Multivalent Form in Gustav Mahlerʼs 'Lied von der Erde' from the Perspective of Its Performance History

The challenge of reconstructing Gustav Mahlerʼs aesthetics and style of performance, which incorporated expressive and structuralist principles, as well as problematic implications of a post-Mahlerian structuralist performance style (most prominently developed by the Schoenberg School) are taken in this article as the background for a discussion of the performance history of Mahlerʼs 'Lied von der Erde' with the aim of probing the model of “performance as analysis in real time” (Robert Hill). Following a method proposed by Nicholas Cook, the article interrelates quantitative tempo analyses of recorded performances (“distant listening”) and analytical observations of musical details in individual interpretations (“close listening”) in order to explore the broad field of performance strategies that Mahlerʼs music affords. Different options for taking tempo and sound dramaturgy as a means of structuring the formal process in performance in 23 recordings of the Liedʼs first movement bring out different facets of its multivalent structure between strophic lied and rotational symphonic sonata, between architectonic and processual form. An outlook on the performance dramaturgies of the entire six-movement cycle, based on quantitative data from 92 recordings as well as on a close listening to a key section from the finale, demonstrates contrary concepts of performed form that particularly concern the proportional weight and significance of the finale: performances of 'Der Abschied' conceptualize it either as a unique, “disproportional” telos of the cyclic formal process, optionally enhancing its fragmentary character, or as a balanced counterpart to the first and second movements, amplifying the symphonic framing of the cycle. Although the technique of using tempo as a means of “formal analysis in real time” may plausibly be traced back to Mahlerʼs own interpretative practice, “authentic” and “inauthentic” readings of Mahlerʼs Lied cannot ultimately be neatly segregated from one another.