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Date: | Wed, 28 Jul 1999 08:53:08 +0200 |
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Just to shed further light on Mahler's 'obsession with death': Mahler did
deal with feelings surrounding death in his music (as with life, love and
happiness), but not necessarily in a negative way. Here's a quotation from
an essay by Donald Mitchell on the Kindertotenlieder
"This might be the place, by the way, to clear up any misconceptions
about a purely autobiographical interpretation of Kindertotenlieder.
It is true that Mahler was to suffer the tragic loss of his elder
daughter, but this was _after_ the song- cycle was composed. Nor,
as some commentators have implied, was there a morbid, unnatural
preoccupation on Mahler's part with the death of children. On the
contrary, he transforms what might have been a topic too painful to
dwell upon, into an experience that is ultimately ennobling and itself
transcendent. Even our sorrow at the loss of innocence, of lives
intolerably abbreviated by the unpredictable and unforseen ... can
be accepted and, through acceptance, overcome: the destruction caused
by the 'storm' can be pacified and thus negated. There is something
almost Buddhist about the radiant resignation which Mahler's D major
affirms at the conclusion of his finale: it is a consideration that
we shall have to look at again in the context of Das Lied [von der
Erde]."
Ruben
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