Kindertotenlieder

Or songs on the death of children. There are five of them, which Mahler culled from a group of over four-hundred poems by Rückert.

Anybody who has been to more than five concerts of lieder will have run into Rückert. He pops up again and again as the poet on whom Schubert, Brahms, both Schumanns, Strauss, and even Hindemith borrow for the texts to their songs. Wikipedia reports that there are about 121 settings of his work to music; only Goethe, Rilke, and Heine have more.

Now, of course, absolutely no one reads him—except in concert halls. But he was wildly popular in his day, especially as an Orientalist. Wikipedia maintains that he continues to exert a powerful influence on German Orientalism today—and who am I to dispute that?

He had a typical 19^th century industriousness. He knew over 30 languages. He published widely. He held professorships in Erlangen and Berlin, and was also appointed a member of the Privy Council.

Tragedy struck when, in 1833-34 his children fell ill with scarlet fever, and then died. He reacted characteristically—spewing out 428 poems. Here’s what Karen Painter, via Wikipedia, has to say:

Rückert's 428 poems on the death of children became singular, almost manic documents of the psychological endeavor to cope with such loss. In ever-new variations Rückert's poems attempt a poetic resuscitation of the children that is punctuated by anguished outbursts. But above all the poems show a quiet acquiescence to fate and to a peaceful world of solace.

The irony is that Mahler wrote the pieces from 1901 to 1905. He had been near death, and was found comatose in a pool of blood. He recovered, wrote the Kindertotenlieder and…

…had his daughter die of scarlet fever four years after their premiere.

One commentator has said that Mahler’s skill with words was nearly equal to his skill in music. And he chose, among the 428 poems at his disposal, the five poems that deal with light, and with regeneration.

“You must not hold the darkness of the night in you, You must flood it in eternal light…”

I’ve no idea how hard these words are to sing. I think they are very easy to say. They may be true, or become true for some people.

But it won’t be months, but years in the future. During which many of the families of the victims will disintegrate, parents will turn to alcohol or drugs, manageable situations will become unmanageable, and unendurable.

A student of mine at Wal-Mart had the grueling experience of having to file both a birth certificate and a death certificate on the same day. His child had died minutes after birth. Five-hundred people—the population of the home office at the time—were at his side.

People who had the energy, the stamina to give him strength. People who were not bowled over by their own tragedy, or the tragedy of someone closer.

Half a continent away, my cousin’s wife is worried—in a lockdown, will she freak and forget the procedure? Could she have acted as the teachers did in Connecticut?

And I wonder, today, what she will say in her classroom tomorrow. Will she address the issue? Reassure the children that they are safe? Wait until a child ventures a fear or worry?

Whatever it is, we have all paid a big price for someone else’s madness, this weekend.

And for the “right” of the NRA to buy Congress.