Geert Woltjer, Analysis of Mahler's Kindertotenlieder

Introduction

This website has been created during a HOVO-course (a course for people older than 50) of Universiteit Maastricht, The Netherlands. This course took place in October and November 2004. The songs of the cycle were analyzed in order to improve the insight in the reasons why the songs work as they do. The analyses are made by an amateur musician, who likes to understand what he is doing. This web is the result of this analysis. It is not meant to be perfect; it's just the result of the HOVO-course. I hope the analysis may help others to get a more in depth view on the song than while only singing, playing or listening to the music. Regretfully, songs number 4 and 5 are not analysed yet.

The analysis uses capital letters for separate tones, and capital letters for major chords. Minor chords have no capital letters. To the full measures of the songs, we refer with a m. So, m. 2 means: the second full measure of the song.