Mahler's 'Abschied':

A Wrong Note Righted

~ : 1985 :-v
Some recent work
1
on which I have been engaged has involved a
detailed scrutiny of Mahler's Das Lied and some of its principal
manuscript sources. One general impression I have been left with
is the exceptional care and subtlety of Mahler's approach to word-
setting, something I suppose I had been aware of but to which I
had never before paid much attention.
I could quote many examples but shall introduce only one into
this short essay because it proved to have rich consequences and
resonances. The passage in question comes toward the end of'Der
Abschied' at fig. 57:
Ex. 1
Still ist mein Herz
There is nothing world-shaking, I concede, about that phrase. On
the other hand, it is an admirable example of Mahler's scrupulous
setting of his text. In particular, the repeated Cs clearly embody the
level, steady, and serene beat of a heart at peace with itself.
I could quite easily quote a considerable number of like exam-
ples, some of them a good deal more complex. But it was this one
1 I acknowledge gratefully the kind co-operation and assistance of the Pierpont Morgan
Library. ew York (the Robert Owen Lehman deposit), the Willem Mengel berg St:ichting
and the Gemeente Museum of The Hague, and Dr Edward R. Reilly.
First published in Musiw/ Quarterly 71/2 ( 19 5), pp. 2oo-204; reprinted in DMCN, pp. 1 r-<5.
lr.
j -.. I ~
492
SCRl:TINY
that caught my ear and eye at a time vvhen I was also busv with
looking through the source materials of the movement; or: to be
more precise, it was these bars and their immediate predecessors,
five bars after fig. 56, that led me to investigate Mahler's composi-
tion sketch. For what we find in the published score is this:
Ex.2
,,
f
J
I
J
I
v r -
Ich wer - de me mals
I confess that I had never in any sense questioned this phrase; on
the contrary I had always thought of it as a neat example of the
kind of integration of \Vhich Mahler was a master, that is, the comple-
mentary vocal phrase 'Still ist mein Herz' ('My heart is still') taking
over the rhythmic pattern of 'Ich werde niemals' ('I shall never
again') and the identical interval and pitches, but reversing their
order and their direction. On this occasion, however, I \Vondered
\vhy, if Mahler were intent on making a point \Vith the repeated
notes in his setting of 'Still ist mein Herz' (my emphasis), he used
the same device onlv a few bars earlier in an entirelv different con-
text, \vhere an imag-e of stillness, of calm, was not
It was this consideration I had casually in mind when turning
over the pages of Mahler's short score of 'Der Abschied' his
'
original composition sketch, which is owned by the Gemeente
Museum ofThe Hague. What immediately leapt to my eye \vas, of
course, 'lch werde niemals .. .'which in the composer's hand quite
clearly does 1101 follow the repeated-note pattern of Ex. 2 but is laid
out thus:
Ex. 3

W :J J If"
r
Ich wer - de me mals
MAHLER'S ABSCHIED: A WRONG NOTE RIGHTED
493
There is no doubt about the composition sketch: the A (v.rhich
appears in all published versions) is undeniably a G. How, then, did
the repeated As arise?
This can be answered simply: because they appear thus in
Mahler's fair manuscript full score of Das Lied, now part of the
Robert Owen Lehman deposit at the Pierpont Morgan Library in
New York City. There is no room for doubt either about what
Mahler wrote in this autograph. It is what \Ve are all thoroughly
familiar with and reproduced in Ex. 2. One might well conclude, if
this vvere all the evidence that might be assembled, that Mahler had
had a change of mind at a very late stage or made a slip of the pen,
but that it was impossible to determine which \vas the more likely
explanation of an A replacing the G. For reasons I shall come to
now, I think there can be hardly any doubt that it was a slip of the
pen and that \Ve should without more ado correct the errant A to
G. I can outline my arguments as follows:
I If we adopt G in bar 442, then the repeated-note response to the
image of 'Still ist mein Herz' is no longer paradoxically anti-
cipated and its impact thus diminished in bars 446-7.
2 The motif with the G appears not only in the composition
sketch but also in the draft and probably earliest extant orchestral
score in Mahler's hand (currently held by the Gemeente Museum)
and in the autograph fair copy of the vocal score (owned by
John Kallir. Scarsdale, New York).
2
So there are at least three
manuscripts in Mahler's own hand in which the motif in its
A-G-A form appears; and it is indisputable that it was with the
G that Mahler first conceived the phrase.
3 There is one further piece of evidence which I personally find
the most convincing of all and which derives from the special
character of the counterpoint in Das Lied and in 'Der Abschied'
in particular. Adorno was among the first to spot this: in his
monograph on Mahler he refers to it as the manifestation of an
2 Mahler's piano reduction of D11s Lied was published in see note 5 belO\v. rEdirorial
note added by Mervyn Cooke for
494 SCRL.Tl!\JY
Unisono ('unfocused unison') in which 'identical voices
differ slightly fi:-om one another in rhythm' .3 This was a brilliant
insight of Adorno's, and it is indeed the case that intensive study
of 'Der Abschied' will reveal numerous examples of contra-
puntal textures, which, in principle, are heterophonic, that is, it
is a rhythmically dis-synchronized unison, shared between the
parts, which is at the heart of the counterpoint.
It is precisely this relationship we encounter in bars 442-7,
where the voice part and the counter-melody of the violins are
built out of an identical melody and simultaneously combined an
' ' ,
octave apart, in two ditierent rhythmic versions. At least, that is
how the passage \Vas originally conceived by Mahler and how, in
my estimation, we should hear it in the future, if my correction is
accepted and becomes established performing practice:
Ich
r-----3----,
*

J
r
*
wer de
If we leave the repeated As as they appear, alas, in the so-called
critical edition of the score (which makes no mention whatsoever
of all this),; then of course this tiny but significant feature of
Mahler's marvellous finale not only goes unheard but allovvs its
3 Theodor .\J,Jh/cr: Ei11c lll!lsik,tlische Physi(;tl/tllllik. p. 1 S!+-
4 71nec, :Ktually. For. as David pointed out to me. in the composition sketch
the third part (system 3, stave 2. bar 4) yet .1gain gins us the A-G-A pattern. (In rhc flit-
copied fUll score this became d \L'cond violin part and is delivered at a different pitch.)
In the second volume of the Stipplel/lellt fLl the .\L1hlcr EdiriotJ (Uni\ersal Edition,
Vienna. which published own \'oral score of D.t Lied t'tlll dcr Erdc,
Stephen E. Hefling. in his Dble of erraw (p. xxiv), and corrects the error that was
originally !vbhler"s in his autograph fair copy of the full score (blindly fOllowed in the
Criric,1! EdititJfl's published full score). \\ithout. howeYcr. acknowledging 0.\f-; thoroughly
documented discovery of the mistake t()ur vears earlier. St:'e. ho\\en:r. Hefting's conrri-
bmion 'Perspective<> on Sketch Sntdies' to !\1. T. Vogt (ed.). D,l.' Ct1Sft1l'-.\!,ll!lcr-Fcst
1989. pp. +45-)7. [EditoriJ! note added by !'v1avyn Cooke tOr D.\IC.V.J
MAHLER's ABSCHIED: A \\
1
RONG NOTE RIGHTED
495
erroneous substitution to blunt the effect of the stillness that is
created by the (legitimately) repeated notes a fe\v bars later.
A last point, though one not directly related to the manuscript
sources. If there is one thing that I have learned from \Vorking
closely alongside composers during the last f\venty years or so, it is
to be sceptical about claims of infallibility made tor their auto-
graphs, even when those autographs are impressively tidy tair
copies, wearing all the signs of finality and authority. It is in mak-
ing his tair copy, into \vhich, very often, a substantial element of
the mechanical enters, that the composer can sometimes nod and
commit - and thereby umvittingly perpetuate - an error. Of
course, if Mahler had ever heard Das Lied in performance, he
would doubtless have made the necessary correction. That \Vas not
to be. It is my guess that \vhen he started to pen the voice part tor
"Ich \verde niemals', his mind had already raced ahead to the next
vocal entry, 'Still ist mein Herz', and under the influence of those
repeated Cs, A-G-A became repeated As.
We have become so familiar with 'lch werde niemals' in its
erroneous form that it may take a little \vhile before we hear how
natural, convincing, and expressive the correct version is: for
instance it brings to lite a crucial word, \verde', which is otherwise
locked into an accentless monotone.
The expressive gain was recently noticed by one of the London
critics \vho attended the first performance of the revision. Simon
Rattle adopted it tor his performance of Das Lied at the Royal
Festival Hall, London, on 19 April 1984, when he conducted the
Philharmonia Orchestra, with the contralto Florence Quivar as
soloist in 'Der Abschied'. Meirion Bo\ven, writing in the Guardimz
on 21 April, made it clear that in prospect the whole thing seemed
slightly ridiculous, this recovery of o11e note, and I v.rould be the first
to concede that the whole afiair might appear, in the abstract, to be
grotesquely over-inflated (the same thought occurred to me,
especially \vhen, at the morning rehearsal, Mme Quivar quite over-
looked the emendation and stuck to what she had always been used
to singing). And yet, after Mr Bowen heard the wrong note righted,
he declared that tor him the phrase \vould never sound right again
if sung in its old form. I \Vould go along \Vith that.