Programme Notes

Gustav Mahler composed the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen in 1884-85 after an unrequited love affair with a German singer called Johanna Richter which threw him into deep depression.

He admired her physical beauty and musical prowess but she had no interest in a young and little known twenty four year old conductor.

Richter’s subsequent marriage motivated Mahler to write a set of four highly personal and emotive songs set to his own text. This outpouring of private emotion was to become typical in his music especially in the darkest moments of his often tragic life. The songs are about a young heartbroken man’s lonely journey through the world after the loss of his beloved. The fi rst song appears to be happy and celebrating the vibrant beauty of nature in stark contrast to the travellers own internal sorrow.

The second is wild with despair, the music is intense and driving, the pain of loss compared to a hot knife in his chest. The final movement is refl ective and funereal as he wishes to return to life before his enforced wanderings.

Originally for piano and low voice, and later fully orchestrated, these versions for brass choir add great warmth to the music that Mahler later reused in his magnifi cent 1st Symphony of 1888.