Orchesterbehandlung und Klangfarbendisposition im Spätwerk Gustav Mahlers: Das Lied von der Erde

Abstract

The surprising lack of musicological studies on the orchestration of Gustav Mahler and his contemporaries appears symptomatic of the inherent difficulties in analyzing the orchestration of post-Wagnerian music. After early attempts during the first half of the twentieth century, among which Egon Wellesz’s Die neue Instrumentation (Berlin, 1928/29) stands out as one of the very few convincing studies on the history of orchestration, the writings of Theodor W. Adorno contained innovative categories that were useful in the analyses of Mahler’s scores. As has been shown in the author’s studies on fin-de-siècle orchestration, a detailed reconstruction of the underlying structural problems needs to precede the interpretation of complex orchestral textures in order to yield meaningful results. A careful look at the score of Das Lied von der Erde reveals that Mahler not only reverted to numerous orchestration techniques already employed in his symphonies, but he also created novel orchestral textures which had a profound impact on the works of composers associated with the Schoenberg circle, most especially those of Anton Webern.