An Mathilde is the last composition of Dallapiccola’s second serial phase, and one of his few works for large orchestra. It is scored for strings (4.4.4.4.2), eight winds (flute, two oboes, three clarinets, bassoon, saxophone), four brass (two horns, trumpet, trombone), and an assortment of un-pitched and pitched percussion, including celesta, harp, glockenspiel, xylophone, and vibraphone. It shares many structural characteristics with the Goethe-Lieder (which were completed several years earlier), including canon, axial symmetry, and trichordal derivation. But there are significant differences between these works. The seven songs of the Goethe-Lieder are based on aphoristic and whimsical texts, whereas An Mathilde incorporates three of Heinrich Heine’s most personal and heartfelt poems. And while the Goethe-Lieder are quite familiar to both scholars and performers alike (for instance, “Die Sonne kommt” appears in numerous anthologies and is a staple in many analysis courses), An Mathilde has been virtually ignored. In fact, at present there are no commercially available recordings of it.

The analytical commentary on An Mathilde is confined to observations found in separate chapters of Rosemary Brown’s dissertation and an article by Peter Kiesewetter in Melos. Brown focuses her comments on three topics: canon, rhythmic proportion, and symbolism. She documents the strict canons in the second movement and the 1:2:2 proportional canons in the third, and argues that these canons project a “vertical homogeneity” that looks forward to the interaction of timbre and duration in Dialoghi and Ulisse. The analytical highlight is a discussion of an intriguing passage in the last movement, where “Seid Schild und Vögte eurem Ebenbilde” (Be shield and guardian to your image) is set in a symmetrical design that incorporates simultaneously the techniques of retrogression and inversion.

Kiesewetter opens with a brief discussion of the text, then goes on to consider isolated structural features of the three movements. His analysis of the first movement focuses on the instrumentation of the instrumental introduction and the pitch structure of the vocal line in the first stanza of text. He notes that B♭ is the first, lowest, and highest note, and that the melismas and repeated notes emphasize the rhymes between such words as “grauen” and “schauen.”