Symphonic Texts and the Cultural Ideology of Mahler's Lieder
ion, could not have come about without the intermediate and preparatory step of the Kindertotenlieder, where Mahler begins to explore placing symphonic forms into the highly literary, textual genre of the song cycle. This overlapping occurs on the level of structure, and is not merely a matter of scoring the cycle for orchestra in a mimicry of the symphony. Rather, symphonic forms inform the foundation of the cycle, including – perhaps most importantly – its textual construction. I would argue that there is an internal teleology within the Kindertotenlieder, as well as an external one concerning its placement in Mahler’s oeuvre as a whole, and that the explication of the former is crucial to an understanding of the function of the work within the latter. With the Kindertotenlieder, Mahler begins his project of uniting song and symphony, and the song cycle begins to take on some of the structural characteristics of the symphony. To understand the structural teleology of the cycle, then, it is necessary to examine how the symphonic genre has influenced its form and construction and how this creates a different end than the characteristic goal of the song cycle as such. The defining difference created by the incorporation of symphonic structure into the Kindertotenlieder is the replacement of a narratively based teleology with one founded on structural connections. The model of the symphony and sonata form provides a loose framework around which to build the cycle, rather than solely the framework of a narrative or of thematic connections. We do not find the same sort of 103 Donald Mitchell, “Mahler’s ‘Kammermusikton,’” The Mahler Companion, ed. Donald Mitchell and Andrew Nicholson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999) 217. 104 “Mahler himself, one has to conclude, demonstrated this integral relationship in the very last years of his life by writing Das Lied von der Erde, the symphony that is also a song-cycle (or the song-cycle that is also a symphony, which was Mahler’s choice of nomenclature).” (Donald Mitchell, “Mahler’s ‘Kammermusikton,’” 217.)