Satoshi Akima ([log in to unmask]) wrote:

>In my mind Das Lied is Mahler's masterpiece, and I like the poems he sets.
>I am concerned why he picks on these poems when there are large numbers
>of German language Lieder set to texts by less than first rate German
>poets?

The orient was very fashionable in Europe at the turn of the century -
beginning, IIRC, from the 1889 Paris Exhibition at which Javanese gamelan
orchestras played, to the particular interest of Debussy (Pagodes).

Mahler, of course, based DLvdE on Hans Bethge's Die chino"siche Flote,
translations of the original Chinese.

Deryk Barker
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