“A symphony must be like the world,” Gustav Mahler famously proclaimed. “It should embrace everything.”
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It will be a very Grimm morning this morning, to complement our grim weather. Join me as I celebrate the birthday of Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) with one of his early works, and one not that often heard: “Das klagende Lied” (“Song of Lamentation”). “Das klagende Lied,” written while the composer was yet a student at the Vienna Conservatory, is based in part on the Grimm fairy tale “The Singing Bone.”
In addition, there will be other Grimm-inspired music by the likes of Philip Glass, Engelbert Humperdinck, William Hurlstone, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Robert Moran, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Bernard Rogers, Robert Schumann, and Elinor Remick Warren.
As I remarked to the witch in the candy cottage, if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. Join me for a morning as grim as the weather, with tales from the Brothers Grimm, from 6 to 11 EDT on WPRB 103.3 FM and at wprb.com. I’ll be introducing the music in an enchanted sleep, on Classic Ross Amico.
It’s supposed to be 90 degrees in the Philadelphia-Princeton area for forever at this point, so it’s best to imagine Gustav Mahler taking a break from his work and hiking about his summer home in the Alps.
Right now on WPRB, we’re listening to an early work of Mahler to celebrate his birthday – the cantata “Das klagende Lied,” inspired by the Grimms’ fairy tale, “The Singing Bone.” But for Mahler, apparently, the original Grimm tale wasn’t quite grim enough. So he made a few changes to ensure things end miserably for everyone!
Two brothers seek the hand of a queen. The younger brother finds the red flower that will win her favor. When the elder brother finds out, he kills the younger, steals the flower, and claims the queen as his bride. A wandering minstrel finds one of the younger brother’s bones and makes a flute from it. When the flute is played, it tells the story of the murder. The minstrel plays the flute at the wedding before the horrified guests, and the castle falls to ground, KILLING EVERYONE.
This is all actually quite tame when compared to the events of “The Juniper Tree,” which include child abuse, a beheading, cannibalism and death by millstone. I’m hoping to get to a one-act opera based on the tale, by Philip Glass and Robert Moran, before the shift is out.
All in all, we’ll be having a Grimm morning, until 11 EDT, on WPRB 103.3 FM and at wprb.com.
NOTE: I just heard from three of you in the last few minutes who wrote to let me know that the streaming is down. The tech folk have been notified, so hopefully we’ll be back up soon. Thanks for letting me know!
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.
You were an associate, friend and disciple of Gustav Mahler. You championed new works by Schoenberg, Stravinsky and Hindemith. You tolerated no coughing or sneezing from your audience. You suffered from severe cyclothymic bipolar disorder. You answered the door to your dressing room in your boxers and covered in lipstick. You underwent surgery to remove a brain tumor “the size of a small orange.” When placed in an institution, you escaped. You took a severe spill, requiring you to conduct from a chair. You set yourself on fire and tried to douse the flames with spirits of camphor. You sired Colonel Klink. Your career was capped by a glorious Indian Summer that spanned 20 years. You lived to the ripe old age of 88. In short, you had all the qualifications to be one of the 20th century’s greatest conductors.
Happy birthday, Otto Klemperer (1885-1973).
Klemperer conducts Schumann in Philadelphia:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ua_m6mMhfuc
Fascinating Klemperer interview:
This guy loves Klemperer:
http://www.morethanthenotes.com/read-the-book/otto-klemperer
PHOTO: Otto the Indestructible
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