Cross-posted from the Mahler-List (and slightly edited).

This song has everything, and nothing.  Nothing, in that there is no
action; it's all descriptive.  Everything, in that it "encompasses a
world." Not *the* world, but *a* world.  Yet when it's over, nothing has
changed.  We're right back where we started.  But in barely three minutes
of music, we have seen a world from the outside and inside, have heard
several glorious melodies, and have had cause to reflect on a vanished
culture, the nature of reality and unreality, and wasted youth.  I'm
talking, of course, about Das Lied von der Erde 3, Von der Jugend, On
Youth.

This song was written shortly after July 1908, which is the earliest
date that appears on any Das Lied manuscript.  Stephen Hefling, author of
"Mahler:  Das Lied von der Erde" in the Cambridge Music Handbooks series
-- and my principal source for most of this posting -- says that Jugend
was probably the second song composed.  BTW, he suggests that the order
the songs were written in was 2, 3, 1, 4, 6; the manuscript for DL 5 bears
no date.  But because the piano and orchestral versions of Das Lied are
so interconnected, the actual order of the songs' composition can't be
determined with utter certainty, he says.

After the drama of DL 1 and 2, the light scoring of Jugend's introduction
comes as a welcome relief and change of pace.  In fact, many critics who
heard it at the premiere likened Jugend to a scherzo in the symphony that
is Das Lied.  A change is also noticeable in the tenor.  As opposed to his
dramatic declamation in DL 1, in which he is overcome by frenzy at the
howling ape, in Jugend he is much more subdued, needing only to describe a
group of young people sitting in a pavilion.  Of the six Von der Jugends
that I've listened to while writing this, Peter Schreier under Kurt
Sanderling shows the most contrast in style, possibly because he is by
far the most animated of all the tenors in DL 1.

Von der Jugend starts with an enchanting melody, probably the most
Chinese-sounding interlude of the whole symphony.  Hefling calls these
pentatonic figurations, prominent high flutes, and chattering quavers
"virtual cliches derived from oriental music." In this prelude, a
seven-second introduction is joined by that indescribable flute passage,
which is so light, so clean, that the presence of a green and white
porcelain pavilion on an island connected to land by a jade footbridge
seems only expected and right.

The singer enters, and describes the scene.  Some sophisticated
young people are sitting in a pavilion.  They're well dressed ("schoen
gekleidet;" you can see the English word "clad" there), chatting among
themselves and jotting down verses.  Idle youth, wasting their lives.  The
footbridge that connects the island to land is important.  It "arches like
the back of a tiger" across the water.  That arch of the bridge becomes the
arch form of the song:  "The seven stanzas of text are grouped 2+3+2 into
a simple ABA format in which the principal tonality is B-flat and the
modulatory scheme forms an arch of third-relations," Hefling explains.

Another description of the friends is also important.  Not only are they
"schoen gekleidet," but "their silken sleeves slide backward, their silken
caps crouch drolly deep on the nape of the neck." I can't remember where
I read this, but I'm sure that some expert has claimed that this song,
attributed to Li-Po, cannot be by that poet as this style of clothing had
not yet developed at the time he was alive.  Well, Mahler never claimed
that he was setting authentic Chinese texts.  Hans Bethge himself, the
author of "The Chinese Flute," from which Mahler selected the texts that
became Das Lied, called the poems "Nachtdichtungen," which Hefling
translates as "paraphrase poems."

But the most clever part of this exquisite song comes next, at about
1:40-2:15 of the Sanderling recording, when the singer tells us that "On
the small pond's still surface everything shows itself in mirror image."
The music gets more and more mysterious and ethereal until we're not sure
what is reality and what is reflection.  It really is an atmospheric,
evocative passage.  There's one more thing that must be noted in this
mirror-world.  In the first part of the song, when the friends are
described, the singer is accompanied by a piccolo.  But in mirror-world,
the same passage is backed by a bassoon.  A high instrument mirrored by
a low one.  I had listened to Das Lied dozens of times without realizing
that, and only "got it" when it was explained at a lecture before a
performance of the chamber version.  I wonder how many other touches
of genius I'm missing.

But then we are jarred awake by the return of the main melody; we're
back in reality.  It's as if Mahler is saying, "Yes, for a second there
these young people had a serious thought about the nature of the world
and reality.  Well, enough of that; let's get back to chatting, drinking
tea, and jotting down verses." And that's where the song ends, right where
it started, like the Chinese tale about the painter who vanishes into his
picture (Hefling quoting Adorno).  It is so Mahlerian:  calm, understated,
no bombast, everything having its purpose, nothing wasted.  Every detail
having its own subtle, infinitely deep, meaning.

I listened to six recordings while writing this:  Horenstein, Tennstedt,
and Sanderling in the orchestral version; Wigglesworth and Herreweghe
in the chamber version; and tenor Thomas Moser accompanied by Cyprien
Katsarsis in the piano version, whose liner notes, incidentally, were
written by Stephen Hefling.  These six run anywhere from an even 3:00
(Moser) to 3:43 (Herreweghe).  Horenstein's Das Lied, the second slowest
on record according to Joel Lazar's liner notes, takes Jugend only eight
seconds faster than Herreweghe; somehow it sounds like a sprint compared to
Herreweghe's.  Herreweghe's Jugend, to me, is the only thing questionable
on this excellent disc; I think it drags a little.  But the sound is
exquisite.  I especially like how Herreweghe emphasizes those damped
cymbals and drumstrokes in the verse that starts "In dem Haeuschen sitzen
Freunde," and are heard prominently thereafter until "reality" sets in.
Finally, if anyone can clarify where I might have read that part about the
clothes, I'd appreciate it.  Also, do I remember correctly that the poet
Li-Po might have been a female? It will be obvious that I know next to
nothing about things Chinese.

Mitch Friedfeld