Tomorrow is the birthday of Gustav Mahler. Rather than pummel you with the expected symphonies, I thought I would take a more circuitous route on WPRB and celebrate the great composer by way of the influence of seminal German romantic Clemens Brentano.
Brentano (1778-1842) was the force not only behind the collection of folk poems which were published as “Des Knaben Wunderhorn” (“The Youth’s Magic Horn”) – which he compiled and embellished with his brother-in-law Achim von Arnim – but also the spark that set the Brothers Grimm to work on their imaginative quest to document fairy tales of the German people.
The influence of “Des Knaben Wunderhorn” on Mahler is well-known. He set many of the poems, both individually and as parts of song cycles, and the melodies of a good number of those pervade his symphonies.
Less well known is the influence of the Brothers Grimm. We’ll hear Mahler’s rarely-performed cantata “Das klagende Lied” (“Song of Lamentation”), inspired by the Grimm tale, “The Singing Bone.” The work is an early one, dating from Mahler’s final year at the Vienna Conservatory, and it underwent heavy revisions over the years, with the composer even dropping the first third of the piece. A two-part version entered the repertoire, but since the late 1960s, when the excised material again came to light, it has often been the practice to perform the cantata in its original three-part form. How Mahler would have felt about that is anyone’s guess – it probably would have infuriated him – but artists are not always the best judges of their own work. Anyway, the more Mahler, the merrier (or maybe not).
For the rest of the morning, we’ll have music inspired by other tales from the Brothers Grimm, including Hansel and Gretel, Snow White, Aschenputtel (Cinderella), Little Briar Rose (Sleeping Beauty), Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, Rumpelstiltskin, The Brave Little Tailor and The Juniper Tree.
It will be a very Grimm playlist indeed, from 6 to 11 a.m. EDT on WPRB 103.3 FM and at wprb.com. We’re always at our grimmest when the heat index hits 100, on Classic Ross Amico.
