Long Autumn Night

Qian Qi (710–782) was a mid-Tang dynasty Chinese court poet known by contemporaries for elegant verses which are rich in meaning and loose in syntax. They could be interpreted in many ways. This poem was inspired by "Long Autumn Night" by Wang Yong 王融^[1] of the 5th century. Gustav Mahler's choral symphony Das Lied von der Erde, 2nd movement, was based on this Tang poem about a lonely young girl at her silk loom in a wealthy household.

The second movement of Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde is based on this Qian Qi poem. The German choral text of the first two stanzas are given below:

Full German choral text and English translation are in the wiki "Das Lied von der Erde ".

The German text for "Der Einsame im Herbst" ("The Solitary One in Autumn") was re-written from the 19th c. German translation of French translations of the poem. The Mahler choral text by necessity differs from the Hans Bethge German text (Bethge's "Die chinesische Flöte") since it must be set to music. The original Chinese poem was not identified for a long time. But now it is conclusively shown to be by Qian Qi, a mid-Tang dynasty poet and high-ranking official. The title is "After Long Autumn Night" 《效古秋夜長》.^[3]

The German source used by Mahler was a translation from French translations. There were major errors in both the text translations and attributions^[4] so that the original poem in Chinese could not be identified. The first identification was published in 1983 by Qian Renkang 钱仁康 through style and subject matter analysis. This was confirmed in 1999 after an exhaustive backwards analysis of a large number of likely authors and texts. The second movement is now generally accepted as being based on this Qian Qi Tang poem.^[5]