A Study On Mahler's Artistic Songs

Gustav Mahler (July 7th, 1860– May 18th, 1911), the Austrian composer and conductor, is one of the representative figures of late 19th-century romanticism music. The majority of his works are symphonies and artistic songs, with the latter, altogether 45, being considered as the treasures in the field of artistic songs in Germany and Austria. These 45 songs mainly include 3 songs created in 1880, Song of Youth Tour (a vocal divertimento created during 1883 and 1884), Children's Singular Horn (created from 1888 to 1910, materials are from a German folk song collection by Ein Ningmu and Brentano), Five Luckert's Songs (created in 1901), Abgetriebenen Kindes Mater (created from 1901 to 1904, a vocal divertimento for alto, with Luckert's poems as its lyrics ), and some other solo songs. During his whole life time, Mahler had been creating those artistic songs that can be said to be a true portrayal of his life. Those songs show the life course of how a young composer with intense emotion and energy changed to a sophisticated man and finally had his soul purified.With all Mahler's artistic songs as its research object, this article firstly summarizes briefly Mahler's life and artistic songs, then analyzes and studies the artistic features of his songs in three chapters.Chapter I,"Theme Features of Mahler's Artistic Songs", examines the theme issue in Mahler's artistic songs, and concludes that his artistic songs contain mainly three themes, namely"love","death", and"religion and philosophy".Chapter II,"Technique Features of Mahler's Artistic Songs", discusses issues on composing techniques, including"external form and development skills of a melody","layout and characteristics of tonality","types and characteristics of musical form", and"technique features of accompaniment".Chapter III,"Performance of Mahler's Artistic Songs", summarizes the value of the performance of Mahler's artistic songs, then discusses from the respects of performing and teaching how to show the characteristics of those songs, the tips on singing them, how to choose a song suitable to a particular singer, and how to solve practical problems concerning vocal techniques.The conclusion part of this article summarizes the artistic features of Mahler's artistic songs, and further discusses the status and value of artistic songs in Mahler's music creation.