Gustav Mahler (1860-1910) has received little recognition as a song-writer outside of Germany. The great effort of his life was expended on his symphonies, which are planned on a scale larger than man had ever thought of before. In many ways Mahler was a very great master. As an artist he was unimpeachable. As a writer for the orchestra he was original and forceful. As a developer of the new radical technique he holds a high place in the history of German music. It may be doubted whether his musical ideas and his power of musical architecture were equal to the execution of his stupendous plans. But these faults, if they exist, do not enter greatly into his songs--at least into the most typical of them. For Mahler had one quality which always stood by him when others failed. This was his intimate feeling for the folk-song. A peasant by birth, he retained a certain simplicity of soul in his attitude toward music which seems contradicted by his great technical complexity. He can reproduce not only the simple form of the folk-song, but also its spirit, its naïve literal quality, which takes joy in what a sophisticated person would find common. This quality we find very frequently in his songs. The greatest of these is the group entitled _Kindertotenlieder_, which are loved in Germany (and especially in Vienna) almost beyond any other. These dirges for children have hardly any parallel in music. They combine an intense pathos with something of the naïve simplicity of the child. They are not mere dirges. They are dirges for those ‘the doubly dead in that they died so young.’ The congenital faults of Mahler are not to be found here. The songs are almost above criticism from the musical standpoint. But Mahler the peasant is to be seen especially in the songs from _Des Knaben Wunderhorn_, that wonderful collection of German folk-poetry which has been such a storehouse for the nation in the last century. While these have not the spiritual elevation or the consistently high musicianship of the _Kindertotenlieder_, they preserve an unconventional freshness of spirit which is hardly less remarkable.