Friedrich Rückert wrote 425 poems After his two youngest children Died from scarlet fever Within sixteen days of each other In 1833 and 1834 he could not Copeland often thought they had gone outfox a while "they'll be home soon"He told himself to tell his wife"They're only taking a long walk"Mahler scored five of those poems In 1901 and 1904 for a vocalist And an orchestra to break your hearts soon as I heard the plaintive oboe And the descending movement of the horn And the lyric baritone entering felt I should not be listening To Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau singingKindertotenlieder with the Berlin Philharmonic Mahler's wife was superstitious And thought he was chancing disaster With Songs on the Death of Children"Now the sun wants to rise so brightly As if nothing terrible had happened overnight That tragedy happened to me alone"Mahler knew he could never have written them After his four-year-old daughter died From scarlet fever three years later He said he felt sorry for himself That he needed to write these songs And for the world that would listen to them