When Gustav Mahler wrote the 4th Symphony he was taking a break from his conducting duties at Vienna Hofoper in a lakeside cabin outside of Salzburg. Apparently, he had hoped to do some spiritual soul-searching and needed to catch up on composition deadlines. Two birds. One symphony. He had originally intended to use the “Des Knaben Wunderhorn” vocal excerpt at the end of his 3rd Symphony… but that would’ve made it way too long!

This was the first time anyone had added a vocal solo to the end of a symphony in this way. Such a clever 19th Century composer, right? Perhaps it was his way of wrapping up the whole feeling of the 4th Symphony’s turgent and polyphonic musings of a complicated life here on earth with a swirling release up into heaven’s serene and sonorous tunes? This musing seems particularly poignant today after the world has painfully endured a recent pandemic and now, sadly, is witnessing a new war. Many of us find ourselves asking, “What will music be like in the next realm both on earth and after this life?”

In his stage directions for the aria, he requests; “With childlike, cheerful expression; entirely without parody!” He truly intended this to be delivered with absolute sincerity and naïveté. People (critics) of the time assumed he meant this as a joke because they just couldn’t fathom why anyone (especially a Jew who converted to Catholicism simply for the Hofoper job) would end a symphony this way — so ‘religiously’! Maybe they thought he had spent a little too much time alone at that lakeside cabin alone in spiritual bliss? But Mahler insisted that he meant it to be a return to innocence…an ode to nature in a way a child can look at the world without judgment. I appreciate this spiritual searching as a way of life and expression for my art. Perhaps that is why I am particularly drawn to these lines which translate to: