Drei Lieder aus "Des Knaben Wunderhorn" (Rheinlegendchen, Das irdische Leben, Der Tod und das Mädchen im Blumengarten) (2025)
(for mezzo-soprano and orchestra)

3 Songs from “Des Knaben Wunderhorn“
for mezzo soprano and orchestra

When Omer Meir Wellber, the musical director of the Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra, approached me with the idea of setting some poems from “Des Knaben Wunderhorn” to music that would fit Mahler's song cycle, I set two texts that Gustav Mahler had also used to music and also found a new text for which Mahler had not written any music.

I noticed that Mahler chose most of the texts from his own, more masculine perspective or that these texts even have the military as their theme. To counter this, I created a cycle of three songs on the themes of loneliness, hunger and death.

I am an Israeli citizen and for some time now we have been experiencing difficult days here due to the cruel and senseless war in which innocent people are being murdered on both sides and children are starving to death. I began to set the song “Das irdische Leben” to music and the thought of a hungry child in Gaza never left me. I used various motifs from Mahler's magnificent original song in my composition. I structured it like a miniature opera with three different roles, but all sung by just one person.

The song “Rheinlegendchen” was the biggest challenge for me. The text is a fairy tale without much drama and Mahler composed it perfectly in the style of an Austrian Ländler. So the challenge of writing something new was enormous. As I delved deeper into the text, I realized that the real theme is the loneliness of the girl. Throughout the song, the flow of the Rhine can be heard in the music. Instead of Mahler's three-note rhythm, I used a five-note rhythm that constantly alternates with a steady rhythm. I tried to musically express the instability of the girl's situation, her disappointment, her hope and the awakening at the end.

In the collection of poems “Des Knaben Wunderhorns”, I came across the poem “Der Tod und das Mädchen im Blumengarten”, for which Mahler did not write any music. It describes the difficult and cruel confrontation between a young girl and the angel of death who comes to take her soul. She begs for her life, but the angel of death does not give up. Here, too, I have created a kind of mini-opera from dialogues between the girl and the angel of death. The poem is very long, detailed and violent. I have selected a few stanzas that are sufficient to convey the girl's distress and the cruelty of death. I dedicated the song to Ariel and Kfir Bibas, the red-haired babies who were abducted from their homes on October 7 and murdered in cold blood in Gaza.

Ella Milch-Sheriff (Translation by Edition Peters)
Mai 2025