Zemlinsky was an Austrian composer, conductor, and teacher whose career bridged the late Romantic and early modern eras. Born in Vienna, he studied at the Vienna Conservatory and won the support of Brahms early in his career. Zemlinsky became a respected conductor in Vienna, Prague, and Berlin, while also teaching composition; among his students and associates were Arnold Schoenberg, who later became his brother-in-law. Although his music was overshadowed for many years by that of Mahler, Schoenberg, and other contemporaries, Zemlinsky is now recognized as a distinctive voice whose richly expressive works combine lush Romanticism with the emerging musical language of the twentieth century.
Lyric Symphony, Op. 18 (1922-23) is Zemlinsky’s best-known orchestral work, an opulent seven-movement setting for soprano, baritone, and large orchestra. The text comes from The Gardener by the Bengali poet and Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore. Inspired in part by the example of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde, the work explores love, longing, fulfillment, separation, and acceptance through a continuous sequence of interconnected songs.
