Wake-up call

Just now I went out to get the paper and I looked at the morning and I got this Gustav Mahler song in my head. Actually the song had nothing to do with the actual day. I get this song in my head every morning. It is funny how you can fall into musical habits like that. It is morning, I get up, I think of this song at one time or another.

I was surprised there were not more takes on this song on YouTube of this song. I would have thought someone would have done something artistic with it because it is so atmospheric, describing a spring morning. Well, the one I found is a dandy: Bo Skovhus with the Bamberg Symphony and a good-looking conductor named Jonathan Nott. Funny, I am hearing a lot about Bamberg lately! We just had thing going in Buffalo where they brought over a film about how they brew beer in Bamberg. The film made the rounds of the taverns and they showed it and had beer tastings. The German filmmaker came along with the film and you could ask him questions.

The Bambergers play Mahler as well as they brew beer. There is no translation but you can get the spirit of the song. And heck, I can more or less translate it from memory. There is breeze in the linden tree (in German songs you are always dealing with linden trees). It's a spring morning. The sun is up. Get up!

And my favorite line, at 1:50.. "And I have already seen your sweetheart."

Your sweetheart is out and about!

If that does not get you out of bed what will?

You get your own inner videos to go with these songs and I always picture the breeze blowing through a village, the birds singing, the people in the streets. You are asleep in an upstairs front bedroom and the branches of the tree outside are tapping on your window and the breeze is coming into the room and stirring the sheets over your feet.

Oh, look. This is darling. (That is what I even wrote, as a comment.) This is a sweet video someone made of the song. The performance, by a singer named Rob Wanders, is kind of amateurish which adds to the charm. Plus it is with piano. All other things being equal I almost always prefer the original piano version to the orchestration. And the piano accompaniment to this song makes the bird trills so pretty.

The concluding image in this second video is especially cute. "Lang schlafer, steh auf!" Long sleeper, get up! There is a comment apparently from the person they show asleep. "That's me in the video! Thanks for using my picture, Rob!"

We would say sleepyhead.

I am one!