Kindertotenlieder

'''' (Songs on the Death of Children'') is a song cycle (1904) for voice and orchestra by Gustav Mahler. The words of the songs are poems by Friedrich Rückert.

==Poems and setting== thumb| Portrait of Friedrich Rückert in 1864 by The original were a group of 428 poems written by Rückert in 1833–34 in an outpouring of grief following the illness (scarlet fever) and death of two of his children. Karen Painter describes the poems thus: "Rückert's 428 poems on the death of children became singular, almost manic documents of the psychological endeavor to cope with such loss. In ever new variations Rückert's poems attempt a poetic resuscitation of the children that is punctuated by anguished outbursts. But above all the poems show a quiet acquiescence to fate and to a peaceful world of solace." These poems were not intended for publication, and they appeared in print only in 1871, five years after the poet's death.