# Understanding Das Lied von der Erde VI (Finale)



## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

_*VI - Der Abschied*_*

Form*

_Part 1_

0:00~1:30 Introduction (C minor)
1:30~2:51 Recitative (C minor)
2:51~4:56 Closing (C minor/major)

4:56~8:43 Song (C/F major/minor)
8:43~10:03 Coda (F major/D minor)

10:03~11:30 Recitative (A minor)

11:30~12:34 Instrumental introduction (B-flat major)
12:34~14:51 Song (B-flat major)
14:51~15:29 Instrumental coda (A minor)

_Part 2_

15:29~20:57 Funereal interlude (C minor)

20:57~24:07 Recitative (C minor->C major)
24:07~26:06 Closing (C minor)

26:06~27:39 Song (C/F major)

27:39~31:10 Transfiguration (C major)

This movement uses two texts (plus additional lines by Mahler), separated by the two part-division listed above:
http://www.recmusic.org/lieder/get_text.html?TextId=20698
http://www.recmusic.org/lieder/get_text.html?TextId=45096

Immediately following the high register A major chord (with a C#) of _Der Trunkene_, the C sounding in the lowest register of the orchestra accompanied by tamtam comes as a shock. In fact, the bass region has been little-utilized for the entire duration of the piece until this point, heightening the effect of this moment considerably.

Like _Der Einsame im Herbst_, the slow sections of the movement are accompanied by a relatively static tonality, and the more fluid chromaticism of the song sections is associated with life and striving rather than death or morbidity.

On a poetic level, this movement recapitulates several motifs found elsewhere in the cycle: spring, greenery (as opposed to cold and winter), a horse (here the rider stops and dismounts), loneliness, and, implicitly, death. Mahler's optimistic coda, like that he added to the Second Symphony's resurrection ode, once again recasts death in a humanist light, and this coda is neither resigned nor etiolated, but rather rejoicing and contented. The reversal of the opening pentatonic horn call into a luxuriant added-sixth chord completes the cycle motivically.

*Themes*

The plaintive call, first heard on oboe, that opens the movement.









The alto's recitative, marked "without expression".









An inversion of the opening of the first movement becomes a gentle rising figure in the winds.









The singing violin line becomes the singer's "Ewig!"









The motif that heads the funeral march.









*Analysis*

The finale begins with a guttural C sounded by contrabassoon, horns, harps, and low strings in their lowest register, backed by the resonant ringing of the tamtam. On the third stroke, a lone oboe enters with a plaintive call turning around C, and the other two horns fill in the remaining notes of the minor triad as an echo. A pause as all sense of time seems to vanish, and the oboe's cry turns into a question. The horns descend in thirds, and the violins draw the music towards C major, in a fluid response to the oboe's line. Major turns back to minor with a chromatic scale played by oboe and flute. The bassoons take up the horns' descending thirds against pendular fifths on the harp.

The music pauses on a low C in the cellos, which continues as the singer begins her recitative, accompanied by descending thirds on the bassoons and a lone flute that forms the oboe's question into a flowing countermelody floating far above the alto's line. After a rhythmically free cadenza in the flute dies away, the low C of the opening returns on counterbassoon and harps with the descending thirds transferred to trilling clarinets. The oboe asks its question twice more, but the singer pulls the music into an emphatic if muted C major. At the end of her phrase, an undulating line on winds and harps leaves her line unresolved, hovering around G minor. The oboe's call is now repeated in that key, and careens chromatically downward against the pendular motion of the harps in a four against three cross-rhythm. The singer's line is reduced to that simple pendular motion as well, and the flute takes up the oboe's opening lament, returned to C. The orchestra trails off ambiguously on an F minor chord.

Harp and clarinets return to the pendular movement, now in a halting triplet followed by a duplet (the so-called Bruckner rhythm). The oboe sounds its call, now implying F major, now beginning a rhythmically free recitative. The pendular figures move into the violas, and the oboe finishes inconclusively. When the harps and clarinets return, the singer enters, with a new lyrical melody in F major against the recitative of the flute. The violins answer, and the music is poised on the edge of C major, but a series of successive outbursts remains unresolved on a C minor chord. The undulating clarinets and harp begin again, answered first by the oboe and then by the singer, once again in an implied F major. The violins take over with a lyrical countermelody followed by the cellos taking the opening call into B-flat, and the tonality hovers ambiguously around C-sharp while the alto sings a duet with a solo cello. The violins sing out once more, leading to a descending line in clarinets and low strings. A low tremolo on basses signals the move back into F, but the texture is more fragmented than before, and over a pedal on A, the singer intones "the world sleeps" in halting thirds.

A chromatic descent on the bassoon leads to the pendular thirds, now implying A minor. The bass clarinet takes up the opening call. The harps stop, and over an A pedal in the basses, the singer begins the second recitative, backed by arabesques in the flute. Both trail off, and a new pattern begins in the harps, backed gently by mandolin. A flute plays a pentatonic figure, haltingly at first, ascending bit by bit. When it reaches an octave, strings enter with a B-flat major chord and a new falling line (example 4 above). The rhythm becomes free and the mood darkens to the minor against a long C-sharp against which the clarinets join the flutes in the earlier pentatonic figure, implying B-flat minor. The singer's entrance, echoing the falling violin line, pushes the music back into the major. The long-silent brass enter and the intensity builds as the singer asks after her interlocutor. The crescendo is cut off suddenly, and the flutes and harps begin as before, as if unaffected by the outpouring of emotion. The singer begins again, and the earlier entrance of the brass signals the start of another crescendo, dying away at the singer's "love-drunk world". The violins trail off once more, and the English horn takes up the call against an increasingly fragmentary texture. A cello solo fails to take off, and the harps now seem to intimate E-flat major.

A tremolo in the contrabasses brings back the dark C minor of the opening, the rich sound of the English horn now taking the oboe's place. Instead of the expected reprise of the introduction, however, low strings and brass add a new motif counter to the English horn, beginning as a simple turn inwards to C. This grows in intensity, and there is a brief pause, and an attempt to extend the motif into a theme. Another pause follows, and the winds take up the motif, turning it into a slow dirge, backed at first only by staccato horns and pizzicato low strings. The full string group joins, and the violins play the opening motif, but repeat it obsessively instead of continuing on, and the winds pick it up once again. Now the violins take up the theme in full, but not rooted to C minor as before. The violins break off and the winds play a new variation on the theme in C, fortissimo. The full complement of winds and brass play a guttural C. The low strings descend to their lowest notes. The upper winds comment mournfully, and all once again dissipates into a single C on the low strings.

The singer enters again, backed only by the pedal point and the dull resonance of the tamtam. Her recitative is as before, but the lack of accompaniment highlights the bleak nature of both words and setting. At the end of her line, the bassoons add their descending thirds and the cellos enter with the funereal motif. The oboe asks its question, and the orchestra comes to a halt. The singer adds an ambiguous interpolation of her own, and another pause follows. The question and thirds motifs follow, but the mood subsequently brightens with the appearance of the major mode, but the continued presence of the earlier motifs sustains the melancholic mood. The mode shifts between major and minor as the singer tells her interlocutor where she must go. After a brief interlude for the winds ending in a descending line on English horn, there is silence.

Pendular thirds on the English horn and then, as before, clarinet and harps signal a return to F major, and the alto begins her rhythmically free and freely accompanied song. But after a few lines, the tempo slows and, against tremolo strings come halting fragments from the winds, and then a fermata on a high E. A burst of C major on the strings and harps accompanies the singer as she takes up the falling line the violins had earlier introduced. A constant three against four polyrhythm underscores the independence of the various lines, all hushed in a spirit of transfiguration. The violins grow rhapsodic as the alto sings the word "ewig" (forever) in a rarefied ethereal haze of winds, harps, and celesta. The winds gently intone the pentatonic theme of the opening inverted into a gentle lullaby. The singer's words become longer and quieter, her final "ewig" left hanging on D. The orchestra disperses, leaving only cellos, first violins, and trombones for the final contented C major chord, pillowed by an A played by a single flute and oboe.

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