Warum hast du gelitten?
an introductory prelude to Mahler’s Symphony No. 2
Duration ca. 9' (2024)
4.4(4d/eh).5(bcl+ebcl).3(+1cb)/ 10.6(1d/picc).3(+bass trombone)1/1 timp/hp/chorus/str/solo soprano
Commissioned by the Santa Rosa Symphony, resident Orchestra of the Green Music Center, Francesco Lecce-Chong, Music Director
PROGRAM NOTE
Warum hast du gelitten? was commissioned by Francesco Lecce-Chong and the Santa Rosa Symphony as an introductory companion piece to Mahler's Symphony No. 2. It uses the same instrumentation as Mahler's score and is designed to segue into the first movement without pause. The text to Warum hast du gelitten? consists entirely of Mahler's own words and is compiled from his surviving correspondence. The first source is an anguished letter from Mahler to his wife Alma, written on August 17, 1910, while he was busy preparing for the premiere of his Eighth Symphony and when the stability of his marriage was threatened by Alma's recently exposed infidelity. This letter is in the form of a poem and was written on the staves of music manuscript paper. Excerpts from this letter are sung by the solo soprano. The second and third sources both document Mahler's own programmatic intentions for his Second Symphony: a letter written to the Berlin-based music critic Max Marschalk on March 26, 1896; and a draft of program notes about the work enclosed in a letter to Mahler's sister Justine written on December 13, 1901. The rhetorical questions sung by the chorus are excerpted from Mahler's commentaries on the symphony's first movement. - by Aaron Ziegel
Sung text and translation:
It is time, the pen is in my hand –
But the thoughts will not come together.
I stare unblinkingly at the five lines
– The staves flicker in front of my eyes –
My heart sings out presses on –
All my thoughts wander aimlessly!
Why have you lived?
Why have you suffered?
What is this life–and this death?
Is a continued existence awaiting us?
Is this all only a desolate dream?
Does this life and death of ours have a purpose?
... a purpose.
Let me assemble all the shivers of my desire
Together into one melody,
O blissful death, come in my most painful hours!
O life – spring up out of my suffering!
Die Zeit ist da, die Feder ist zur Hand –
Doch die Gedanken wollen nicht verweilen.
Auf die fünf Linien blick' ich unverwandt
– Es flimmern vor den Augen mir die Zeilen –
Mein Herz auch singt und dringt ––
es schweifen alle Sinne in die Runde!1
Warum hast du gelebt?
Warum hast du gelitten?2
Was ist dieses Leben–und dieser Tod?
Gibt es für uns eine Fortdauer?
Ist dies Alles nur ein wüster Traum?
Hat dieses Leben und dieser Tod einen Sinn?3
... einen Sinn.
Zusammenfassen will ich alle Schauer
meiner Lust zu einer Melodie.
O wonniger Tod in schmerzenvollsten Stunden!
O Leben – spriesse auf aus meinen Wunden!1
Sources of the original German-language texts:
1. Letter from Gustav Mahler to Alma Mahler, 17 August 1910; in Henry-Louis de La Grange, et al, eds., Anthony Beaumont, trans., Gustav Mahler: Letters to His Wife (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004), 396–7.
2. Letter from Mahler to Max Marschalk, 26 March 1896; in Alma Maria Mahler, ed., Gustav Mahler: Briefe, 1879–1911 (Berlin: Paul Zsolnay Verlag, 1925), 188–9.
3. Letter from Mahler to Justine Mahler, 13 December 1901; in Donald Mitchell, Gustav Mahler: The Wunderhorn Years (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 2005), 179–82.
The composer wishes to thank musicologist Aaron Ziegel for researching and suggesting these texts to the composer and for his English translation of them, used with his permission.