Alma Schindler's setting of Gustav Falke's Erntelied (Harvest Song) was written during her period of study under Alexander von Zemlinsky, "a deformed dwarf" of a man to whom Schindler was sexually attached because of his abilities as a composer. Like most of her other 14 surviving songs, Erntelied is a rapturous fin de siècle confection with simple, warm-hearted melodies; sensually chromatic harmonies; and a through-composed structure that verges on the incoherent. And like all of Schindler's songs, it was locked in a trunk when she married Gustav Mahler, who insisted that one composer in the family was enough. Mahler recanted his words in 1910 when, as a peace offering to his philandering wife, he insisted that her songs be published by his publisher. Erntelied was orchestrated by the brothers Colin and David Matthews and is more often performed and recorded in this form than in its original piano-accompanied version.

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