The Kindertotenlieder - Prologue. Prologue

Kindertotenlieder translates as “songs on the death of children”.

Kindertotenlieder is a piece of twentieth century classical music (known as a song cycle) written by Gustav Mahler during the period 1901-1904.

The lyrics of the song cycle are the words of five poems (out of a total of four hundred and twenty eight) written by Friedrich Rückert in 1833-1834 about the illness and death of his children from scarlet fever; tragically, four years after he had finished writing Kindertotenlieder, Mahler lost his own child to scarlet fever.

"I placed myself in the situation that a child of mine had died. When I really lost my daughter, I could not have written these songs any more." Gustav Mahler after the death of his daughter.