# What type of piece is DLVDE



## mahlernerd (Jan 19, 2020)

Ah, one of the greatest debates in classical music. The famed work by Mahler, who supposedly composed this as a symphony but disguised it as a song cycle to beat the “curse of the ninth.” There is much debate to this day whether or not Das Lied von der Erde is a symphony or a song cycle. Which is it to you? Say why you think this as well.

P.S. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s already a thread about this, so I’m sorry if there is.


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## bz3 (Oct 15, 2015)

It's a cantata. So is his 8th symphony.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Mahler called it a symphony. If he had intended it to be a song cycle, he would have called it a song cycle.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

bz3 said:


> It's a cantata. So is his 8th symphony.


No.  Cantata is not some junk category you can lump everything with an orchestra and vocals into.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Art Rock said:


> Mahler called it a symphony. If he had intended it to be a song cycle, he would have called it a song cycle.


If my German is correct:

*The Lies of the Erda*
A Symphony

For a tenor or an alternate (older baritone) singer and orchestra
(No Hans, suffer death by Chinese flute)

By Gustav Mahler
(partially)

Universal Edition


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

Art Rock said:


>





Couchie said:


> If my German is correct:
> 
> *The Lies of the Erda*
> A Symphony
> ...


Your German looks Greek to me, and I guess that means it's okay … except for your translation of the final word, "partially", which is actually the word which explains what _Das Lied_ is: neither symphony nor song-cycle; rather, it's a Partita.

Bach would have been proud.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Worst. Translation. Ever.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Couchie said:


> No.  Cantata is not some *junk* category you can lump everything with an orchestra and vocals into.


Well, it says on the title page, that it is JUNK









Or it could be an oratorio, based on the story "Das lied on the Earth".

"Das" is actually a surname in some countries.
Samar Das (Bengali: সমর দাস) (December 10, 1925 - September 25, 2001) was a Bangladeshi musician and composer. He became one of the most important music directors in Pakistan and subsequently Bangladesh and was the composer of over 2,000 songs.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

I think the most plausible answer is "Both! It’s half and half", and it's coded into the abbreivated letters "DLVDE". The letter " L " is made up of 2 lines; 1 horizontal line and 1 vertical line, jointed together at their ends perpendicularly. If you divide them and rotate the horizontal line 90 degrees to convert it to a vertical line, we get 2 get two vertical lines, " I I ". Insert them into the abbreviation, we get "DIIVDE". Then reorder the letters to get "DIVIDE". So what Mahler is trying to say through his "code" is that the nature of the work is "divided" into multiple genres. It contains an element that makes it a "symphony", as well as an element that makes it a "song cycle".

Btw, Mahler died 109 years ago today.


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## flamencosketches (Jan 4, 2019)

A few months ago I would have wholeheartedly voted "Song Cycle" but I had to say half and half. It is both symphony and song cycle, and neither one nor the other.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

I've never spent any amount of time debating it whatsoever. It's simply a 'terrific piece of music."


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

It is both but it is not "half and half" so I couldn't vote.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

I don't think of it as a song cycle - I would suggest that the length of _Der Abschied_ alone makes it far too lop-sided for that category. I couldn't think of it as an oratorio either since there's no choir. At a push, cantata would come closest in my book.

Mahler designated it as a symphony so that's good enough for me at least. It's always struck me as more of a symphony than his 8th at any rate.


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## Allegro Con Brio (Jan 3, 2020)

Well, I certainly don’t think of it as “symphonic” in any sort of commonly accepted sense. My brain says it can be nothing else than a song cycle. But Mahler obviously saw it as a symphony. Gustav, I’ve already violated your wishes once by preferring S/A in the 6th, so I’ll give this one to you - it’s a symphony!


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## bz3 (Oct 15, 2015)

Couchie said:


> No.  Cantata is not some junk category you can lump everything with an orchestra and vocals into.


On the contrary, I don't feel that the symphony is a 'junk category' we should lump entirely vocal works into any more than we should with opera. The 8th has little besides motivic development in common with a symphony, and the song of the earth is clearly structured as a series of songs.

At worst I'm being reductive and contrary to Mahler's wishes (at least with regard to the 8th). However since neither work strictly _is_ anything I feel the cantata is most fair because the pieces lack a real narrative drive to make them oratorios and they utterly lack almost everything that makes a symphony - that is, unless you _do_ define a symphony as a 'junk category.'


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## Coach G (Apr 22, 2020)

This is all Berlioz' fault for setting the precedent of blurring categories. Is _Harold in Italy_ a symphony or a viola concerto? Is _Romeo and Juliet_ an opera or a symphony? Is _Damnation of Faust_ an oratorio or opera?

On the one hand, Mahler's _Song of the Earth_ makes for a very unconventional symphony, but was apparently identified as a symphony by the composer, at least until he thought he had cheated death. On the other hand, the "songs" of the "song cycle" are too long and too symphonic to really be considered to be songs.

_Song of the Earth_ was one of those pieces that mystified me until my own middle age (it's message and meaning concern middle age, facing one's mortality, existential crisis, etc.). Some guys deal with it by trading in their wife for a younger model, buying a sports car, and dying their hair black; I became fixated on _Song of the Earth_.

There are lots of great recordings of _Song of the Earth_. Two of my favorites are Rene Kollo/Christa Ludwig/Leonard Bernstein/Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, and Rene Kollo/Christa Ludwig/Herbert Karajan/Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra; same soloists with different conductors and orchestras; the former more spacious and spontaneous, and the later more polished and measured.

There's also a wonderful version for baritone featuring the unbeatable dynamic duo of Fritz Wunderlich and Dietrich Fischer-Diskau with Josef Krips and the Vienna Symphony Orchestra.

Somewhere, I know I have a CD recording of a reduction made for just a few instruments arranged by Arnold Schoenberg and recorded by the "Orchestra of the Swan"; no idea who they are, and the names of conductor and soloists also escape my memory at the moment, but it retains all Mahler's musical vision and is quite nice.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

This should be a no-brainer: Mahler labeled it a symphony, so symphony it is. The term "symphony" means more than what Haydn, Beethoven, and Brahms wrote:

def: an elaborate instrumental composition in three or more movements, similar in form to a sonata but written for an orchestra and usually of far grander proportions and more varied elements.

And *Partitur* is simply the German word for "score".


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## brunumb (Dec 8, 2017)

It's a concerto for voice and orchestra. :devil:


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

I agree that it's a cantata but it could also be a hybrid like the Third Symphony which is a cantata surrounded by a symphony.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

So, Beethoven's 9th is a cantata preceded by a symphony?


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## Allegro Con Brio (Jan 3, 2020)

Does “symphony” have a concrete definition, or is it just “if the composer called it a symphony, it’s a symphony?” I for one do not consider Berio’s Sinfonia and Gorecki’s 3rd to be “symphonies” in any sort of recognizable sense. I would like to hear the composers’ rationales for calling these works symphonies. Alas, we never shall.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

Can I suggest that several commentators here should get a good music dictionary or encyclopedia and look up some basic terms? Such as CANTATA? It's a narrative story, DLVDE is not a cantata, whereas Das Klagende Lied is: it tells a story.

Symphony has several definitions. The 3rd, 8th, and DLVDE may not be symphonies as Haydn or Beethoven or Dvorak might have thought about it, but by a more flexible definition they most certainly are. The human voice is just another instrument, and there have been quite a few symphonies with voices - solo and more - and without or without words.


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## flamencosketches (Jan 4, 2019)

Allegro Con Brio said:


> Does "symphony" have a concrete definition, or is it just "if the composer called it a symphony, it's a symphony?" I for one do not consider Berio's Sinfonia and Gorecki's 3rd to be "symphonies" in any sort of recognizable sense. I would like to hear the composers' rationales for calling these works symphonies. Alas, we never shall.


Why is Górecki's 3rd not a symphony to you? What makes it any different than, say, Mahler's 4th?


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## Allegro Con Brio (Jan 3, 2020)

flamencosketches said:


> Why is Górecki's 3rd not a symphony to you? What makes it any different than, say, Mahler's 4th?


Seems more like a short song cycle or solo cantata to me. But I forgot that it does have extended portions for orchestra alone that make it more "symphonic" rather than the more intimate nature of a song cycle/cantata, so maybe I retract that comment.


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## flamencosketches (Jan 4, 2019)

Allegro Con Brio said:


> Seems more like a short song cycle or solo cantata to me. But I forgot that it does have extended portions for orchestra alone that make it more "symphonic" rather than the more intimate nature of a song cycle/cantata, so maybe I retract that comment.


I'm pretty sure there's more purely instrumental music than vocal music in the symphony. That being said, it might be seen as a kind of "song-symphony" along the lines of Das Lied von der Erde. Wherever we fall on DLvdE, Górecki's 3rd belongs there too. But please, not "cantata".


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