The Echo of ‘After-Poetry’: Hans Bethge and the Chinese Lyric

The publication, in 1908, of Hans Bethge's Die chinesische Flöte marked a highpoint in the reception of Chinese poetry in modern Europe. Bethge's ‘Nachdichtungen’ (‘after-poems’) of poems from the Tang dynasty through to the late 1800s were extraordinarily popular, and were almost immediately immortalized by Gustav Mahler's decision to use a selection from them as the text for Das Lied von der Erde (1909). Yet Bethge could not read Chinese, and so based his poems on existing translations by figures including Judith Gautier, whose Livre de Jade had appeared in 1867. This article situates Bethge's reception of Chinese poetry – and in particular, that of Li-Tai-Po (Li Bai) – within the context of European chinoiserie, notably by concentrating on his engagement with a recurring imagery of lyrics and Lieder. Although he was deaf to the music of Chinese, Bethge was extremely sensitive to the ways in which Li-Tai-Po's self-conscious reflections on poetic creation underlay his ‘after-poems’ or Nachdichtungen, deriving his impetus from images of the rebirth of prose – songs, birdsong, lyrics, Lieder – as poetry. The very form of the ‘lyric’ emerges as predicated on its function as echo: the call of the Chinese flute elicits the response of the European willow. That this is necessarily a comparative process – between Asia and Europe, between China, France, and Germany – suggests its resonance as an example of the West-Eastern lyric.

Vocal and Choral Symphonies and Considerations on Text Representation in Music

The article examines the genres of the vocal and the choral symphony in connection with the author’s vocal symphony Finland for soprano, tenor and orchestra set to Evgeny Baratynsky’s poem with the same title. It also discusses the issue of expression of the literary text in vocal music, as viewed by a number of influential 19th and 20th century composers, music theorists and artists. Among the greatest examples of the vocal symphony are Gustav Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde and Alexander von Zemlinsky’s Lyrische Symphonie. These works combine in an organic way the features of the symphony and the song cycle. The genre of the choral symphony started with Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and includes such works as Mendelssohn’s Second Symphony, Scriabin’s First Symphony and Mahler’s Second, Third and Eighth Symphonies. Both genres exemplify composers’ attempts to combine the most substantial genre of instrumental music embodying the composers’ philosophical worldviews with that of vocal music, which expresses the emotional content of the literary texts set to music. The issue of expressivity in music is further elaborated in examinations of various composers’ approaches to it. Wagner claimed that the purpose of music was to express the composers’ emotional experience and especially the literary texts set to music. Stravinsky expressed the view that music in its very essence is not meant to express emotions. He called for an emotionally detached approach to music and especially to text settings in vocal music. Schoenberg pointed towards a more introversive and abstract approach to musical expression and text setting in vocal music, renouncing outward depiction for the sake of inner expression. Similar attitudes to this position were held by painter Wassily Kandinsky and music theorist Theodor Adorno. The author views Schoenberg’s approach to be the most viable for 20th and early 21st century music.

Lika Mutal / Juan Javier Salazar / Venancio Shinki

ILLAPA dedica los versos que siguen a los amigos que se han ido. Provienen de una gran obra musical de Gustav Mahler titulada Das Lied von der Erde (El canto de la tierra) que expresa, como nunca antes se había hecho, un canto a la vida, embriagante y a la vez melancólico, también una despedida.Luis Arias Vera, Lika Mutal, Juan Javier Salazar y Venancio Shinki vivirán entre nosotros a través de las obras que nos han dejado.

Viennese Moderne and Its Spatial Planes, Sounded

The opening of Mahler's ““Der Abschied”” from Das Lied von der Erde demonstrates a special set of musical conditions that include spare textures, a wide disposition of instrumental forces, and the effect of temporal suspension. This transparency allows the process of individuation and exchange between musical elements to come to the fore, especially in relation to timbre. Through this passage Mahler highlights voices that work in synthesis with those that are juxtaposed. The first half of the study explores how this music is defined spatially through this process. It then proposes that this space is historically meaningful because Mahler's construction of musical space is analogous to the visual tensions in the landscape works of his artistic contemporaries Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele. In both musical and visual context, these tensions reflect the diversity of the Viennese Moderne through their ephemeral and laconic qualities. Mahler's compositional tendency to ““suspend”” time and flatten the sonic plane gave his critics fodder for an ideological argument that involved ornamentation versus organic development, since his methods reflected ambiguously on the nineteenthcentury tradition of teleologically based symphonic forms. ““Abschied”” derived its relevancy from neither static surface nor motivic development but by its capacity to suggest unique spatial relationships. The movement initiates a timbrally and rhythmically nuanced recitative, in the form of subtle decays and articulated renewals. Like Klimt's superimposed visual planes, which create a synthetic relationship between figure and ground, Mahler's music suggests incremental distances between subjects. The economy of his music relates also to Schiele's laconic subjects. In Mahler's landscapes, both types of experiments coexist.