Lieder aus "Des Knaben Wunderhorn"

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'Des Knaben Wunderhorn' ('The Youth's Magic Horn') is a collection of anonymous German folk poems assembled and published by Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano between 1805 and 1808; since that time, selected items from the collection have been set as 'Lieder' by several composers. The specific term Lieder aus "Des Knaben Wunderhorn", however, is usually used in connection with settings made by Gustav Mahler – though it should be appreciated that Mahler actually made more settings of Wunderhorn texts than are explicitly grouped together under that title.

Mahler's self-composed text for the first of his Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen ('Songs of a Travelling Journeyman', regularly mistranslated as 'Songs of a Wayfarer'; 1884–1885) is clearly based on the Wunderhorn poem 'Wann mein Schatz'; his first genuine settings of Wunderhorn texts, however, are found in the Lieder und Gesänge ('Songs and Airs'), later renamed by the publisher as Lieder und Gesänge aus der Jugendzeit ('Songs and Airs From Days of Youth'). The nine Wunderhorn settings therein were composed between 1887 and 1890, and occupied the second and third volumes of this three-volume collection of songs for voice and piano. The titles of these nine songs (different in many cases from the titles of the original poems) are as follows:

Volume II:

1. "Um schlimme Kinder artig zu machen"
2. "Ich ging mit Lust durch einen grünen Wald"
3. "Aus! Aus!"
4. "Starke Einbildungskraft"

Volume III:

1. "Zu Strassburg auf der Schantz"
2. "Ablösung im Sommer"
3. "Scheiden und Meiden"
4. "Nicht wiedersehen!"
5. "Selbstgefühl"

Mahler began work on his next group of Wunderhorn settings in 1892. A collection (not a 'cycle') of 12 of these was published in 1899 under the title Gesänge"/'Humoresken ('Humoresques'), but is now known simply (and somewhat confusingly) as Mahler's 'Songs from "Des Knaben Wunderhorn"'. The titles in this collection are:

1. "Der Schildwache Nachtlied" – The Sentinel's Nightsong (January/February 1892)
2. "Verlor'ne Müh" – Labour Lost (February 1892)
3. "Trost im Unglück" – Solace in Misfortune (April 1892)
4. "Wer hat dies Liedlein erdacht? – Who Thought up this Song? (April 1892)
5. "Das irdische Leben" – The Earthly Life (after April 1892)
6. "Des Antonius von Padua Fischpredigt" – St. Anthony of Padua's Sermon to the Fish (July/August 1893)
7. "Rheinlegendchen" – Little Rhine Legend (August 1893)
8. "Lied des Verfolgten im Turm" – Song of the Persecuted in the Tower (July 1898)
9. "Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen" – Where the Fair Trumpets Sound (July 1898)
10. "Lob des hohen Verstandes" – Praise of Lofty Intellect (June 1896)
11. "Urlicht" – Primeval Light (1893)
12. "Es sungen drei Engel" – Three Angels sang a sweet air (1895)

'Urlicht' (composed ?1892, orch. July 1893) was rapidly incorporated unchanged into the 2nd Symphony (1888–1894) as the work's fourth movement; 'Es sungen drei Engel', by contrast, was specifically composed as part of the 3rd Symphony (1893–1896): requiring a boys' chorus, it is the only song among the twelve for which Mahler did not produce a 'voice-and-orchestra' version and the only one which he did not first publish separately.

An additional setting from this period was "Das himmlische Leben" ('The Heavenly Life'), of February 1892 (orch. March 1892). By the year of the collection's publication (1899) this song had been earmarked as the finale of the 4th Symphony (1899–1900), and thus was not published as part of the Des Knaben Wunderhorn collection, nor was it made available in a 'voice-and-piano' version.

After 1901, 'Urlicht' and 'Es sungen drei Engel' were removed from the collection, and replaced in later editions by two other songs, thus restoring the total number of songs in the set to twelve. The two new songs were:

"Revelge" – Reveille (July 1899)

"Der Tamboursg'sell" – The Drummer Boy (August 1901)

Shortly after Mahler's death, the publisher (Universal Edition) replaced Mahler's own piano versions of the songs by 'piano reductions' of the orchestral versions, thus obscuring the differences between the two and taking the listener away from the composer's pianistic conceptions. The original piano versions were re-published in 1993 as part of the critical edition, edited by Renate Hilmar-Voit and Thomas Hampson.