Mahler's attempt to avoid fate failed, as his oeuvre also ended with the ominous Ninth Symphony, and his Tenth Symphony remained unfinished.
Compositional Technique
Das Lied von der Erde combines elements of a song cycle and a symphony, with its first movement functioning as both a strophic song and a sonata movement.
Composer Biography
Three events in 1907 plunged Mahler into a life crisis: the death of his eldest daughter, his forced retirement from the Vienna Court Opera, and the diagnosis of a heart condition that would lead to his death.
Composition History
Gustav Mahler composed Das Lied von der Erde, a symphonic cantata, without assigning it a number to avoid the fate of other composers whose ninth symphonies were their last works.
Composer's Artistic Vision
The deciding factor for Mahler in choosing the Chinese poems for Das Lied von der Erde was the underlying theme of transience and premonition of death that permeated them.
Critical Reception
Arnold Schönberg described Das Lied von der Erde as the one work of Mahler's that 'reached the furthest into the future,' despite Mahler's other symphonies sometimes irritating listeners with their 'shockingly collage-like insertions of trivial material'.
Composition History
Mahler did not live to see the premiere of Das Lied von der Erde; it was conducted by his student, assistant, and friend Bruno Walter six months after Mahler's death.
