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Title
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[Mahler, black ink:] Um
Mitternacht |
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Date |
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[Mahler, black ink, below
title:] (componirt entweder 1899 oder 1900) |
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Calligraphy |
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Main text: dark brown ink, pencil |
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Paper |
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16 staves, J.E. &
Cọ
, Nọ
4, 16 linig, upright format, watermark
?, 330 x 260 (r=???) |
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Manuscript structure and collation |
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Provenance |
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Gift from Mahler to William Ritter, 1908;
inherited by Josef Ritter-Tcherv (Ritter's adopted son), 1955;
purchased by Henry Louis de La Grange, 1961; now at the La
Grange-Fleuret Music Library, Bibliothèques Royaumont, Paris. |
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Facsimiles |
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None currently available |
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Select Bibliography |
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FDLG, 3;
SWXIII/4,
xi;
SWXIV/4,
xi |
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Notes |
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The manuscript has at the top of fol. 1
the following autograph note in black ink, written no doubt at
the same time as the title of the song and the note about the
date of the work were added:
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Herrn William Ritter bittet der
Author, diese Zeilen von seiner Hand als ein Zeichen
seiner Freundschaft anzunehmen. Wien, 1908, Gustav
Mahler. |
The author asks Mr William Ritter to accept these
lines in his hand as a mark of his friendship.
Vienna, 1908, Gustav Mahler. |
William Ritter
(1867–1955) was a Swiss writer and critic whose initially
ambivalent (though outwardly wholly negative) response to
Mahler's music, notably the première of the Fourth Symphony at
Munich in 1901, was dominated by his anti-semitism; but this was
gradually transformed into intense admiration and friendship
(see in particular
HLGII, 395ff.;
HLGIII,
509ff;
HLGIV, 252ff.) The circumstances that led up to this
gift are recounted in two of Ritter's publications about Mahler,
an essay on the Seventh Symphony dating from the summer of 1912
(WRcGM,
141), and some rather later reminiscences about
Mahler published in 1946 (WRcGM,
36). The earlier account is the most detailed, and
recalls Mahler's preparations for the first performance of the
Seventh Symphony in Prague which took place on 19 September
1908:
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... Mahler pouvait jusqu'à la
dernière minute de la dernière répétition ratiociner,
essayer, supprimer, corriger, transporter d'un
instrument à l'autre. En dirigeant, ou rentré chez
lui à l'hotel, il jetait ses idées de modifications
sur des bouts de papier quelconques... J'en ai
conservé quelques-ons ramassés derrière sons dos,
lorsque la correction avait été faite sur le
manuscrit....Il surprit une fois mon geste
humblement pieux...«Non laiisez cela.... Je ne veux
pas que vous ramassiez de telles choses... Je vous
enverrai mieux... J'ai un manuscrit pour vous
justement en ce moment. Je vous l'enverrai au
retour, de Vienna.» Et j'eus à moi dédié le
manuscrit du beau Lied si profond Um
Mitternacht ... et qui m'arriva das des
circonstances ou il semblait comme écrit pour moi.... |
... Until the last minute of the last
rehearsal Mahler would consider, try out, delete,
correct, transfer from one instrument to another. On
his way back to his hotel, he scribbled his ideas
for revisions onto bits of paper... I have kept some
of them, picked up behind his back after the
correction had been made in the manuscript. ... Once
he surprised me in this gesture of humble piety ...
'No, leave that ... I do not want you to collect
such things ... I will send you something better ...
at the moment I have a manuscript just right for
you. I will send it to you from Vienna when I
return.' And I had the manuscript of the beautiful
and profound Lied, Um Mitternacht,
dedicated to myself ... in circumstances
in which it seemed as if written for me .... |
The autograph
note about the date of composition, written, no doubt, at
the same time as the dedication to Ritter, is in error: the
song was certainly one of those composed by Mahler in the
summer of 1901, though the date of this fair copy is
unknown. In this context it is worth noting that the
16-stave paper is not one that Mahler used frequently; that
in this version the song is four bars shorter than the
composition draft (SS6)
and the other surviving manuscript and printed sources
because Mahler experimented with the re-barring of the six
bars, 78–83, into two bars of 6/2; and that, unlike the two
other known autographs of the song (the
composition draft
and the autograph full score), it is notated in B minor (not
B
minor) and includes no instructions about possible
transposition. So one has to consider the possibility that
this manuscript was prepared after publication, perhaps in
1908, as a presentation copy for Ritter.
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