Mahler+Um+Mitternacht

Mahler wrote 5 songs based on Ruckert Texts... first with piano and voice... then orchestrated each of them, but each with a different orchestration, and "Um Mitternacht" is scored for orchestral winds.

text: nice site with article, text pictures, and video of a performance (Zubin Mehta, Jesse Norman, NY Phil): @http://www.harpers.org/archive/2009/07/hbc-90005352

text with english translation: @http://www.recmusic.org/lieder/get_text.html?TextId=14085

Background on Ruckert Lieder: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rückert-Lieder

scores from IMSLP: http://imslp.org/wiki/Rückert_Lieder_(Mahler,_Gustav)

Koops Masters thesis on Operatic wind music (Kurt Weil, Gustav Mahler, Robert Kurka, Jed Koops). [[[insert here]]]

Charles Peltz' notes from New England Conservatory http://necmusic.edu/mahler/rückert-lieder

Mahlerfest notes: @http://www.mahlerfest.org/mfXVI/notes_lieder.htm excerpt:

At last year's MahlerFest, Dr. Stuart Feder, who is speaking here this year as well, noted the autobiographical features of this song: the low registers and heartbeat rhythms that suggest anxiety, the downward spiraling passages that imply depression, and the fact that Mahler was just turning 41 and entering what was then considered middle-age. Mahler must also have been thinking of his own "midnight hour," his near- death experience that had occurred only six months prior to the song's composition. But at the very end, a blazing affirmation of life: "Lord! Over life and death You keep guard at midnight." Note how the upward harp arpeggios – a signature Mahlerian symbol of light, as attendees of last year's//Kindertotenlieder// will recall – sweep away the midnight gloom. Rückert is in great form here, putting most of the poem in the past tense but moving the affirmation into the present. Mahler emphasizes this with the most positive music of the song, but did he go too far? Some have found the conclusion unpersuasive compared to what has gone before, seeing it, as Henry-Louis de La Grange has said, "perhaps a little too loud to be as convincing as the luminous resignation" at the end of works such as //Kindertotenlieder// and Das Lied. As a heartfelt expression of his philosophy of life, however, no one can doubt Mahler's intellectual honesty and artistic integrity — in this song and in the collection as a whole. ===by Mitch Friedfeld ===

@http://chambermusictoday.blogspot.com/2008/03/philip-wests-chamber-ensemble.html Phillip West completed a chamber ensemble arrangement of all 5 of the Ruckert songs by Mahler...

The original orchestration for Um Mitternacht: Mahler specified an orchestra without strings, just pairs of woodwinds (with a single oboe d’amore instead of an oboe section), three horns, two trumpets, three trombones, a solitary tuba, tympani, plus harp and piano. (AK note: However, I think Mahler meant in the score, Harp or piano???)