Des Knaben Wunderhorn

Fertile song.
1887-1901: for more than fifteen years, Mahler drew on the early 19th-century anthology collected by Arnim and Brentano for virtually all the poems he set to music. The resulting songs in their turn constituted the principal source of inspiration for the first four symphonies. The lieder of Des Knaben Wunderhorn, the quintessence of the Mahlerian universe, derive their impact from the simplicity that lies at the heart of their dense musical texture, but also from their gently ironic vision of the vanity of the world.