Program Note:
Gustav Mahler first cast his setting of Ablösung im Sommer (“Change/Relief in Summer”) for voice and piano at his “Häuschen” in Steinbach am Attersee during the summers of 1888 and 1889. It was first published in 1892 as Lieder und Gesänge (“Songs and Airs”) but later renamed Lieder und Gesänge aus der Jugendzeit (“Songs and Airs from Days of Youth”). In 1895 and 1896, Mahler used the song as the basis for the second movement of his Third Symphony.
The text of "Ablösung im Sommer" comes from page 434–5 of the third edition of Clemens Brentano and Achim von Arnim’s famous collection of folksongs entitled Des Knaben Wunderhorn (1808). The minor to major modal change of the music reflects the transition from winter to summer as symbolized in the text by the death of the Cuckoo and the arrival the Nightingale. The return of the minor mode in the codetta seems to suggest that the Cuckoo is not in fact dead. He will come back as summer wanes.