Cover Graphics for Mahler's Symphony No.1

I plan to release my rendition of Gustav Mahler's Symphony No.1 as an "album" online. For this I need of course a cover graphic. When looking at many of the classical music CD, many of the covers are quite unimaginitive: often a painting by Gustav Klimt, representing the fin-de-siecle in Vienna, or some alpine mountains. But Mahler's Symphony No.1 contains so much more... and I wanted to express this.

Especially I wanted to express the personal background which contributed to Gustav Mahler's emotional state while writing this music. And of strong predominance were the two unhappy love affairs he had in 1884 (Johanna Richter) and 1888 (Marion von Weber) - there is a lot of source material about this in the literature.

First I selected van Gogh's painting "The Harvest" as a main background image. This painting was created in 1888 and therefore fits right into the timely context. It shows a rural countryside in harmony, with sunny fields, and I found this represents well the mood of "Ging heut morgen uebers Feld" (went this morning over the field), which is a theme in the first movement. Also the Laendler movement with its bucolic dances fit in my opinion well to the sunny and optimistic mood of this picture.

Then I used the wood cut by Moritz Schwind "Hunter's Funeral" which was a direct inspiration for the 3rd movement "Stranded".

In order to represent the personal unhappy love stories, I put two faint profiles of women there, and overlaid the whole picture with a pair of blue eyes. This represented the reference to "die zwei blauen Augen von meinem Schatz" (the two blue eyes of my darling) which is part of the lyrical middle section of the 3rd movement.

I basically had a nice graphics representing movement 1-3, but then I worked on the rendition of movement 4, and this overall sunny mood was no longer representative for the symphony as a whole. So I added a dark thunderstorm background with lightning and added some fire flames in the foreground. This seemed to work well now. In addition I added a cuckoo bird, a trumpet and a French horn. Finally, with the inclusion of "Blumine", I added a bunch of blue flowers. And of course, a Gustav from a photo from about 1888 in the foreground.

In my initial draft the two women shapes were facing each other, but then I realised it would be better if they faced away from Gustav, representing the rejection of his affection.