Summer pauses. A small silence opens where the cuckoo would call. Paula lets that gap speak first—an absence with shape to it—then sets a new current in motion. You feel it as quick lift and answer, a brightness taking its place without fuss. The surface plays at lightness: a hop, a perch, a phrase that returns because it wants to. Nothing is literal, yet the exchange is clear. One voice falls away; another keeps the season alive. Lady Nightingale is not pictured; she is the turn itself—the moment the day remembers how to sing.
Background note: Mahler set this Wunderhorn poem as a youthful song and later echoed its material in Symphony No. 3 (III), which is why the painting moves from playful spark to a more listening calm.
Oxford Lieder — text & translation
LiederNet — text/translation
Utah Symphony — how the song feeds Mahler’s Symphony No. 3
LA Phil — overview of Mahler’s Wunderhorn world
Background note: Mahler set this Wunderhorn poem as a youthful song and later echoed its material in Symphony No. 3 (III), which is why the painting moves from playful spark to a more listening calm.
Oxford Lieder — text & translation
LiederNet — text/translation
Utah Symphony — how the song feeds Mahler’s Symphony No. 3
LA Phil — overview of Mahler’s Wunderhorn world
