Letters illuminate the friendship between Strauss and Mahler and discusses their views on music and composition

Gustav Mahler-Richard Strauss Correspondence 1888-1911 (English and German Edition)

Politics & Social Sciences

Mahler, Gustav

Politics & Government

Univ of Chicago Pr

Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss came to know one another as young conductors in Leipzig in 1887. From then until Mahler's death in 1911—the year of the first performance of Der Rosenkavalier—they kept in touch. Mahler himself described their relationship as that of two miners tunneling from opposite directions with the hope of eventually meeting. This first publication of their correspondence, which includes twenty-five previously unknown Strauss letters, offers a portrait of two men who were as antithetical in their musical means and goals as in their temperaments and personalities, but who exercised a strong fascination for one another. These sixty-three letters show both composers advancing in their careers as they battled against adverse conditions in the musical world at the turn of the century. They present Mahler's energetic support of Strauss's Symphonia Domestica, which Mahler conducted in 1904 and, in turn, Strauss's championing of Mahler's music, especially the Second and Third Symphonies. The correspondence is fully annotated and is supplemented with a major essay by Herta Blaukopf. "Unfailingly absorbing. . . . An indispensable addition to the literature on these composers."—Norman Del Mar, Times Literary Supplement

Gustav Mahler--Richard Strauss: Correspondence 1888-1911

Biographies & Memoirs

STRAUSS, Richard

Arts & Literature

University of Chicago Press

In Das Lied von der Erde, Gustav Mahler fused the two forms that most obsessed him — song and symphony — into a masterpiece that epitomized his musical genius and the very spirit of late Romanticism. It is a work of stunning power, one that musical artists and audiences worldwide have made a repertoire favorite, and it is reprinted here from the original full score published in Vienna by Universal-Edition in 1912. Based on a cycle of six poems translated from the Chinese by Hans Bethge, Das Lied von der Erde, scored for tenor, alto (or baritone), and orchestra, expresses a dualism of feeling — ecstatic pleasure shadowed by dark foreboding — that characterizes not only Mahler himself but the peculiarly autumnal mood of late Romanticism as well. Throughout, Mahler calls on the orchestra to suggest the exotic atmosphere summoned by the text, and to sustain and supplement the solos with all its resources, both in the accompaniment and the extensive connecting interludes. This sturdily bound, finely produced full score, containing an English translation of the song text is printed on fine-quality paper. It offers both amateur and professional singers and musicians — along with music lovers who enjoy following a love or recorded performance, score in hand — a lifetime of pleasurable study and intimate enjoyment of one of the most celebrated classics of 20th-century music.

Das Lied von der Erde in Full Score (Dover Orchestral Music Scores)

Arts & Photography

Music

Dover Publications

"The first performance of the work took place at Munich on September 12, 1910, Mahler himself conducting. Its reception, which was overwhelming, was the first unqualified success that he had ever enjoyed. Eight months later he was dead." — Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Mahler's massive complex "Symphony of a Thousand" has been called a crowning achievement of his career, a work that integrates on a truly grand scale the musical ideas, forms, and media that dominated his creative life. The symphony is in two parts. The first is a setting of words from the medieval Latin hymn "Veni, Creator Spiritus." The words of the second part are taken from the final scene of Goethe's Faust. The theme of this amalgam is the redemptive power of love, and its form is a powerful synthesis of motet, dramatic cantata, oratorio, song cycle, and symphony. Mahler scored the work for orchestra, eight solo voices, double chorus, boys' choir, and organ, eliciting from this mighty consortium the most subtle of musical nuances one moment and majestic torrents of sound the next. This authoritative full-score edition makes the Symphony No. 8 available at a reasonable price to all students and performers of Mahler, and all music lovers who wish to immerse themselves in the glories of this monumental masterpiece.

Symphony No. 8 In Full Score (Dover Orchestral Music Scores)

Mahler's third and fourth symphonies mark a turning point in his development as a composer. Symphony No. 3 (1896) predominantly follows the musical style of the earlier two symphonies, which tended to emphasize a single melodic line with subordinate harmonies. Symphony No. 4 (1900) embodies the more contrapuntal style that characterizes his later symphonic works. At the same time, these works bring Mahler to the end of his "Wunderhorn years," when his inspiration derived strongly from Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Youth's Magic Horn), an early 19th-century collection of folklike poetry that celebrated themes of nature. The Third Symphony, scored for a massive orchestra, was conceived as a vast nature cycle in six movements. These include the great opening march, the moving setting for alto of Nietzsche's "O Mensch! Gib Acht!" and the scintillating bell song for women's and boys' choirs "Es sungen drei Engel." The Fourth Symphony, more restrained in expression yet filled with affecting melody, is one of the most beloved of all Mahler's symphonies. Smaller in scale than the Third and classically proportioned, it progresses from the striking sleighbells of the opening and the rich complexities of the early movements to the deeply touching simplicity and beauty of the closing soprano song "Das himmlishce Leben." Now music lovers can study the orchestral richness of these two great Mahler scores, reprinted here from original Viennese editions. In the unusually diverse musical textures of these two contrasting symphonic masterworks, music professionals, and students alike can explore the genius of the composer often regarded as the last great Austrian symphonist."

Symphonies Nos. 3 and 4 in Full Score (Dover Orchestral Music Scores)

Songs of a Wayfarer (Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen), Mahler's first orchestral song cycle, is a strongly autobiographical work. Set to his own text, it is a revealing self-portrait of the young man in the agonies of love, and a work considered by many to be the masterpiece of Mahler's early period. The folklore idioms of Songs of the Wayfarer give way to the haunting musical imagery of Mahler's later style in the Kindertotenlieder (Songs of the Death of Children), the company's setting of five poems by Friedrich Rückert. Filled with the delicate counterpoint and luminous chromatic harmony of his last works, they reflect another compelling facet of Mahler's intense romanticism. These two deeply moving scores, both favorites of musical artists and their audiences today, are reprinted here from the original German editions. They will provide musicians and music lovers a lifetime of study and enjoyment of two of Mahler's masterly achievements for voice and orchestra.

Songs of a Wayfarer and Kindertotenlieder in Full Score (Dover Orchestral Music Scores)

Music Scores

In his Fifth Symphony, Gustav Mahler (1860–1911) moved on from the song-oriented works of his "Wunderhorn" period to take up the challenges of the purely instrumental symphony. It was a move that brought to the fore the Austrian composer's genius for discovering fresh and convincing formal solutions for his musical aims. Without a specific dramatic "program" or narrative live, the Fifth Symphony moves forward in vivid, emotionally compelling musical shapes that begin in funereal gloom and build to climactic expressions of heroic triumph and ultimate joy. In his Sixth Symphony, Mahler continued to explore the potential of the instrumental symphony, but followed an opposite dramatic course to that of the Fifth, this time building to a series of shattering climaxes implying ultimate defeat and death. Both of these deeply moving works, composed between 1901 and 1906, are today among the most performed symphonic works in the orchestral repertoire. Both symphonies are reprinted here from authoritative full-score editions in a finely produced volume designed to provide a lifetime of enjoyment and study.

Symphonies Nos. 5 and 6 in Full Score (Dover Orchestral Music Scores)

This convenient volume contains Mahler's three great song cycles in piano-vocal score, reprinted from authoritative German and Austrian editions. All three complete scores offer singers and musicians the opportunity to study and savor the compelling musical qualities of these famous works at the piano. Songs of a Wayfarer (Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen), the composer's first song cycle, is considered by many the masterpiece of his early period. A setting of his strongly autobiographical text, this is a revealing self-portrait of a young man. The haunting musical imagery of Songs of the Deaths of Children (Kindertotenlieder), Mahler's setting of five poems by Friedrich Rüchert, embodies the chromatic harmonies typical of his late work. In The Song of the Earth (Das Lied von der Erde), Mahler combines the forms that most obsessed him — song and symphony — into a masterpiece that epitomized his musical genius and the very spirit of late Romanticism. Based on six poems translated from Chinese, the songs merge from passionate evocations of the pleasures of youth to dark and foreboding expressions of loneliness, sorrow, and farewell.

Three Song Cycles in Vocal Score: Songs of a Wayfarer, Kindertotenlieder and Das Lied Von Der Erde (Dover Song Collections)

"Mahler inherited the romantic conception of music as an expression of a quest for spiritual reality … he expressed a four-sided conflict between a devouring love of life, a spiritual need, a skeptical intellect, and an existential dread of ultimate meaninglessness." — Encyclopaedia Britannica. In this great work, Mahler experimented with the four-movement symphonic form, producing a masterpiece of musical innovation, satiric writing, and poetic drama expressed in purely instrumental terms. Alban Berg referred to the first movement of the Ninth Symphony as "the most glorious [Mahler] ever wrote," and further observed, "the whole movement is based on a premonition of death which constantly recurs … that is why the tenderest passages are followed by tremendous climaxes like new eruptions of a volcano." Now the full orchestral score of the Ninth Symphony is available in the inexpensive, high-quality edition, reprinted from an authoritative Viennese score. Music lovers and admirers of Mahler's work will find in these pages abundant evidence of the fresh and formidable thinking the composer brought to this monumental composition.

Symphony No. 9 In Full Score (Dover Orchestral Music Scores)

One of the last great composers in the Austro-Germanic tradition, Gustav Mahler (1860–1911) created nine symphonies (the now-legendary Symphony No. 10 was left unfinished) that explored far-reaching, innovative, and visionary approaches to melody, tonal organization, and formal structure. Outstanding among these is the work that obsessed Mahler for seven years — the imposing Symphony No. 2 ("Resurrection"), scored for soprano solo, alto, solo, full chorus, and a vastly expanded orchestra. Plagued by incessant visions of his own death, Mahler composed a tone poem Totenfeirer (Funeral Rite) that was to become the foundation and first movement of Symphony No. 2, posing the great question, "To what purpose have you lived?" Mahler described the middle movements as post-funeral memories, nostalgic daydreams, and a harsh awakening to the meaningless realities of real life, answered finally by the angelic folk poem "Primal Light," the terror of the Last Judgment, and the salvation of resurrections: "With wings that I wont … I shall mount to the light … I shall die, so as to live!" — an intimation of immortality through the monument of his works. This profound work is presented here in full score with original instrumentation, bar-numbered movements, and with ample margins at the bottom of each score page for notes and analysis. Ideal for study in the classroom, at home, or in the concert hall, this affordable, high-quality, conveniently sized volume will be the edition of choice for music students and music lovers alike.

Symphony No. 2 in C Minor: "Resurrection" (Dover Miniature Scores: Orchestral)

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