The firmament is eternally blue, and the earth
will long stand fast and blossom in spring.
But thou, O man, how long then livest thou?
Not a hundred years canst thou delight
in all the rotten trash of this earth!
-- from "Das Trinklied vom Jammer der Erde" ("The Drinking Song of Earth's Sorrow"), the opening movement of Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth); English translation by Deryck Cooke
Jon Vickers, tenor; London Symphony Orchestra, Sir Colin Davis, cond. Philips, recorded March 1981
by Ken
In Friday night's preview I argued that Jon Vickers's massive but "slow-speaking" tenor was heard to limited advantage in "On Youth," the finely detailed second of the three tenor songs of Mahler's song-symphony The Song of the Earth. I certainly wouldn't say the same of at least this fraught chunk of the opening song. This seems to me very much the kind of sound -- that of a full-fledged heroic tenor -- that Mahler must have had in mind.
We're going to hear the full song momentarily, but first I think we need to repeat an experiment we've done before in approaching Mahler's Song of the Earth(1908-09), his six-movement setting of Hans Bethge's then-recently-published German renderings of classical Chinese poems, which was the first work he conceived after learning that he had untreatable heart disease. We're going to listen again to his final, confidently heaven-storming musical utterance before the fateful diagnosis. (It's the conclusion of Goethe's Faust.)
MAHLER: Symphony No. 8 in E-flat (1906):
conclusion, "Alles Vergängliche ist nur ein Gleichnis"
All things transitory are but parable;
here insufficiency becomes fulfillment,
here the indescribable is accomplished;
the ever-womanly draws us heavenward.
[much repeated]
-- English translation by Peggie Cochrane
Soloists, choruses, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Sir Colin Davis, cond. BMG, recorded live, July 7-8, 1996
Soloists, choruses, London Symphony Orchestra, Jascha Horenstein, cond. BBC Legends, live performance from the Royal Albert Hall, March 20, 1959
