Gustav Mahler (1860-1911)
Autograph music manuscript, a working manuscript for the song ‘Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder’, n.p. [Maiernigg, Austria], n.d. [June 1901]
Piano-vocal score for the complete song, notated in black ink on five three-stave systems. One page, 264 x 343mm, on a bifolium, 20-stave printed paper, stamped ‘Protokoll Schutzmarke No. 12a’, text in German (opening ‘Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder!’ and closing ‘Dan[n] vor allen nasche du! Nasche du!’), autograph direction ‘Heiter fliessend’ at the head, autograph alterations and cancellations in black ink and, twice, pencil or blue crayon, including a subsequently-deleted insertion of a bar at the end of the piano introduction, with a sketch in pencil on the verso of the integral blank leaf. Provenance: Stargardt, 10 March 1988, lot 911.

Autograph working manuscript for ‘Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder’ from the Rückert-Lieder, composed alongside the Kindertotenlieder and the Fifth Symphony, marking a turning point in Mahler’s oeuvre. Mahler's settings of the early 19^th-century poet Friedrich Rückert date from the period 1901–4. They fall into two groups: one an intended cycle, the Kindertotenlieder, the other a less formally related collection of five songs composed in 1901-2, the so-called ‘Rückert-Lieder’. Mahler composed four of the five songs that would comprise the Rückert-Lieder in the summer of 1901; alongside ‘Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder’, he set to music ‘Ich atmet’ einen linden Duft’, ‘Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen’, and ‘Um Mitternacht’. That summer was Mahler’s first in his new villa near Maiernigg on the Wörthersee and notably productive: by autumn he had composed not only the aforementioned Rückert-Lieder, but three of the Kindertotenlieder, ‘Der Tamboursg'sell’ and part of the Fifth Symphony. Given Mahler's modernist connections at this time, Rückert represented a conservative choice of poet – one whose poems had previously been set by Schubert and Robert Schumann – but while the composer’s settings flirt with sentimentality, both the Kindertotenlieder and the independent songs that form the Rückert-Lieder model a lyrical discourse of great subtlety. The songs composed between 1901 and 1904 have been considered to anticipate the style not only of Mahler’s 5^th, 6^th and 7^th symphonies, but also of his late works, such as Das Lied von der Erde and the 9^th Symphony (D. Mitchell, Songs and Symphonies of Life and Death, 2002, p.56).

The Rückert-Lieder received their premiere – without ‘Liebst du um Schönheit’, the fifth and final song, composed in 1902 – in Vienna on 29 January 1905, alongside the Kindertotenlieder. They were first published separately in their versions for piano accompaniment by C.F. Kahnt in Leipzig in 1905, then swiftly collected as numbers 3-7 in Sieben Lieder aus letzter Zeit, issued by the publisher that same year. This newly renamed collection, which had been expanded to include the Wunderhorn songs ‘Revelge’ and ‘Der Tamboursg’sell’, was published in full score by Kahnt in 1910.

Another, more heavily worked, manuscript for the piano version of ‘Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder’, now at the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek (Vienna, Mus.Hs.4365 MUS), is dated 14 June 1901 by Mahler. Notated on 18-stave paper, it shows the composer toying with the length of the piano introduction, cancelling a couple of bars that appear here. For the most part, Mahler destroyed the preparatory work for his compositions: the material that survives, whether in private hands or institutional collections, represents only a selection surviving by chance. The autograph manuscript for the full orchestral score is on deposit at the Morgan Library (New York, Lehman collection, M214.L716).

The pencil sketch on the verso of the integral blank represents an experimental variant of the left-hand accompaniment, similar to that which appears in ink for the fourth bar and again four bars before the end. It is the sort of brief, half-formed idea found in Mahler's notebooks and preliminary sketch sheets; without any indication of the treble part, it is difficult to establish the specific bar of the song to which it relates. Christie’s is grateful to Professor Stephen Hefling for his advice in this matter.