Introduction

Gustav Mahler's Songs of the Deaths of Children is a cycle of five songs for solo voice and orchestra on poems by Friedrich Rückert about the deaths of children and the feelings of their surviving parents, drawn from his personal experience. In this song, the text explores the painful irony of a parent experiencing the sunrise while mourning the death of a child in the night. The speaker expresses the cruelty in the permanence of the natural cycle of existence in the face of such an impermanent state. 

Mahler's setting of this text heightens its meaning. The regular use of dissonance suggests the anguish of the speaker and the melodic direction (ascending or descending) mocks the claims of the text. For example, Mahler sets the first line, a declaration of the rising sun, with a mournful descending melody. In addition to these features, Mahler mixes major and minor modes freely, suggesting the instability of the speaker. 

Reflection Questions

1. How would you characterize the melody of this work?
2. How does the instrumentation contribute to the meaning of the poetry?
3. How does the texture of the music engage with the sentiment of the poem?