Songs and Symphony No. 1

Abstract Mahler’s earliest works need not detain us for more than a few lines. Some have already been mentioned. Mahler told Natalie BauerLechner: At the Conservatoire I never finished a single score. I usually stopped after the first or second movement, occasionally after the third … not because I was impatient to start another but because, before even finishing my work, I was no longer satisfied with it. I had already moved beyond it. Some of the earliest compositions which he allowed to be published are in the three books of Lieder und Gesange aus der Jugendzeit (Songs from the Days of Youth). The first of the three books, all published in 1892, comprises five songs written between 1880 and 1883. The remaining books contain nine settings from Des Knaben Wunderhorn, which will be considered in that context. Of Book 1, the third song, Hans und Grethe, to a text by Mahler, was composed on 5th March 1880 as one of a proposed set of five songs dedicated to Josephine Pois!, daughter of the postmaster at lglau, of which three survived.