|
Title and Numbering
Until 1916/17 there was no collective title for this group of
songs: up to that date they were published only as individual
Lieder. It is notable that it was not the copyright owner,
C.F. Kahnt Nachfolger, but Universal-Edition (which distributed
the songs under licence from 1910 onwards) that announced in the
November 1916 issue of Hofmeister's Monatsbericht the
first collective volume that brought all the piano and voice
versions together under one cover: such a volume fitted in with
UE's strategy of attempting to establish itself as the
distributor of all of Mahler's original compositions, and there
were clear production and marketing advantages in offering the
songs in a single-volume. When in 1913 UE had acquired a licence
to issue Mahler's earlier Lieder und Gesänge (published
by Schott in Mainz), it was apparently considered advisable to
differentiate that collection from the group of Lieder already
licensed from Kahnt, so the collective volumes were re-titled
14 Lieder und Gesänge (aus der Jugendzeit); when the
collective volume of the Kahnt songs was announced by UE in 1916
it was under a title that was partly modelled on, but
differentiated from that of the earlier collection – Sieben
Lieder aus Letzter Zeit – and this new form was also adopted
for copies subsequently issued by Kahnt. For practical reasons a
collective title is useful in a catalogue such as this, so a
shorted form, Sieben Lieder, has been adopted.
When Mahler reviewed the manuscript copies of the piano and
voice versions of Der Tamboursg'sell (that for Revelge
has not been traced) and the four Rückert settings that were to
be sent to Kahnt in March 1905 (and which were subsequently used
as the printer's copies), he added a number to each song in a
way that suggests that he envisage two distinct groups:
[1.] Revelge; 2. Der Tamboursg'sell
1.
„Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder!‟; 2. „Ich atmet' einen
linden Duft‟;
3. „Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen‟; 4.
Um Mitternacht
Thus, although Mahler specified no ordering of the groups
in these annotations, the ordering of the songs on
printed title pages and wrappers issued during his lifetime may
well reflect an overall preference, and (as a single continuous
sequence, 1–6) has been adopted here for the catalogue entries
documenting the collection. On the other hand Mahler's four
performances of songs from this collection offer no grounds
for supposing that this sequence was envisaged by him as a
preferred order of performance.
When the piano-vocal scores of the songs were issued in
collective volumes from 1916 onwards the sequence of the seven
songs was modified to 4, 7, 3, 5, 6, 1, 2, but the
miniature score of the collection, issued by the
Wiener
Philharmonischer Verlag A.G. in 1926,
re-adopted the original listing sequence (with „Liebst du um
Schönheit“ added as the seventh song).
Texts
Mahler had known and drawn on Des Knaben Wunderhorn since
the mid 1880s, but the date and circumstances under which he
became interested in Rückert's poetry are unknown and his
source(s) for the texts has/have not been identified. Presumably
he had begun to consider the possibility of using Rückert as a
source before the summer of 1901, and took the texts of all nine
(i.e. including those for Kindertotenlieder) from Vienna
to his newly-completed villa at Maiernigg when he and Justine
moved in for the first time in June. (Another, less likely
scenario is that he had taken them with him in the summer of
1900, when he rented the Villa Antonia while his own was being
built, and left them there for collection the following year).
Rückert had already attracted the attention of some major
composers, including Schubert, Brahms, Richard Strauss, and most
especially Schumann, so it is notable that in the summer when he
composed his first settings of the poet, Mahler talked to
Natalie Bauer-Lechner about what he admired in Schumann's
Lieder (NBL2,
188–9;
NBLE, 169):
Schumann ist
einer der größten Liederkomponisten, gleich neben
Schubert zu nennen. Die vollendete, in sich
abgeschlossene Form des Liedes hat keiner beherrst
wie er; sein Vorwurf hält sich immer in den Grenzen
des Liedes, daß er nichts verlangt, was sein Gebiet
übersteigt. Verhaltene Empfindung, wahre Lyrik und
eine tiefe Melancholie liegt in seinen Gesängen... |
Schumann is one
of the greatest composers of songs, to be mentioned
in the same breath as Schubert. Nobody has mastered
the perfected, self-contained form of the Lied as he
did; his conception always confines itself to the
limits of the song, and he never demands anything
that oversteps these limits. Restrained feeling,
true lyricism and profound melancholy pervade his
songs... |
Had his
exploration of Schumann's
Lieder guided Mahler both towards Rückert, and a new,
pared-down and intensely intimate conception of song?
Interestingly Claudia Wiener (CWVD),
without citing this explicit reference by Mahler, uses some
of Schumann's Ruckert's settings as a route into a
fascinating discussion of the purely poetic features of
Rückert's texts that may have drawn Mahler to them.
Performance,
Transpositions and Pre-Publication
It was probably no accident that Alfred Hoffmann, the director
of C.F. Kahnt visited Mahler at his hotel when the composer was
in Leipzig for the local première of his Third Symphony in late
November 1904. Hoffmann may have been aware of press
announcements,
which began to appear in mid-October 1904,
for the third concert of the
Vereinigung schaffender Tonkunstler Wiens
in January 1905,¹
indicating that it would be devoted entirely to Mahler's
orchestral songs. If so, he may have surmised that some of these
were unpublished. His approach must have seemed fortuitous to
Mahler: performance material for the new songs had to be
prepared for the concert (and the copying was presumably already
under way) so it could be refined and corrected following
rehearsals and performance in preparation for publication, and
he wrote immediately to Alma (GMBaA,
234;
GMBaAE, 192):
Eben war ein Verleger (Kahnt) bei mir
un bewarb sich mit Leidenschaft um die neuen Lieder
und Balladen. Ich werde ihm von Wien aus die
Clavierauszüge schicken, und er wird mir dan ein
Angebot machen. |
I've just had a
visit from a publisher (Kahnt), who is eager to
acquire my new Lieder and Ballads. I'll send him the
piano arrangements from Vienna and he'll make an
offer. |
In the event it was perhaps not until March the following year
that the copies were dispatched to Hoffmann (see below).
Fig. 1: Advert
Neues Wiener Journal,
15.01.1905, 19 |
A notable
feature of the concert at which the Kindertotenlieder
and
six other new songs (excluding Liebst du um Schönheit)
were first heard along with some of the
already-published Wunderhorn Lieder, is that they
were all sung by male singers: two baritones,
Anton Moser (1872–1909) and
Friedrich Weidemann (1871–1919), and a tenor,
Fritz Schrödter (1855–1924), all of whom were
members of the Court Opera ensemble.²
Moser and Weidemann had rather
different repertoires and voices; although both sang
Mozartian roles, Moser's other repertoire was mostly
required a relatively light baritone voice, whereas
Weidemann also took on heavier Wagnerian roles, not
least Wotan and Hans Sachs. Their contemporary
recordings rather confirm this characterisation, and
Mahler's assignment of songs to them in the 1905 concert
is also consonant with it, with Weidemann singing, for
example,
Kindertotenlieder, Der Schildwache Nachtlied
and
Der Tamboursg'sell. However, Wiedemann also sang the
two Rückert settings, „Ich bin der Welt abhanden
gekommen‟ and „Um Mitternacht‟, that were transposed
down, apparently to accommodate his voice and which were
the only songs in the collection to published from the
outset by Kahnt in both their original high-voice keys
and medium-voice versions. Possible reasons for this
situation may be linked to changes in the roster of
singers: throughout January the advertisements had
included the soprano Marie Gutheil-Schoder (1874–1935)
and the tenor Erik Schmedes (1868–1931).
Exactly
when these two singers cancelled their participation is
not known. A brief
announcement published on
5 January and press adverts for the Mahler-Abend
on
8th and
15th January (Fig.1) list Marie Gutheil-Schoder
(soprano) and Erik Schmedes (tenor), alongside Fritz
Schrödter (tenor), Anton Moser (baritone) and Friedrich
Weidemann (baritone) without specifying who was to sing
what. Gutheil-Schoder's withdrawal was the result of a
prior engagement: she was due to appear at a
late-afternoon popular concert in the Grosser Musikvereinsaal on 29 January 1905, and in December 1904
had also agreed to sing at a literary evening devoted
(appropriately enough) to Des Knaben Wunderhorn
at the Bösendorfer-Saal, starting at 19:30. When
originally announced the latter event was scheduled
for 8 January, but by
22 January had been rescheduled for
29 January (see also
Martner2, 193–5). Rather remarkably, it was agreed
that this literary evening should take precedence:
according to an
early advert, Gutheil-Schoder probably included two
of Mahler's early
Wunderhorn settings from the Lieder und Gesänge,
Ablösung im Sommer and „Ich ging mit Lust durch
einem grünen Wald‟ in her contribution to the
celebration. Following the unprecedented success of the
Mahler-Abend a 'repeat' performance was quickly
arranged for 3 February 1905: Gutheil-Schoder was
available, and performed three of Mahler's more recent
Wunderhorn settings, Verlor'ne Müh, Lob
des hohen Verstandes
(world première) and Wer hat dies Liedlein erdacht?.
It therefore seems unlikely that Mahler had considered
Gutheil-Schoder as the singer for „Ich bin der Welt‟,
and certainly not after Wiedemann's première of the
song.
|
By contrast no immediately obvious explanation for Schmedes's
non-participation in either of the Vienna performances has come
to light,³
although it is worth noting that he had a particularly busy
period on stage during January and early February 1905,
including Loge in Das Rheingold and the title role in
Lohengrin:
Date |
Performance (conductor) |
Singers originally listed
for Mahler-Abend |
Rehearsals
|
01.01.1905 |
Lustigen Weiber von Windsor
(Walter) |
GS |
|
02.02.1905 |
Mignon (Spetrino) |
FS, FW |
|
03.01.1905 |
Die Hochzeit des Figaro
(Mahler) |
GS |
|
04.01.1905 |
Tannhäuser (Walter) |
|
|
05.01.1905 |
Czar
und Zimmermann (Walter) |
FW, FS |
|
06.01.1905 |
Cav./Pag. + Ballet (Spetrino;
Bayer) |
ES, AM |
|
07.01.1905 |
Rigoletto + Ballet (Spetrino;
Bayer) |
FS |
|
08.01.1905 |
Fidelio (Mahler) |
FW |
|
09.01.1905 |
Der
Evangelimann + Ballet (Walter; Bayer) |
ES |
|
10.01.1905 |
Lakme
(Spetrino) |
AM |
|
11.01.1905 |
Aïda
(Spetrino) |
FW |
|
12.01.1905 |
Carmen (Walter) |
GS, FS, AM |
Das Rheingold(piano
rehearsal) |
13.01.1905 |
Die Königin von Saba (Walter) |
FW |
Das Rheingold (piano
rehearsal) |
14.01.1905 |
Hoffmann's Erzählungen (Spetrino) |
GS, FS |
Das Rheingold (piano
rehearsal) |
15.01.1905 |
Lohengrin (Schalk) |
ES |
|
16.01.1905 |
Die Bohême + Ballet (Spetrino;
Bayer) |
FS, AM,
FW, GS |
|
17.01.1905 |
Der Troubador + Ballet (Spetrino;
Bayer) |
AM |
Das Rheingold (orchestra
rehearsal) |
18.01.1905 |
Norma (Spetrino) |
|
Das Rheingold (orchestra
rehearsal) |
19.01.1905 |
Lakme (Spetrino) |
AM |
Das Rheingold (orchestra
rehearsal) |
20.01.1905 |
Tannhäuser (Walter) |
|
|
21.01.1905 |
Cav./Pag. + Ballet (Spetrino;
Bayer) |
FS, GS, AM |
Das Rheingold (Generalprobe) |
22.01.1905 |
Fidelio (Mahler) |
|
|
23.01.1905 |
Das Rheingold (Mahler) |
FW, ES, GS |
|
24.01.1905 |
Die
Fledermaus (Walter) |
FS |
|
25.01.1905 |
Das Rheingold |
FW, ES, |
|
26.01.1905 |
Margarethe (Faust) (Spetrino) |
AM |
|
27.01.1905 |
Hoffmann's Erzählungen (Spetrino) |
GS, FS |
|
28.01.1905 |
Das Rheingold (Mahler) |
FW, ES |
Mahler Liederabend (Generalprobe:
14:30) |
29.01.1905 |
Lakme + Ballet (Spetrino;
Bayer) |
|
Mahler Liederabend |
30.01.1905 |
Lohengrin (Walter) |
ES |
|
31.01.1905 |
Carmen (Schalk) |
GS, FS, FW, AM |
|
01.02.1905 |
Die Meistersinger (Schalk) |
|
|
02.02.1905 |
3 Ballets + Mignon (Bayer;
Spetrino) |
WS, FW, AM, GS |
|
03.02.1905 |
Ballet (Bayer) |
|
Mahler Liederabend (2) |
|
|
|
|
Key: |
AM Anton Moser (bar);
ES Erik Schmedes (ten); FS
Fritz Schrödter (ten); FW Friedrich
Weidemann (bar);
GS Marie Gutheil-Schoder
(sop) |
Table 1
Extracted from handbills and press adverts [ANNO] and
Spielplan der Hofoper, 1897–1907
Assuming
that Mahler had made decisions about the allocation of songs to
singers by the time the Schmedes withdrew, it would seem
possible that both „Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen‟ and „Um
Mitternacht‟, were assigned to Schmedes, particularly as he had
the power necessary for the end of Um Mitternacht and his
range would probably have enabled him to accommodate the
challenging
pianissimo g' (sounding pitch) that begins the penultimate
vocal phrase of the F major version of „Ich bin der Welt‟ (b.
55). That supposition is partially supported by the fact that at
the concert of the Allgemeine Deutsche Musikverein on 1 June
1905, at which a group of thirteen orchestral songs by Mahler
were performed under his baton, Wiedemann, Moser and Schrödter
were joined by Schmedes, who performed „Um Mitternacht‟. On the
other hand, it is striking that Weidemann retained „Ich bin der
Welt abhanden gekommen‟ (in E
major), presumably because the composer had been impressed by
his interpretation in January. As a result Mahler may never have
conducted the high-voice version of the song, a possibility made
more likely by the striking absence of rehearsal numbers in the
autograph score (in F major), the Stichvorlage and the first edition.
If that was the case – and it is clear that no-one thought to
collate the two versions – this would also explain why, as
Zoltan Roman noted in his critical notes to
SWXIV/4, refinements in the published E
version were not incorporated in the original high-voice edition
of the score and parts. If this reconstruction of events is
correct, it would appear that the medium voice versions of „Ich
bin der Welt abhanden gekommen‟ and „Um Mitternacht‟ were
probably prepared relatively quickly in January 1905.
It has also been suggested (SWXIV/2,
pp. 348;
NKGXIV/2,
385) that a non-autograph pencil annotation 'Schmedes' on
the first proofs of the full score of Revelge (ACPFpr1)
indicates that the song was originally assigned to him
during the planning of the first Vienna performance, but was
subsequently assigned to Schrödter. This seems plausible, and it
might be noted that both tenors were listed in the first
press announcements of the event that identify the singers
(which appeared in early January) so the re-assignment of the
song to Schrödter (who sang nothing else in the concert)
probably took place before that date. The reason for the
reassignment may be bound up with Mahler's description of the
song as being 'for a tenor who also has a good middle and lower
register' (letter to Oscar Fried, [summer 1905],
GMUB, 50) and Schrödter's performance must have been
adequate as he repeated it in the sequence of Mahler orchestral
songs given in Graz on 1 June 1905.
Just over a month after the first performances, c. 1 March 1905,
Mahler wrote to Alfred Hoffmann in Leipzig (GMBsV,
161):
Ich laße meine Lieder copiren, und
werde Ihnen dieselben Anfangs nächster Woche zur
Durchsicht einsenden. |
I'm having my
songs copied and will send them to you for perusal
at the beginning of next week. |
It seems unlikely that Mahler was
having new orchestral scores and parts copied: the surviving
printer's copies for the scores have annotations that
suggest they were used for the first two performances (e.g.
for „Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder‟ (ACF3m);
„Ich atmet' einen linden Duft‟ (ACF4m);
„Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen‟ (ACF5m)),
and the parts would not have been of use to the publisher
while appraising the new works. So it seems that in late
February–early March Mahler had the copies of the
piano-vocal scores (and presumably those of the
Kindertotenlieder) prepared for dispatch to Hofmann.⁴
Agreement was quickly reached, and the contract for the
publication of all eleven songs (i.e. not including „Liebst
du um Schönheit‟), was signed on 13 April 1905 (GMBsV,
162–3). By
the spring of 1905 plans for performances of Mahler's
orchestral songs at the 44th Meeting of the Allgemeiner
Deutscher Musikverein were being discussed (see
GMRSB, 92ff.,
GMRSBE, 76ff. and
HLGIII, 211ff.). Mahler's initial proposal was
that seventeen should be heard, including all the new songs
(including
Kindertotenlieder) about to be published by Kahnt, and
six of the Wunderhorn Lieder, but by 15 May Mahler
had decided to omit „Blicke mir nicht in die
Lieder‟, „Ich atmet' einen linden Duft‟ and
Lob des hohen Verstandes.
Early Publishing History
The publication history of these songs is rather complex. Under
the terms of §9 of Mahler's contract with the Erster Wiener
Zeitungsgesellschaft (signed on 12 August 1898) (see
PBMNC) the publisher had the right of first refusal on all
new works by Mahler. Although in mid-1903 this became irksome to
the composer – when it threatened to prevent him negotiating the
sale of the Fifth Symphony to Peters Edition, Leipzig – earlier,
on 2 March 1901, he told Natalie Bauer-Lechner that he was
thinking of preparing Revelge and the Fourth Symphony for
publication and would hand them over to the printer (i.e. EWZG)
in the Spring (NKGXIV/2,
XVII). However, there seems to have been a delay, because it was
not until 6 June 1902 that the proofs of the orchestral and
piano-vocal scores were ready for correction and revision by the
composer (see
ACPF1pr1).
A
new factor was, presumably, the composition of a final
Wunderhorn setting, Der Tamboursg'sell, in the summer
of 1901. At the time Mahler may well have assumed that since it
too had to be offered to EWZG, it could also be added to the
collection of
Wunderhorn settings already published under the
Weinberger imprint. But, unlike Revelge, it appears never
to have been sent to EWZG for copy-editing and engraving, and
the published full score was clearly prepared by C.F. Kahnt's
printer, Brandstetter in Leipzig (see the notes on
PF2m1
for further information). However, one might note that in the
years 1901–1904 Mahler was busy composing his Fifth and Sixth
Symphonies, so deciding the future of his rather odd assortment
of unpublished songs (two large-scale Wunderhorn songs
and seven very diverse, shorter settings of Rückert that
included three that were to eventually form part of the
Kindertotenlieder) may not have been a priority. In any
case, Mahler's successful negotiations with EWZG in 1903 to
annul the 'first-refusal' clause in their contract presumably
removed any need to come to a swift decision.
Following Alfred Hofmann's
approach to Mahler in early 1905 a
contract assigning the copyrights of eleven songs to C.F.
Kahnt Nachfolger was signed on 13 April. The two Wunderhorn
songs and four Rückert settings were published individually by
C.F. Kahnt later in the year. Initially the songs were only
issued separately (collective volumes of the piano and voice
versions appeared from late 1916/early 1917 – see
below) and were listed on the
passe-partout title page in the order adopted here: the
first four for one voice range only, the last two in both high-
and medium-voice versions, both prepared by the composer. Kahnt
had also published the Kindertotenlieder
as a single volume in 1905 and eventually (c. 1907–11) a listing
of the song-cycle was added to
later variants of the
passe-partout title page. In 1906 Mahler decided to publish
a fifth Rückert setting, Liebst du um Schönheit, that had
originally been composed in 1902 as a birthday present for Alma.
The
assignment contract was signed on 8 December and the
song added to the
title pages and
wrappers of later issues. The format and content of
the wrappers of the published copies (which were on much
flimsier paper and have a relatively low survival rate) are
those of the title pages, but a potentially confusing feature
found in later issues of the songs is the use of evidently
late-issue wrappers to enclose an impression of the song that
retains an earlier version of the title page. One explanation
might be that Kahnt had substantial unsold stock of early
printed sheets of the songs and rather than modifying or
destroying them, they were 'brought up-to-date' by supplying
them with wrappers that incorporated current information about
pricing and different publishing formats.
Under the terms of the
firm's original
contract with Mahler, Kahnt was entitled to make 'the usual
arrangements, abridgements, adaptations for one or more
instruments or voices, as well as transpositions.... and
translations...' (GMBsV,
162). Over the three years 1915–1917 Kahnt not only
commissioned an orchestration of the seventh song, but also
added further transpositions of orchestral or piano versions
where necessary so that by mid-1917 at least six of the seven
songs were available in three vocal ranges (hoch,
mittel, tief). The possible exception was
Revelge: a medium-voice transposition of the orchestral
version was listed in Hofmeister in 1906 and in Kahnt
advertisements thereafter (see the
Working Paper on Kahnt's Advertisements) but no copies of
either the score or orchestral parts have been located (see the
entry for
PF1m1).
During WWI Kahnt also decided to issue the voice and piano
versions with English or English and French translations of the
text: in such cases the piano and voice versions of the songs
were re-engraved and provided with a new plate number, but the
translations were not added to the orchestral scores. In
addition to individual songs, Kahnt also published collective
volumes that included all six (after 1907, seven) songs.
However, the firm also itself published, or licensed other firms
to publish some in albums. (See the separate listings of the
collective publications of all seven songs by C.F. Kahnt and
Philharmonia (1916–1926), and the
Working Paper: Mahler's Music in Supplements, Albums, Magazines
and Libraries.)
Drawing on some important working documents from the Kahnt
business papers Reinhold Kubik has provided an overview of the
print runs for the first four separate Rückert settings in the
period 1905–1915 (RKGMK,
172):
|
PV |
PF |
PO |
|
Copies |
Printings |
Copies |
Printings |
Copies |
Printings |
„Blicke mir nicht in
die Lieder!‟ (m) |
1100 |
3 |
150 |
1 |
300 |
1 |
„Ich atmet' einen
linden Duft‟ |
1500 |
5 |
150 |
1 |
300 |
1 |
„Ich bin der Welt
abhanden gekommen‟ (h) |
1400 |
4 |
150 |
1 |
300 |
1 |
„Ich bin der Welt
abhanden gekommen‟ (m) |
1600 |
4 |
150 |
1 |
300 |
1 |
Um Mitternacht
(h) |
1100 |
4 |
150 |
1 |
300 |
1 |
Um Mitternacht
(m) |
1200 |
4 |
150 |
1 |
300 |
1 |
Table 1
Total print
runs of Rückert settings, 1905–1915
In 1910, as part of Emil Hertzka's policy of acquiring rights to
distribute works by Mahler not owned by UE, the company began
issuing the piano and voice scores of individual songs under
licence, and Table 2 below summarises the numbers of copies of
the four songs ordered up to 1915.
|
PV |
|
Copies |
Orders |
„Blicke mir nicht in
die Lieder!‟ (m) |
401 |
2 |
„Ich atmet' einen
linden Duft‟ |
606 |
4 |
„Ich bin der Welt
abhanden gekommen‟ (h) |
505 |
4 |
„Ich bin der Welt
abhanden gekommen‟ (m) |
705 |
4 |
Um Mitternacht
(h) |
404 |
2 |
Um Mitternacht
(m) |
402 |
2 |
Table 2
Total no. of copies of Rückert settings ordered
by UE, 1910–1915
It remains unclear whether these UE orders were included in or
excluded from the totals given in Table 1. The
November/December 1916
issue of the Hofmeister Monatsbericht
announced the publication of these four songs, together
Revelge and Der Tamboursg'sell in high- and low-voice
collective piano-vocal volumes containing to be issued by UE:
Fig. 2
Hofmeister, Monatsbericht, xi/xii 1916, p.
171
There are a number of features that are
unexpected:
-
that the entry names only
Universal-Edition as a publisher: it seems unlikely that
this was a publishing initiative that UE could have
undertaken without consulting C. F. Kahnt, and the omission
of that firm's name would have made it difficult for users
to identify the songs included in the volumes, as the choice
of title reflected
UE priorities not those of the licensor;
-
that only versions for high and low
voice are listed (why not all three voice-ranges?);
-
that (by omission) it seems that this
was to be a German-only issue, although Kahnt had English
and (and in two cases) French translations available.
Nevertheless, despite these features the
announcement is corroborated in part by the UE
Verlagsbuch which records deliveries of copies of the high-
and low-voice versions (but not the medium-voice version) in
October 1916. The possibility that there was an unrecorded
parallel issue by Kahnt cannot be wholly discounted, but the
next Hofmeister announcement, in the April/May 1917 issue seems
to be an attempt to clarify a muddled situation:
Fig. 3
Hofmeister, Monatsbericht, iv/v 1917, p.
50
This entry normalises all the exceptional
features of the earlier listing (see the entry above):
-
both publishers are listed (and in a
way that reflects the hierarchical relationship);
-
versions for all three voice ranges
are included;
-
the text languages are identified.
The full scores and orchestral parts were also listed in UE
catalogues up to 1938, but the
Verlagsbuch shows that very few copies in these formats
were ever ordered by UE; the licence was terminated on 15 July
1939. An overview of all the UE issues of Kahnt's Mahler
publications is provided in the entry devoted to
Universal Edition.
Performance Practice
Performance
practice issues, some of which are relevant to these songs, are
discussed in a separate essay,
Mahler on the performance of his Lieder (1906–7).
[Hereafter MPL].
Revelge: the orchestral and
piano-vocal versions
A reconstruction
of the early creative history of this song is hampered by the
fact that no early autograph manuscripts have been located (see
the entry for
[AV1] for an account of this issue). The matter is of some
practical significance because the two first editions (PF11h
and
PV11h) differed not only in details
(which is often the case with Mahler's orchestral songs) but
more substantially in terms of sung text and the vocal line, to
the extent that the first edition of the piano-vocal score could
not be used by singers as the sole basis for learning and
performing the orchestral version. Further problems accrue from
the fact that the medium-voice transposition of the piano-vocal
score (PV11m
(1906)) presents a further stage in Mahler's conception of song.
The major discrepancies in the vocal part are summarized
below:
|
Full score
(PF1h1) |
Piano-vocal score
(PV1h1) |
Piano-vocal score
(PV1m1) |
b. 75–7 |
|
Text, melodic line
and rhythm modified |
as PV1h1 |
b. 84–5 |
continuous vocal line* |
vocal line omitted |
as PV1h1 |
b. 119 |
|
vocal line modified |
as PV1h1 |
b. 156 |
|
vocal line modified |
1st 2 beats=PF1h1;
2nd 2 beats=PV1h1 |
b. 161–2 |
|
as PF1h1 |
simplified ossia provided |
* The vocal
line was engraved, deleted by Mahler in the proofs (ACPF1pr1),
but retained in the printed copies.
Table 3
The initial copy-editing, casting off
and engraving was undertaken by the music department at
Eberle/EWZG, presumably under the normally watchful eye of Josef
V. von Wöss, so it is doubly surprising that these and other
anomalies were not spotted and resolved. At some date after 1915
the original plates were revised (presumably by Brandstetter) to
bring the vocal part of the piano-vocal score into line with
that of the full score (see
PV1h1d).
Translations
C.F. Kahnt decided in about 1915 that
the piano-vocal scores of all the Mahler songs they published
would be provided with English and/or French versions of the
texts. All the English adaptations so far traced were prepared
by John Bernhoff and the manuscript (possibly autograph)
versions (all dated April 1916) of three of the texts survive
among the papers presented to the Internationale Gustav-Mahler
Gesellschaft by the publisher: Revelge, Der
Tamboursg'sell and „Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder‟. For
further details see the Working Paper:
Kahnt Lieder Translations, 1905–1920.
Critical Edition
The critical editions of the seven songs are split between four
volumes in the Collected Works; Revelge and Der
Tamboursg'sell have also appeared in the New Critical
Complete Edition: Voice and Piano
SWXIII/2b: Gustav Mahler, Fünfzehn
Lieder, Humoresken und Balladen aus Des Knaben Wunderhorn,
für Singstimme und Klavier, Sämtliche Werke, Kritische
Gesamtausgabe, Band XIII, Teilband 2b, ed. Renate Hilmar-Voit,
Thomas Hampson (Vienna: Universal Edition, 1993)
This volume does not include the C minor voice and piano version
of
Revelge that was either prepared by Mahler or was
supervised by him, but incorporates some of its variant readings
into the text of the D minor version.
NKGXIII/2b: Gustav Mahler, Des
Knaben Wunderhorn, Fünfzehn Lieder, Humoresken und Balladen aus
Des Knaben Wunderhorn,
für Singstimme und Klavier, Neue Kritische Gesamtausgabe,
Band XIII, Teilband 2b, ed. Renate Hilmar-Voit, (Vienna:
Universal Edition, 2008)
This volume does not include the C minor voice and piano version
of
Revelge that was either prepared by Mahler or was
supervised by him, but incorporates some of its variant readings
into the text of the D minor version.
SWXIII/4: Gustav Mahler, Lieder nach
Texten von Friedrich Rückert für eine Singstimme mit Klavier,
Sämtliche Werke, Kritische Gesamtausgabe, Band XIII, Teilband 4,
ed. Zoltan Roman (Frankfurt: C.F. Kahnt, 1984)
This volume does not include Mahler's A minor version of Um
Mitternacht,
or the E
major version of „Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen‟.
Voice and orchestra
SWXIV/2: Gustav Mahler, Des Knaben
Wunderhorn, Gesänge für eine Singstimme mit
Orchesterbegleitung, Sämtliche Werke, Kritische
Gesamtausgabe, Band XIV, Teilband 2, ed. Renate Hilmar-Voit
(Vienna: Universal Edition, 1998)
This edition silently omits Mahler's rehearsal numbers. The
first orchestral version of Der Tamboursg'sell is
included as Appendix II.
NKGXIV/2: Gustav Mahler, Des Knaben
Wunderhorn, Gesänge für eine Singstimme mit
Orchesterbegleitung, Neue Kritische Gesamtausgabe, Band XIV,
Teilband 2, ed. Renate Hilmar-Voit (Vienna: Universal Edition,
2010) This edition silently omits
Mahler's rehearsal numbers. The first orchestral version of
Der Tamboursg'sell is included as Appendix II
SWXIV/4:
Gustav Mahler, Lieder nach Texten von Friedrich
Rückert für eine Singstimme mit Orchester, Sämtliche Werke,
Kritische Gesamtausgabe, Band XIV, Teilband 4, ed. Zoltan Roman
(Frankfurt: C.F. Kahnt, 1984)
This edition omits Mahler's A minor version of Um Mitternacht,
but includes both the F major and E
major versions of „Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen‟ |