Hanya Holm's 1976 homage to the great Czech/Austrian symphonist and conductor Gustav Mahler was choreographed to his touching song cycle Kindertotenlieder (Song on the Death of Children) which he set to five poems by Friedrich Rückert. Dancers studying the work today are moved by the realization that men and women of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries lived close to death, parents often surviving one or more of their children.

For the 1997 reconstruction of the dance at Rutgers University, the music was performed by Maria Denison, mezzo-soprano, and Carol Wong, piano. Wong was challenged to find her own interpretation of Mahler's musical phrasing while following dynamic markings in his piano transcription of the orchestral score. Respecting Mahler's theme of solemn grief Wong sought to keep the music vibrant enough to sustain images of eternal existence implied in the text.

Gustav Mahler was born on July 7, 1860 in Kalischt, Bohemia. His parents had fourteen children, eight of whom died in infancy. He was fourteen when his favorite brother Ernst died at the age of twelve. In 1875 Mahler moved to Vienna to study music at the conservatory of the Friends of Music. He embarked on a long career as a conductor, making his American debut in 1908 when he conducted at the Metropolitan Opera. He composed nine symphonies and began a tenth. Mahler started to compose Kindertotenlieder in 1901 and finished the cycle in 1904. His first daughter, Maria Anna, was born in 1902 and she died five years later of scarlet fever and diphtheria. Mahler was never able to conduct the Kindertotenlieder after the death of his daughter. He died four years later on May 18, 1911. Poet Friedrich Rückert was born in 1788 in Schweinfurt, Germany and he died in 1866 in Neusen, Germany. He studied philosophy and published his first notable poetry in 1814. Rückert married Luise Fischer in 1820 and together they had ten children; only seven outlived their parents. In December, 1833 his only daughter and youngest child died of scarlet fever at the age of three and sixteen days later his second youngest child, Ernst, died of the same illness. Rückert wrote 425 poems, which he called Kindertotenlieder in the six months after the death of his children. Seven decades later Gustav Mahler chose five of the poems for his monumental song cycle. It is interesting to note that each poem he chose to set to music deals with light and darkness, symbolizing eternal life and death.

NUN WIL DIE SONN' SO HELL AUFGEHN! ~Freidrich Rückert

Nun will die sonn' so hell aufgeh'n,		Now the sun will rise so brightly,
Als sei kein Unglück die Nacht gescheh'n!		As if no disaster had come in the night!
Das Unglück geschah nur mir allein;		The disaster came to me alone;
Die Sonne sie scheinet allgemein!		The sun goes on shining everywhere!
Du musst nicht die Nacht in dir verschränken,		You must not let night dwell in your heart,
Musst sie ins ew'ge Licht versenken!		You must submerge it in eternal light!
Ein Lämplein verlosch in meinem Zelt!		A little lamp went out in my heart!
Heil! Heil sei dem Freudenlicht der Welt!		Hail! Hail to the joyful light of the world!