarer relies on a musical technique called “progressive tonality” in which songs begin in one key but end in another. The first song, "Wenn mein Schatz Hochzeit macht" (“When My Sweetheart Is Married,”) conveys the joy of his lover's wedding day but is soon followed by the sadness of the spurned protagonist. Mahler depicts these conflicting emotions with upbeat wind instruments and percussive thoughts against the slowed pensive vocal melody.
"Ging heut' morgen ubers Feld" (“This Morning I Walked Over the Field,”) has an embracing melody that is filled with energy and beauty that depicts the protangonist's joy out in the countryside. The flute is happily functioning and lends a pastoral touch. However, the songs veer off into a sullen mood when the protanganist realizes that his world is incomplete without his lover.
"Ich hab' ein gluhend Messer" (“I Have A Gleaming Knife,”) conveys the protagonist's bitterness bursting forth and the metaphorical knife used to betray and kill the love affair betwen the protagonist and his unfaithful lover. The vocals are emotional and are filled with faster tempos, are louder, and contain harmonic dissonances. The textures and colors in this song convey the strife and the angst the protagonist is feeling and Mahler restrains the use of the orchestra to make his point.
"Die zwei blauen Augen von meinem Schatz" (“The Two Blue Eyes of My Beloved”) is a funeral march that symbolizes the death of the love affair. However, as in the second song, the protagonist finds peace and comfort in nature and falls asleep under a linden tree (a Romantic metaphor for death) that covers him with its blossoms. The harp enters with soft strumming and continues to a soft dreamlike coda.
About Gustav Mahler
Despite having lived a life riddled with joy and tragedies, triumph and hopelessness, Gustav Mahler gave the world unlimited music in the form of operas, symphonies, orchestral song cycles, and vocal works. He is considered one of the world’s most important late-Romantic/early Modernist composers/conductors and is recognized as the last great German symphonist.
From 1893 to 1896, Mahler took summer vacations at Steinbach am Attersee in Upper Austria, where he revised and edited his Symphony No. 1, completed his Symphony No. 2, sketched his Symphony No. 3, and wrote most of the song collection Lieder aus "Des Knaben Wunderhorn" (Songs from 'The Youth's Magic Horn'), based on a famous set of heavily redacted folk-poems.
In 1897 Mahler was offered the directorship of the Vienna State Opera, the most prestigious musical position in the Austrian Empire. Mahler worked at the Opera for nine months of each year for 10 years. During the summers he composed his fifth through eighth symphonies, the Rückert Lieder and Songs on the Death of Children, both based on poems by Friedrich Rückert, and Der Tamboursg'sell, the last of his 'Des Knaben Wunderhorn' settings.
Mahler and his family travelled to America in 1908 where he was employed by the Metropolitan Opera in New York. He conducted one season there before returning to Europe. Mahler later returned to America to conduct the New York Philharmonic. At this time, he completed his Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth), and his Symphony No. 9, which would be his last completed work. The work can be considered a combination of song cycle and symphony.
While in New York, Mahler fell ill in February 1911 and conducted his last concert. He returned to Vienna where he died from an infection on May 18, 1911 at the age of 50, leaving his Symphony No. 10 unfinished. Mahler's symphonies and orchestral songs are now a part of the core repertoire of major symphony orchestras worldwide. In films and other media Mahler's music is used to suggest a character in turmoil, or one with a bohemian personality.
Source: James, Burnett D. 1985. The Music of Gustav Mahler. Rutherford, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press; London: Associated University Press
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