Programs · Episode

Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder: “Songs on the Death of Children”

Program: Night Music with Frank Dominguez
Aired: Friday, May 27, 2022 @ 8:00 pm
Hosted by Frank Dominguez

Tonight’s Evening Opus remembers the victims of the mass school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. Mahler wrote Kindertotenlieder, or Songs on the Death of Children, at the turn of the 20th century. A time when families routinely lost children to illness and accident. Mahler himself knew this profound grief. Although the circumstances of loss in these songs is significantly different, we offer this work to remember the families that continue to lose children in the unceasing epidemic of mass shootings in the United States. We hope that as a people we can find the will to end the present threat that is endangering so many children in our nation.

This program will be available for a limited time at the WDAV Archive. 

Pictured: Gustav Mahler, by Emil Orlík – Collections Walter Anton, Public Domain. 

Lyrics & Translation

Mahler’s song cycle adapts five poems by the 19th century writer Friedrich Ruckert. He wrote more than four hundred poems – which he never published – to deal with the loss of his children. As arranged by Mahler in the song cycle, the texts convey anguish, the consolation of memories, and ultimately acceptance in the belief that death is powerful, but love is even stronger.

"Now the sun wants to rise as brightly"
Now the sun wants to rise as brightly
As if nothing terrible had happened during the night.
The misfortune happened only to me,
But the sun shines equally on everyone.

You must not fold the night into yourself.
You must bathe it in eternal light.
A little lamp has gone out in my tent.
I must greet the joyful light of the world.


"Now I see why with such dark flames"
Now I see why with such dark flames
Your eyes flash at me in certain moments.
O eyes, it was as if in a single glance
You could concentrate your full power.

Yet I didn't realize, because mists were floating around me,
Woven by a blinding fate,
That your beam of light was ready to be sent home,
To the place from which all beams emanate.

You wanted to tell me with your light:
We really want to stay near you forever!
But that was taken away by fate.

Look straight at us, because soon we will be far away!
What to you are only eyes in these days,
In the nights to come will be only stars.

"When your mama"
When your mama
steps in through the door
and I turn my head
to see her,
on her face
my gaze does not first fall,
but at the place
nearer the doorstep,
there, where your
dear little face would be,
when you with bright joy
would step inside,
as you used to, my little daughter.

When your mama
steps in through the door
with the glowing candle,
it seems to me, as if you always
came in with her too,
hurrying behind her,
as you used to come into the room.
Oh you, of a father's cell,
ah, too soon
extinguished joyful light!

"I often think that they have just stepped out"
I often think that they have just stepped out
And that they will be coming home soon.
The day is fine, don't be worried,
They've just gone for a long walk.

Yes indeed, they have just stepped out,
And now they are making their way home.
Don't be worried, the day is fine.
They have simply made a journey to those hills.

They have just gone out ahead of us,
And they will not be coming home again.
We'll go meet them on those hills,
In the sunlight, the day is fine
On those hills.

"In this weather"
In this weather, in this windy storm,
I would never have sent the children out.
They have been carried off,
I wasn't able to warn them!

In this weather, in this gale,
I would never have let the children out.
I feared they sickened:
those thoughts are now in vain.

In this weather, in this storm,
I would never have let the children out,
I was anxious they might die the next day:
now anxiety is pointless.

In this weather, in this windy storm,
I would never have sent the children out.
They have been carried off,
I wasn't able to warn them!

In this weather, in this gale, in this windy storm,
they rest as if in their mother's house:
frightened by no storm,
sheltered by the Hand of God.

Source: Kindertotenlieder/Wikipedia

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