Friday, December 23, 2005
Mahler: Symphony No.3
Peter Laki writes:
Symphony No. 3 in D minor
by Gustav Mahler (1860-1911)
Gustav Mahler was born in Kalischt (now Kaliste) in Austrian Bohemia (now the Czech Republic) on July 7, 1860, and died in Vienna on May 18, 1911.
Mahler wrote his Third Symphony in the summers of 1895 and 1896 (movements 2 through 6 were written in 1895, the first movement in 1896). Two themes that eventually found their way into the first movement were sketched as early as 1893, however. The song "Ablösung im Sommer" ("Relief in Summer"), on which the third movement was based, was written about 1890.
Music from Mahler's Third Symphony was first heard in concert on November 9, 1896, when Arthur Nikisch conducted the second movement, under the title "Blumenstück" ("Flower Piece") with the Berlin Philharmonic. Movements 2, 3, and 6 were conducted by Felix Weingartner on March 9, 1897, also in Berlin. Mahler conducted the premiere of the complete work on June 9, 1902, at Krefeld. The score was first published in 1897 by Josef Weinberger in Vienna; two years later, Mahler made some revisions to the score. The United States premiere was on May 9, 1914, in Cincinnati, under the direction of Ernst Kunwald.
This symphony runs about 1 hour and 35 minutes in performance. Mahler scored the symphony for 4 flutes (2 doubling piccolos), 4 oboes (one doublinEnglishsh horn), 3 clarinets (one doubling bass clarinet), 2 high clarinets in E flat, 4 bassoons (one doubling contrabassoon), 8 horns, 4 trumpets, posthorn, 4 trombones, contrabass tuba, timpani, percussion (glockenspiel, snare drum, triangle, tambourine, bass drum, suspended cymbals, cymbal attached to the bass drum, tam-tam, birch brush), 2 harps, strings, contralto solo, women's chorus, and children's chorus.
One wonders whether it was pure coincidence that the two archrivals, Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss, wrote works inspired (at least in part) by Friedrich Nietzsche at exactly the same time. Strauss completed his tone poem Also sprach Zarathustra ("Thus Spake Zarathustra") in August 1896. The very same month, Mahler put the finishing touches on his Third Symphony, whose fourth movement is a song for contralto with words from the "Midnight Song" from Nietzsche's philosophical poem - an excerpt, moreover, that is also featured in Strauss's work.(1.)
The relationship between Nietzsche's book and the music of both Mahler and Strauss is an open - and extremely complicated - question. (In his autobiography, titled Ecce Homo, Nietzsche had said that Zarathustra was itself a musical composition.) It seems that despite the great - and obvious - differences between Also sprach Zarathustra and Mahler's Third, the reasons that caused both composers to turn to Nietzsche had something in common. Strauss found in Zarathustra a compelling image of human evolution through successive stages of spiritual development. (Those stages are indicated in the titles of the sections that compose Strauss's work: "Of the Great Longing," "Of Joys and Passions," "Of Science," etc.) Mahler, too, envisioned his work as some kind of evolution through successive stages (or, in the words of German musicologist Constantin Floros, a "musical cosmology"); the six movements of his symphony originally had titles that were couched in parallel grammatical structures, as were those of Strauss. This becomes immediately clear if we juxtapose some of the section headings in Strauss's tone poem with some of the provisional movement titles of Mahler's symphony (his last version before he did away with titles altogether):
[STRAUSS] "Of the Backworldsmen" - "Of the Great Longing" - "Of Joys and Passions" - "Of Science"
[MAHLER] "What the Flowers in the Meadow Tell Me" - "What the Animals in the Woods Tell Me" - "What Mankind Tells Me"- "What the Angels Tell Me" - "What Love Tells Me"
Mahler's case is, to be sure, more complicated: the movement titles changed several times during the composition process (with only the general formula, "what . . . tells me," remaining constant) and were finally eliminated altogether in the published score.
In his book on Mahler's symphonies, Constantin Floros concluded that the Third Symphony, although based in part on Nietzsche, is "diametrically opposed to Nietzsche's philosophy." Floros contrasts Nietzsche's anti-religious stance with Mahler's affirmation of faith in the fifth movement, and he asserts that the message of love in the last movement is also antithetical to Nietzsche's philosophy. Yet, in his great Mahler biography, Henry-Louis de La Grange writes that "Nietzsche's essential theme . . . the conflicting Apollonian and Dionysian principles . . . influenced Mahler all his life." These principles are certainly present in the Third Symphony; also, Mahler contemplates nature and humanity on a universal, "cosmological" scale, just as Nietzsche had done.
The planning of Mahler's Third Symphony began with a series of tentative movement titles that probably preceded any substantial compositional work. The earliest version of the plan was transmitted in slightly different forms by Paul Bekker and Alma Mahler in their respective books on the composer. This plan included the title Sommernachtstraum ("A Midsummer Night's Dream"), to which Mahler added in parentheses: "not after Shakespeare." According to Alma Mahler's version, the work at this point was supposed to consist of seven movements:
1. "Summer Marches In" (Fanfare and Merry March)
2. "What the Woods Tell Me"
3. "What Love Tells Me" (Adagio)
4. "What the Twilight Tells Me"
5. "What the Flowers in the Meadow Tell Me"
6. "What the Cuckoo Tells Me" (Scherzo)
7. "What the Child Tells Me"
At this stage, the work seems to have existed in Mahler's mind as a kind of "nature symphony," with flowers and animals but no humans or angels; the addition of human voices and sung texts was not yet part of the scheme. At the end of summer 1895 - he had now spent an entire summer working on the music - Mahler thought of adopting the title of another book by Nietzsche, Die fröhliche Wissenschaft (variously translated as "The Happy Science" or "The Joyful Wisdom"), as the overall title of his symphony, either in its original form or changed to Meine fröhliche Wissenschaft ("My Happy Science"). He also changed "Midsummer Night's Dream" to "Midsummer Morning's Dream." New movement titles - night, morning bells - appeared, expanding the symphony's cosmology; also, the participation of an alto soloist and women's chorus became clearly established by this time. The symphony's cosmology was also influenced by a poem by Mahler's close friend Siegfried Lipiner, himself a follower of Nietzsche. Lipiner wrote a poem called "Genesis," which was, according to Constantin Floros, "conceived as a cosmogonic dream. It presents a poetic vision of the creation of the world from a large, resting cloud that begins to speak. In a language rich with images, Lipiner tells how out of the cloud the firmament, the earth, suns, the plant kingdom, the animal kingdom, and mankind came into being."
Mahler first envisioned a seven-movement symphony, and, as of 1895, he planned to end it with his 1892 song Das himmlische Leben ("Heavenly Life"), an alternate title of which would have been "What the Child Tells Me." (This song eventually found its place as the last movement of Mahler's Fourth.)
The last decision to be made involved moving the Adagio, the "Love" movement, from third place to the end of the symphony (a rather unusual choice, coming only two years after Tchaikovsky's "Pathétique" Symphony, which also ended with a slow movement). This decision had important philosophical consequences. As Mahler himself explained: "In the Adagio, everything is resolved in the calm of existence. The Ixion's wheel of appearances finally stops turning." (Ixion was a king in Greek mythology, punished by Zeus for his love for Hera by being bound on an eternally revolving wheel in the underworld.)
Except for this final movement, the structure of Mahler's Third Symphony shows definite parallels with that of the Second. According to British musicologist Peter Franklin, who devoted a whole volume to Mahler's Third (2.), the new symphony "was to celebrate the 'happy life' that the Second had inaugurated after dispelling apocalyptic horrors with its concluding choral hymn to the individual spirit." Franklin provided a useful chart comparing the two symphonies:
Symphony No. 2 (1890-94)
Part I:
1 (Extended dramatic sonata structure)
- Pause -
Part II:
2 Andante
3 Scherzo (based on Wunderhorn setting)
4 Alto solo (Wunderhorn)
5 Finale (orchestral apocalypse and resolving choral conclusion)
Symphony No. 3 (1893?-96)
Part I:
1 (Extended dramatic sonata structure)
- Pause -
Part II:
2 Minuet
3 Scherzo (based on Wunderhorn setting)
4 Alto solo (Nietzsche)
5 Short choral movement (Wunderhorn)
6 Finale (concluding Adagio)
THE FIRST MOVEMENT - which was actually written last - is, by size at least, almost a complete symphony in itself. Many critics, including admirers of Mahler, have found this movement rambling and diffuse, with its sections disconnected and incoherent. However, it is possible that the main idea behind the movement is precisely the creation of order out of chaos, the emergence of clear directions out of a state of aimlessness. This would be in keeping with the "Genesis" idea from Lipiner's above-mentioned poem.
There are four stages in the unfolding of this first movement. (Although the stages often share the same thematic material, they can be readily distinguished by ear.) (3.) The first is the fanfare for eight horns with which the symphony opens, the second, is a string of melodic fragments in a tragic mood in a low register, initially dominated by the brass instruments, and the third is a string of folk-like themes of an ethereal quality, played mainly by woodwinds or solo violin.
All of these materials are static and, in the words of analyst David B. Greene, "resist vital impulses." Motion is introduced eventually, as a monumental march - the fourth stage - develops, combining the "fanfare" and "folk-like" material with a lively rhythmic accompaniment. The first time, the march is unable to proceed for very long before being interrupted by the three static groups of themes. The second time, however, as the music starts once more from silence as it has so often before, the march grows triumphantly to the final climax.
THE SECOND MOVEMENT had the title "Blumenstück" ("Flower Piece") when it was performed separately - a holdover from Mahler's original program. Mahler described this movement to his friend Natalie Bauer-Lechner:
"It is the most carefree music I have ever written, as carefree as only flowers can be. It all sways and ripples like flowers on limber stems sway in the wind. Today I realized to my surprise that the basses have nothing but pizzicato, not one firm stroke, and that the low, heavy percussion is not used at all. On the other hand, the violins, again with a solo violin, have the most lively, flowing, and charming figures. . . . That this innocent flowery cheerfulness does not last but suddenly becomes serious and weighty, you can well imagine. A heavy storm sweeps across the meadow and shakes the flowers and leaves. They groan and whimper, as if pleading for redemption to a higher realm."
The movement is a (more or less) regular minuet with a highly irregular Trio section repeated twice in the form M-T-M-T-M. The "grazioso" tone of the minuet evokes the 18th century despite subtle touches in the orchestration (especially the harp writing) and in the phrase structure that betray the hand of a late Romantic composer. What makes the Trio so irregular is that it consists of three different sections, each in a different meter. In Peter Franklin's words: "Although [the Trio] . . . cuts some odd capers and seems intent upon a developmental life of its own, the graceful minuet is prepared to surprise us with a coquettish smile when it returns."
THE THIRD MOVEMENT is based on one of Mahler's early Wunderhorn songs, with the first line "Kuckuck hat sich zu Tode gefallen" ("Cuckoo has fallen to its death"). The song describes the cuckoo's death with irony and mock mourning, and then goes on to celebrate the nightingale who will replace the cuckoo as the preferred singer in the forest. The scherzo expands on this song in much the same way the scherzo of the Second Symphony did on "St. Anthony of Padua's Sermon to the Fishes." In the present work, the "cuckoo" song alternates between several contrasting episodes, including a memorable posthorn solo, which occurs twice in the course of the movement. The nostalgic melody of the posthorn brings on that typical Mahlerian moment when the fun is suddenly over and things become serious. The posthorn, which used to announce the arrival of the mail in small Austrian towns, has its own literary-musical tradition from Schubert's Winterreise ("The Winter Journey") to several poems about posthorns and stagecoaches by Nikolaus Lenau, a Romantic poet cherished by Mahler. At its return, the "cuckoo" scherzo evolves into a more boisterous ("grob!" - "rude!") section. A second hearing of the posthorn solo and a brief but very eventful coda close the movement.
THE FOURTH MOVEMENT brings an abrupt change of mood with a setting of Nietzsche's "Midnight Song" from Zarathustra, for contralto solo. Out of a mysterious background of muted strings, the soloist begins on a single repeated pitch. The vocal line gradually becomes more and more elaborate, but the harmonies remain static and the dynamics extremely soft throughout. The image of pain is emphasized by an expressive violin solo.
THE FIFTH MOVEMENT, which follows without a break, is another complete contrast in mood. The happy chiming of the bells, children's voices singing "bimm, bamm" provide the background to a cheerful, folk-like chorus on a text from Des Knaben Wunderhorn, the German collection of folk poetry that inspired Mahler throughout the 1890s. This movement shares a characteristic motif with the last movement of the Fourth Symphony (which, as we have seen, was to have belonged to the Third). The choral interjectionsoloistsollst ja nicht weinen" ("No, you mustn't weep") are Mahler's addition to the folk text.
THE SIXTH MOVEMENT follows the fifth with no break. All the previous contrasts seem to be resolved in the peaceful calm of this, Mahler's first great symphonic Adagio. The opening theme quotes from the slow movement of Beethoven's last string quartet (Op. 135) - the resemblance is too great to be accidental. The continuation, however, is more in the spirit of Bruckner - one of the few times that Bruckner's and Mahler's styles are really close. The manuscript bears the following inscription, adapted from Des Knaben Wunderhorn:
Vater, sieh an die Wmienn mein!
Kein Wesen lass verloren sein!
Father, look upon my wounds,
Let no creature be lost!
The movement is based on two themes: a simple and soft D-major chorale melody and a more intense and dramatic minor-mode theme. The two themes and their variations alternate - and their developments include subtle recalls of fragments both from the first movement's tragic episodes and a comforting moment from the fifth. All these conflicting impulses are finally united in the powerful closing section, where the dynamics rise to fortissimo (Mahler warns: "not with raw force but with a saturated, noble tone") as the monumental symphony reaches its glorious and ecstatic conclusion.
(1.) Frederick Delius's setting of Zarathustra's Nightsong came only two years later, in 1898, followed in 1905 by A Mass of Life, also based on Nietzsche's work.
(2.) Cambridge Music Handbooks, published by Cambridge University Press in 1991.
(3.) This discussion is based on an extended technical analysis of Mahler's Third in David B. Greene's book, Mahler: Consciousness and Temporality, published by Gordon & Breach (New York, 1984).
Symphony No. 3 in D minor
by Gustav Mahler (1860-1911)
Gustav Mahler was born in Kalischt (now Kaliste) in Austrian Bohemia (now the Czech Republic) on July 7, 1860, and died in Vienna on May 18, 1911.
Mahler wrote his Third Symphony in the summers of 1895 and 1896 (movements 2 through 6 were written in 1895, the first movement in 1896). Two themes that eventually found their way into the first movement were sketched as early as 1893, however. The song "Ablösung im Sommer" ("Relief in Summer"), on which the third movement was based, was written about 1890.
Music from Mahler's Third Symphony was first heard in concert on November 9, 1896, when Arthur Nikisch conducted the second movement, under the title "Blumenstück" ("Flower Piece") with the Berlin Philharmonic. Movements 2, 3, and 6 were conducted by Felix Weingartner on March 9, 1897, also in Berlin. Mahler conducted the premiere of the complete work on June 9, 1902, at Krefeld. The score was first published in 1897 by Josef Weinberger in Vienna; two years later, Mahler made some revisions to the score. The United States premiere was on May 9, 1914, in Cincinnati, under the direction of Ernst Kunwald.
This symphony runs about 1 hour and 35 minutes in performance. Mahler scored the symphony for 4 flutes (2 doubling piccolos), 4 oboes (one doublinEnglishsh horn), 3 clarinets (one doubling bass clarinet), 2 high clarinets in E flat, 4 bassoons (one doubling contrabassoon), 8 horns, 4 trumpets, posthorn, 4 trombones, contrabass tuba, timpani, percussion (glockenspiel, snare drum, triangle, tambourine, bass drum, suspended cymbals, cymbal attached to the bass drum, tam-tam, birch brush), 2 harps, strings, contralto solo, women's chorus, and children's chorus.
One wonders whether it was pure coincidence that the two archrivals, Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss, wrote works inspired (at least in part) by Friedrich Nietzsche at exactly the same time. Strauss completed his tone poem Also sprach Zarathustra ("Thus Spake Zarathustra") in August 1896. The very same month, Mahler put the finishing touches on his Third Symphony, whose fourth movement is a song for contralto with words from the "Midnight Song" from Nietzsche's philosophical poem - an excerpt, moreover, that is also featured in Strauss's work.(1.)
The relationship between Nietzsche's book and the music of both Mahler and Strauss is an open - and extremely complicated - question. (In his autobiography, titled Ecce Homo, Nietzsche had said that Zarathustra was itself a musical composition.) It seems that despite the great - and obvious - differences between Also sprach Zarathustra and Mahler's Third, the reasons that caused both composers to turn to Nietzsche had something in common. Strauss found in Zarathustra a compelling image of human evolution through successive stages of spiritual development. (Those stages are indicated in the titles of the sections that compose Strauss's work: "Of the Great Longing," "Of Joys and Passions," "Of Science," etc.) Mahler, too, envisioned his work as some kind of evolution through successive stages (or, in the words of German musicologist Constantin Floros, a "musical cosmology"); the six movements of his symphony originally had titles that were couched in parallel grammatical structures, as were those of Strauss. This becomes immediately clear if we juxtapose some of the section headings in Strauss's tone poem with some of the provisional movement titles of Mahler's symphony (his last version before he did away with titles altogether):
[STRAUSS] "Of the Backworldsmen" - "Of the Great Longing" - "Of Joys and Passions" - "Of Science"
[MAHLER] "What the Flowers in the Meadow Tell Me" - "What the Animals in the Woods Tell Me" - "What Mankind Tells Me"- "What the Angels Tell Me" - "What Love Tells Me"
Mahler's case is, to be sure, more complicated: the movement titles changed several times during the composition process (with only the general formula, "what . . . tells me," remaining constant) and were finally eliminated altogether in the published score.
In his book on Mahler's symphonies, Constantin Floros concluded that the Third Symphony, although based in part on Nietzsche, is "diametrically opposed to Nietzsche's philosophy." Floros contrasts Nietzsche's anti-religious stance with Mahler's affirmation of faith in the fifth movement, and he asserts that the message of love in the last movement is also antithetical to Nietzsche's philosophy. Yet, in his great Mahler biography, Henry-Louis de La Grange writes that "Nietzsche's essential theme . . . the conflicting Apollonian and Dionysian principles . . . influenced Mahler all his life." These principles are certainly present in the Third Symphony; also, Mahler contemplates nature and humanity on a universal, "cosmological" scale, just as Nietzsche had done.
The planning of Mahler's Third Symphony began with a series of tentative movement titles that probably preceded any substantial compositional work. The earliest version of the plan was transmitted in slightly different forms by Paul Bekker and Alma Mahler in their respective books on the composer. This plan included the title Sommernachtstraum ("A Midsummer Night's Dream"), to which Mahler added in parentheses: "not after Shakespeare." According to Alma Mahler's version, the work at this point was supposed to consist of seven movements:
1. "Summer Marches In" (Fanfare and Merry March)
2. "What the Woods Tell Me"
3. "What Love Tells Me" (Adagio)
4. "What the Twilight Tells Me"
5. "What the Flowers in the Meadow Tell Me"
6. "What the Cuckoo Tells Me" (Scherzo)
7. "What the Child Tells Me"
At this stage, the work seems to have existed in Mahler's mind as a kind of "nature symphony," with flowers and animals but no humans or angels; the addition of human voices and sung texts was not yet part of the scheme. At the end of summer 1895 - he had now spent an entire summer working on the music - Mahler thought of adopting the title of another book by Nietzsche, Die fröhliche Wissenschaft (variously translated as "The Happy Science" or "The Joyful Wisdom"), as the overall title of his symphony, either in its original form or changed to Meine fröhliche Wissenschaft ("My Happy Science"). He also changed "Midsummer Night's Dream" to "Midsummer Morning's Dream." New movement titles - night, morning bells - appeared, expanding the symphony's cosmology; also, the participation of an alto soloist and women's chorus became clearly established by this time. The symphony's cosmology was also influenced by a poem by Mahler's close friend Siegfried Lipiner, himself a follower of Nietzsche. Lipiner wrote a poem called "Genesis," which was, according to Constantin Floros, "conceived as a cosmogonic dream. It presents a poetic vision of the creation of the world from a large, resting cloud that begins to speak. In a language rich with images, Lipiner tells how out of the cloud the firmament, the earth, suns, the plant kingdom, the animal kingdom, and mankind came into being."
Mahler first envisioned a seven-movement symphony, and, as of 1895, he planned to end it with his 1892 song Das himmlische Leben ("Heavenly Life"), an alternate title of which would have been "What the Child Tells Me." (This song eventually found its place as the last movement of Mahler's Fourth.)
The last decision to be made involved moving the Adagio, the "Love" movement, from third place to the end of the symphony (a rather unusual choice, coming only two years after Tchaikovsky's "Pathétique" Symphony, which also ended with a slow movement). This decision had important philosophical consequences. As Mahler himself explained: "In the Adagio, everything is resolved in the calm of existence. The Ixion's wheel of appearances finally stops turning." (Ixion was a king in Greek mythology, punished by Zeus for his love for Hera by being bound on an eternally revolving wheel in the underworld.)
Except for this final movement, the structure of Mahler's Third Symphony shows definite parallels with that of the Second. According to British musicologist Peter Franklin, who devoted a whole volume to Mahler's Third (2.), the new symphony "was to celebrate the 'happy life' that the Second had inaugurated after dispelling apocalyptic horrors with its concluding choral hymn to the individual spirit." Franklin provided a useful chart comparing the two symphonies:
Symphony No. 2 (1890-94)
Part I:
1 (Extended dramatic sonata structure)
- Pause -
Part II:
2 Andante
3 Scherzo (based on Wunderhorn setting)
4 Alto solo (Wunderhorn)
5 Finale (orchestral apocalypse and resolving choral conclusion)
Symphony No. 3 (1893?-96)
Part I:
1 (Extended dramatic sonata structure)
- Pause -
Part II:
2 Minuet
3 Scherzo (based on Wunderhorn setting)
4 Alto solo (Nietzsche)
5 Short choral movement (Wunderhorn)
6 Finale (concluding Adagio)
THE FIRST MOVEMENT - which was actually written last - is, by size at least, almost a complete symphony in itself. Many critics, including admirers of Mahler, have found this movement rambling and diffuse, with its sections disconnected and incoherent. However, it is possible that the main idea behind the movement is precisely the creation of order out of chaos, the emergence of clear directions out of a state of aimlessness. This would be in keeping with the "Genesis" idea from Lipiner's above-mentioned poem.
There are four stages in the unfolding of this first movement. (Although the stages often share the same thematic material, they can be readily distinguished by ear.) (3.) The first is the fanfare for eight horns with which the symphony opens, the second, is a string of melodic fragments in a tragic mood in a low register, initially dominated by the brass instruments, and the third is a string of folk-like themes of an ethereal quality, played mainly by woodwinds or solo violin.
All of these materials are static and, in the words of analyst David B. Greene, "resist vital impulses." Motion is introduced eventually, as a monumental march - the fourth stage - develops, combining the "fanfare" and "folk-like" material with a lively rhythmic accompaniment. The first time, the march is unable to proceed for very long before being interrupted by the three static groups of themes. The second time, however, as the music starts once more from silence as it has so often before, the march grows triumphantly to the final climax.
THE SECOND MOVEMENT had the title "Blumenstück" ("Flower Piece") when it was performed separately - a holdover from Mahler's original program. Mahler described this movement to his friend Natalie Bauer-Lechner:
"It is the most carefree music I have ever written, as carefree as only flowers can be. It all sways and ripples like flowers on limber stems sway in the wind. Today I realized to my surprise that the basses have nothing but pizzicato, not one firm stroke, and that the low, heavy percussion is not used at all. On the other hand, the violins, again with a solo violin, have the most lively, flowing, and charming figures. . . . That this innocent flowery cheerfulness does not last but suddenly becomes serious and weighty, you can well imagine. A heavy storm sweeps across the meadow and shakes the flowers and leaves. They groan and whimper, as if pleading for redemption to a higher realm."
The movement is a (more or less) regular minuet with a highly irregular Trio section repeated twice in the form M-T-M-T-M. The "grazioso" tone of the minuet evokes the 18th century despite subtle touches in the orchestration (especially the harp writing) and in the phrase structure that betray the hand of a late Romantic composer. What makes the Trio so irregular is that it consists of three different sections, each in a different meter. In Peter Franklin's words: "Although [the Trio] . . . cuts some odd capers and seems intent upon a developmental life of its own, the graceful minuet is prepared to surprise us with a coquettish smile when it returns."
THE THIRD MOVEMENT is based on one of Mahler's early Wunderhorn songs, with the first line "Kuckuck hat sich zu Tode gefallen" ("Cuckoo has fallen to its death"). The song describes the cuckoo's death with irony and mock mourning, and then goes on to celebrate the nightingale who will replace the cuckoo as the preferred singer in the forest. The scherzo expands on this song in much the same way the scherzo of the Second Symphony did on "St. Anthony of Padua's Sermon to the Fishes." In the present work, the "cuckoo" song alternates between several contrasting episodes, including a memorable posthorn solo, which occurs twice in the course of the movement. The nostalgic melody of the posthorn brings on that typical Mahlerian moment when the fun is suddenly over and things become serious. The posthorn, which used to announce the arrival of the mail in small Austrian towns, has its own literary-musical tradition from Schubert's Winterreise ("The Winter Journey") to several poems about posthorns and stagecoaches by Nikolaus Lenau, a Romantic poet cherished by Mahler. At its return, the "cuckoo" scherzo evolves into a more boisterous ("grob!" - "rude!") section. A second hearing of the posthorn solo and a brief but very eventful coda close the movement.
THE FOURTH MOVEMENT brings an abrupt change of mood with a setting of Nietzsche's "Midnight Song" from Zarathustra, for contralto solo. Out of a mysterious background of muted strings, the soloist begins on a single repeated pitch. The vocal line gradually becomes more and more elaborate, but the harmonies remain static and the dynamics extremely soft throughout. The image of pain is emphasized by an expressive violin solo.
THE FIFTH MOVEMENT, which follows without a break, is another complete contrast in mood. The happy chiming of the bells, children's voices singing "bimm, bamm" provide the background to a cheerful, folk-like chorus on a text from Des Knaben Wunderhorn, the German collection of folk poetry that inspired Mahler throughout the 1890s. This movement shares a characteristic motif with the last movement of the Fourth Symphony (which, as we have seen, was to have belonged to the Third). The choral interjectionsoloistsollst ja nicht weinen" ("No, you mustn't weep") are Mahler's addition to the folk text.
THE SIXTH MOVEMENT follows the fifth with no break. All the previous contrasts seem to be resolved in the peaceful calm of this, Mahler's first great symphonic Adagio. The opening theme quotes from the slow movement of Beethoven's last string quartet (Op. 135) - the resemblance is too great to be accidental. The continuation, however, is more in the spirit of Bruckner - one of the few times that Bruckner's and Mahler's styles are really close. The manuscript bears the following inscription, adapted from Des Knaben Wunderhorn:
Vater, sieh an die Wmienn mein!
Kein Wesen lass verloren sein!
Father, look upon my wounds,
Let no creature be lost!
The movement is based on two themes: a simple and soft D-major chorale melody and a more intense and dramatic minor-mode theme. The two themes and their variations alternate - and their developments include subtle recalls of fragments both from the first movement's tragic episodes and a comforting moment from the fifth. All these conflicting impulses are finally united in the powerful closing section, where the dynamics rise to fortissimo (Mahler warns: "not with raw force but with a saturated, noble tone") as the monumental symphony reaches its glorious and ecstatic conclusion.
(1.) Frederick Delius's setting of Zarathustra's Nightsong came only two years later, in 1898, followed in 1905 by A Mass of Life, also based on Nietzsche's work.
(2.) Cambridge Music Handbooks, published by Cambridge University Press in 1991.
(3.) This discussion is based on an extended technical analysis of Mahler's Third in David B. Greene's book, Mahler: Consciousness and Temporality, published by Gordon & Breach (New York, 1984).
Thursday, December 22, 2005
Haydn: London symphonies---the Joker
The so-called "London" or "Solomon" symphonies, twelve in number, were written for those visits: Nos. 93 to 98 for the first trip, 1791-1793; No. 99 in the interval between the trips; and Nos. 100 to 104 in 1794 and 1795.
The "London" symphonies are particularly rich in humor, and repay the most attentive listening. Unexpected thematic entrances, false recapitulations, pauses, sudden chords, and the like are among the more obvious of Haydn's humorous effects. But he also reveals subtle touches that are sometimes lost in the sheer joy of hearing the music. Irregular phrases and abrupt modulations, sly bits of imitation and irrelevant turns of phrase, brief moments of apparent confusion and sudden mock-serious passages---such devices call forth many an appreciative chuckle. With an effervescent spirit and a quick-wittedness Haydn increasingly animates the fast movements and often the minuets.
Cheers,
The "London" symphonies are particularly rich in humor, and repay the most attentive listening. Unexpected thematic entrances, false recapitulations, pauses, sudden chords, and the like are among the more obvious of Haydn's humorous effects. But he also reveals subtle touches that are sometimes lost in the sheer joy of hearing the music. Irregular phrases and abrupt modulations, sly bits of imitation and irrelevant turns of phrase, brief moments of apparent confusion and sudden mock-serious passages---such devices call forth many an appreciative chuckle. With an effervescent spirit and a quick-wittedness Haydn increasingly animates the fast movements and often the minuets.
Cheers,
Sibelius: Tapiola
by Andrew Clements
Friday July 6, 2001
The Guardian
In 1926, Sibelius produced his final work of any real significance: the symphonic poem Tapiola, which was premiered in New York in December that year.
As so often, the starting point was Finnish mythology - Tapio was the god of the forest, and his kingdom was Tapiola. But though some of Sibelius's orchestral writing is an evocation of that mysterious world - the whirling strings of the coda, for instance, inescapably conjure images of the wind through the forest trees - many analysts have treated the movement as a drastically compressed symphony, as a replacement for the lost Eighth (the score of which Sibelius probably burned). All the themes are intimately related, the gearing between the sections is seamlessly smooth, and the tonal plan starkly simple; Sibelius's technique is pared down to its raw essentials.
There are many fine recordings of this masterpiece, and a final choice depends to some extent on the couplings. For a long time, Herbert von Karajan's 1964 version was a firm recommendation (Deutsche Grammophon); that is currently available either with Sibelius's Violin Concerto and Finlandia, or with Nielsen's Fourth Symphony. Vladimir Ashkenazy offers a very effective performance as part of an all-Sibelius program that also includes Finlandia and En Saga (Decca). Neeme Järvi's Sibelius collection (BIS) is more adventurous - Pohjola's Daughter, and Rakastava as well as Tapiola, while Osmo Vänskä includes the work as an extra in the fininstallmentent of his symphony cycle, with the Sixth and Seventh. I'd go for Vänskä, not least because he is the greatest Sibelius conductor of today, but all the above performances are certainly worth hearing.
Key recording: Vänskä (BIS)
Friday July 6, 2001
The Guardian
In 1926, Sibelius produced his final work of any real significance: the symphonic poem Tapiola, which was premiered in New York in December that year.
As so often, the starting point was Finnish mythology - Tapio was the god of the forest, and his kingdom was Tapiola. But though some of Sibelius's orchestral writing is an evocation of that mysterious world - the whirling strings of the coda, for instance, inescapably conjure images of the wind through the forest trees - many analysts have treated the movement as a drastically compressed symphony, as a replacement for the lost Eighth (the score of which Sibelius probably burned). All the themes are intimately related, the gearing between the sections is seamlessly smooth, and the tonal plan starkly simple; Sibelius's technique is pared down to its raw essentials.
There are many fine recordings of this masterpiece, and a final choice depends to some extent on the couplings. For a long time, Herbert von Karajan's 1964 version was a firm recommendation (Deutsche Grammophon); that is currently available either with Sibelius's Violin Concerto and Finlandia, or with Nielsen's Fourth Symphony. Vladimir Ashkenazy offers a very effective performance as part of an all-Sibelius program that also includes Finlandia and En Saga (Decca). Neeme Järvi's Sibelius collection (BIS) is more adventurous - Pohjola's Daughter, and Rakastava as well as Tapiola, while Osmo Vänskä includes the work as an extra in the fininstallmentent of his symphony cycle, with the Sixth and Seventh. I'd go for Vänskä, not least because he is the greatest Sibelius conductor of today, but all the above performances are certainly worth hearing.
Key recording: Vänskä (BIS)
Wednesday, December 21, 2005
Welcome to the sun!
The time of pause and reflection is here. I hope you have time to bring in the return of the sun in a way befitting a time that has brought about awe to our ancestors.
Cheers,
Cheers,
Mahler: Symphony No 7
Andrew Clements
Friday July 20, 2001
The Guardian (UK)
Of all Mahler's symphonies, the Seventh is the most enigmatic, and in its musical language the most radical and forward-looking. Schoenberg regarded it as the work that signaled the end of romanticism, the historic moment at which all the tenets that had sustained music for the previous century began to crumble away.
The symphony's sense of inhabiting a twilight world in which all the old certainties were being questioned and found wanting - two of its most disconcerting movements are labeled "Nachtmusik" - perhaps led to its nickname, The Song of the Night. If it is a gigantic nocturne, though, it is one far removed from the gentle musings that the 19th century would have recognized in the form.
Mahler began the score in 1904, while he was still finishing the Sixth Symphony. He composed the two Nachtmusik movements first, and had finished and revised it thoroughly two years later; the first performance that he conducted himself took place in 1908.
It has never been among the most popular of his symphonies, and much of the criticism of the work's structure has been leveled against the last movement, with its brazen, almost post-modern collation of styles, including a C major theme that could have come straight out of Wagner's Mastersingers. Yet it's a conclusion that can be made to work, given the right conductor; then it seems like a joyous assertion of the polyglot confusion of the exterior world, coming as it does after the introverted neuroses that have colored so much of what has gone before.
Though the current CD catalogue suggests that, apart from the unfinished Tenth, it is the least recorded of all the symphonies, the Seventh has never lacked champions - Otto Klemperer conducted the piece from the 1920s onwards, and in the 1950s Hans Rosbaud and Hermann Scherchen, then in the vanguard of the Mahler revival, both recorded the work.
Klemperer's own recording from the 1960s (EMI) is dark and grim, and never really sounds convinced by the brazen optimism of the finale. The work is not one of the most successful elements, either, in any of the cycles by Haitink (Phillips), Kubelik (Deutsche Grammophon), Tennstedt (EMI), Solti (Decca) and Bernstein (Sony).
The Seventh was one of the first issues in Pierre Boulez's ongoing Mahler series (Deutsche Grammophon), and this is a performance that, predictably, relishes the work's foreshadowing of modernism, while seeming more impatient with the backward glances.
That Janus-like character of the work is best conveyed by Claudio Abbado (Deutsche Grammophon) and Riccardo Chailly. Chailly just wins on points: partly because of the vivid quality of the sound, but more importantly because of the gorgeous playing of the Concertgebouw Orchestra, who played this music under the composer and his first great advocate Willem Mengelberg, and still have it in their bones.
Key Recording: Chailly (Decca, 2 CDs)
Friday July 20, 2001
The Guardian (UK)
Of all Mahler's symphonies, the Seventh is the most enigmatic, and in its musical language the most radical and forward-looking. Schoenberg regarded it as the work that signaled the end of romanticism, the historic moment at which all the tenets that had sustained music for the previous century began to crumble away.
The symphony's sense of inhabiting a twilight world in which all the old certainties were being questioned and found wanting - two of its most disconcerting movements are labeled "Nachtmusik" - perhaps led to its nickname, The Song of the Night. If it is a gigantic nocturne, though, it is one far removed from the gentle musings that the 19th century would have recognized in the form.
Mahler began the score in 1904, while he was still finishing the Sixth Symphony. He composed the two Nachtmusik movements first, and had finished and revised it thoroughly two years later; the first performance that he conducted himself took place in 1908.
It has never been among the most popular of his symphonies, and much of the criticism of the work's structure has been leveled against the last movement, with its brazen, almost post-modern collation of styles, including a C major theme that could have come straight out of Wagner's Mastersingers. Yet it's a conclusion that can be made to work, given the right conductor; then it seems like a joyous assertion of the polyglot confusion of the exterior world, coming as it does after the introverted neuroses that have colored so much of what has gone before.
Though the current CD catalogue suggests that, apart from the unfinished Tenth, it is the least recorded of all the symphonies, the Seventh has never lacked champions - Otto Klemperer conducted the piece from the 1920s onwards, and in the 1950s Hans Rosbaud and Hermann Scherchen, then in the vanguard of the Mahler revival, both recorded the work.
Klemperer's own recording from the 1960s (EMI) is dark and grim, and never really sounds convinced by the brazen optimism of the finale. The work is not one of the most successful elements, either, in any of the cycles by Haitink (Phillips), Kubelik (Deutsche Grammophon), Tennstedt (EMI), Solti (Decca) and Bernstein (Sony).
The Seventh was one of the first issues in Pierre Boulez's ongoing Mahler series (Deutsche Grammophon), and this is a performance that, predictably, relishes the work's foreshadowing of modernism, while seeming more impatient with the backward glances.
That Janus-like character of the work is best conveyed by Claudio Abbado (Deutsche Grammophon) and Riccardo Chailly. Chailly just wins on points: partly because of the vivid quality of the sound, but more importantly because of the gorgeous playing of the Concertgebouw Orchestra, who played this music under the composer and his first great advocate Willem Mengelberg, and still have it in their bones.
Key Recording: Chailly (Decca, 2 CDs)
Tuesday, December 20, 2005
Vincent d'Indy: Second Symphony, in B-flat, Op.57
Vincent d'Indy's Second Symphony, in B-flat, Op.57 was written in 1903-4, and first publicly performed in February, 1904. It exemplifies the modern subjective trend of romantic music, but follows no program, adhering strictly to the methods of absolute musical presentation, though with those differences in result which the increasingly insistent demand for freedom of self-expression, free rein for personal emotions and passions, have inevitably brought about. Like the greater part of modern compositions, it tolerates no comparison with the sober objective art of the great classic masters; the latter, as is sufficiently apparent, aimed at the production of a unified structure to be viewed as Whole, whereas the moderns achieve their effects more through the Details, contenting themselves with a procession of passing images, often supremely lovely, but bound rather loosely together. This trait is recognizable among the later "classics" as early as Schumann, with whom beauty of detail supersedes firmness of structure. The distinction is obvious in d'Indy's music, though he, and others, have the happy custom of welding the panoramic details into an effective and perspicuous unit through the employment of Leading Motives. Thus, in this Symphony, the entire work rests upon a figure of four tones, announced portentously in the Introduction, and interwoven through the fabric of all the Movements, in multifold rhythmic shapes.
The first Movement is in sonata-allegro form.
The second (slow) Movement is a First-Rondo form, augmented by two alternations of the principal Theme with the same subordinate one (somewhat modified). The chief Theme is a lyric sentence of unusual melodic character, typical of d'Indy's thought, weird, but not without a certain strain of loveliness; the other Theme is frankly unmelodious, in jerky dotted rhythm. A brief Introduction opens the slow movement with an echo of the first figure of the Theme of the preceding one. Into the subordinate Theme the Leading Motive (in extended form) is here and there inserted.
The third Movement is essentially the Scherzo, but its chief, opening, Theme is a Romanza of simple, tender beauty. The other, alternating Theme (the design appoximates the First-Rondo) is evolved from the Leading Motive, in fantastic rhythmic shape, wild, bacchantic, insistent---used ostensibly as accompaniment to other wild melodic phrases, one of which resembles the jerky subordinate Theme of the slow Movement. The lyric Theme is drawn for a time into the orgiastic, dizzy whirl, but regains its composure near the end.
The Finale is a marvel of thematic artifice and astounding ingenious combinations. It corresponds to none of the conventional designs, though the presence of two essential Themes is vaguely evident. The form can therefore claim no more accurate designation than a fanciful Series of Episodes, utilizing all the motives of the foregoing Movements, and one or two new ones, interlaced with dazzling skill, admirably controlled, and effectively presented.
This Symphony is appraised by many critics as too cerebral. One commentator of wide orchestral experience declares his conviction that it just misses being a truly great work, because it lacks spontaneity. Unquestionably it displays a greater proportion of mental reflection than genuine human sentiment, and of that quality, absolutely indispensable in a work of art, especially of the Tone-art, namely, Beauty---a quality for which no degree of technical skill can compensate.
But be all that as it may, this Symphony is a creation to be reckoned with. It is, in many respects at least, a "great" Symphony---great in its scope, in its originality, in its supreme craftsmanship, in its sincerity; the product of an extraordinary musical genius. I hope you find this piece as controversial as I have.
Cheers,
The first Movement is in sonata-allegro form.
The second (slow) Movement is a First-Rondo form, augmented by two alternations of the principal Theme with the same subordinate one (somewhat modified). The chief Theme is a lyric sentence of unusual melodic character, typical of d'Indy's thought, weird, but not without a certain strain of loveliness; the other Theme is frankly unmelodious, in jerky dotted rhythm. A brief Introduction opens the slow movement with an echo of the first figure of the Theme of the preceding one. Into the subordinate Theme the Leading Motive (in extended form) is here and there inserted.
The third Movement is essentially the Scherzo, but its chief, opening, Theme is a Romanza of simple, tender beauty. The other, alternating Theme (the design appoximates the First-Rondo) is evolved from the Leading Motive, in fantastic rhythmic shape, wild, bacchantic, insistent---used ostensibly as accompaniment to other wild melodic phrases, one of which resembles the jerky subordinate Theme of the slow Movement. The lyric Theme is drawn for a time into the orgiastic, dizzy whirl, but regains its composure near the end.
The Finale is a marvel of thematic artifice and astounding ingenious combinations. It corresponds to none of the conventional designs, though the presence of two essential Themes is vaguely evident. The form can therefore claim no more accurate designation than a fanciful Series of Episodes, utilizing all the motives of the foregoing Movements, and one or two new ones, interlaced with dazzling skill, admirably controlled, and effectively presented.
This Symphony is appraised by many critics as too cerebral. One commentator of wide orchestral experience declares his conviction that it just misses being a truly great work, because it lacks spontaneity. Unquestionably it displays a greater proportion of mental reflection than genuine human sentiment, and of that quality, absolutely indispensable in a work of art, especially of the Tone-art, namely, Beauty---a quality for which no degree of technical skill can compensate.
But be all that as it may, this Symphony is a creation to be reckoned with. It is, in many respects at least, a "great" Symphony---great in its scope, in its originality, in its supreme craftsmanship, in its sincerity; the product of an extraordinary musical genius. I hope you find this piece as controversial as I have.
Cheers,
Vincent d'Indy
Vincent d'Indy was born in Paris in 1851 and became a pupil and leading disciple of César Franck, whose music he did much to propagate. He distinguished himself as a teacher and writer on musical subjects and was an important figure in the musical life of Paris in his time, although by the time of his death a new era in music was well under way.
Although developing early as a pianist, Parisian Vincent d’Indy (1851-1931) set aside his military inclinations to study composition and related disciplines at the Paris Conservatoire. He cofounded the Schola Cantorum, eventually rivaling the Paris Conservatoire, and was renowned as a teacher of composers. His output crossed all major genres except ballet and film, and his orchestral compositions include the sumptuous Symphony #2 in B-flat Major bordering on the super-Romantic.
Cheers,
Although developing early as a pianist, Parisian Vincent d’Indy (1851-1931) set aside his military inclinations to study composition and related disciplines at the Paris Conservatoire. He cofounded the Schola Cantorum, eventually rivaling the Paris Conservatoire, and was renowned as a teacher of composers. His output crossed all major genres except ballet and film, and his orchestral compositions include the sumptuous Symphony #2 in B-flat Major bordering on the super-Romantic.
Cheers,
Monday, December 19, 2005
Mahler: Symphony No.2 (Resurrection)
Symphony No. 2 in C minor, “Resurrection”Gustav Mahler (b. July 7, 1860 in Kalischt, Bohemia; d. May 18, 1911 in Vienna) In August 1886, the distinguished conductor Arthur Nikisch, later music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, appointed the 26-year-old Gustav Mahler as his assistant at the Leipzig Opera. At Leipzig, Mahler met Carl von Weber, grandson of the composer, and the two worked on a new performing edition of the virtually forgotten Weber opera Die Drei Pintos. Following the premiere of Die Drei Pintos, on January 20, 1888, Mahler attended a reception in a room filled with flowers. This seemingly beneficent image played on his mind, becoming transmogrified into nightmares and waking visions, almost hallucinations, of himself on a funeral bier surrounded by floral wreaths. The First Symphony was completed in March 1888, and its successor was begun almost immediately. Mahler, spurred by the startling visions of his own death, conceived the new work as a tone poem entitled Totenfeier (“Funeral Rite”). The title was apparently taken from the translation by the composer’s close friend Siegfried Lipiner, titled Totenfeier, of Adam Mickiewicz’s Polish epic Dziady. Though he inscribed his manuscript, “Symphony in C minor/First Movement,” Mahler had no idea at the time what sort of music would follow Totenfeier, and he considered allowing the movement to stand as an independent work. The next five years were ones of intense professional and personal activity for Mahler. He resigned from the Leipzig Opera in May 1888 and applied for posts in Karlsruhe, Budapest, Hamburg and Meiningen. To support his petition for this last position, he wrote to Hans von Bülow, director at Meiningen until 1885, to ask for his recommendation, but the letter was ignored. Richard Strauss, however, the successor to Bülow at Meiningen, took up Mahler’s cause on the evidence of his talent furnished by Die Drei Pintos and his growing reputation as a conductor of Mozart and Wagner. When Strauss showed Bülow the score for the Weber/Mahler opera, Bülow responded caustically, “Be it Weberei or Mahlerei [puns in German on ‘weaving’ and ‘painting’], it makes no difference to me. The whole thing is a pastiche, an infamous, out-of-date bagatelle. I am simply nauseated.” Mahler, needless to say, did not get the job at Meiningen, but he was awarded the position at Budapest, where his duties began in October 1888.In 1891, Mahler switched jobs once again, this time leaving Budapest to join the prestigious Hamburg Opera as principal conductor. There he encountered Bülow, who was director of the Hamburg Philharmonic concerts. Bülow had certainly not forgotten his earlier low estimate of Mahler the composer, but after a performance of Siegfried he allowed that “Hamburg has now acquired a simply first-rate opera conductor in Mr. Gustav Mahler.” Encouraged by Bülow’s admiration of his conducting, Mahler asked for his comments on the still-unperformed Totenfeier. Mahler described their encounter:“When I played my Totenfeier for Bülow, he fell into a state of extreme nervous tension, clapped his hands over his ears and exclaimed, ‘Beside your music, Tristan sounds as simple as a Haydn symphony! If that is still music then I do not understand a single thing about music!’ We parted from each other in complete friendship, I, however, with the conviction that Bülow considers me an able conductor but absolutely hopeless as a composer.” Mahler, who throughout his career considered his composition more important than his conducting, was deeply wounded by this behavior, but he controlled his anger out of respect for Bülow, who had extended him many kindnesses and become something of a mentor. Bülow did nothing to quell his doubts about the quality of his creative work, however, and Mahler, who had written nothing since Totenfeier three years before, was at a crisis in his career as a composer. The year after Bülow’s withering criticisms, Mahler found inspiration to compose again in a collection of poems in German folk style by Ludwig Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano called Des Knaben Wunderhorn (“The Youth’s Magic Horn”). He had known these texts since at least 1887, and in 1892 set four of them for voice and piano, thereby renewing some of his creative self-confidence. The following summer, when he was free from the pressures of conducting, he took rustic lodgings in the village of Steinbach on Lake Attersee in the lovely Austrian Salzkammergut, near Salzburg, and it was there that he resumed work on the Second Symphony, five years after the first movement had been completed. Without a clear plan as to how they would fit into the Symphony’s overall structure, he used two of the Wunderhorn songs from the preceding year as the bases for the internal movements of the piece. On July 16th, he completed the orchestral score of the Scherzo, derived from Des Antonius von Padua Fischpredigt, a cynical poem about St. Anthony preaching a sermon to the fishes, who, like some human congregations, return to their fleshly ways as soon as the holy man finishes his lesson. Only three days later, Urlicht (“Primal Light”) for mezzo-soprano solo, was completed; by the end of the month, the Andante, newly conceived, was finished.By the end of summer 1893, the first four movements of the Symphony were done, but Mahler was still unsure about the work’s ending. The finality implied by the opening movement’s “Funeral Rite” seemed to allow no logical progression to another point of climax. As a response to the questions posed by the first movement, he envisioned a grand choral close for the work, much in the manner of the triumphant ending of Beethoven’s final symphony. “My experience with the last movement of my Second Symphony was such that I literally ransacked world literature, even including the Bible, to find the redeeming word.” Still, no solution presented itself. In December 1892, Bülow’s health gave out, and he designated Mahler to be his successor as conductor of the Hamburg Philharmonic concerts. A year later Bülow went to Egypt for treatment, but died suddenly at Cairo on February 12, 1894. Mahler was deeply saddened by the news. He met with Josef Förster the same day and played through the Totenfeier with such emotion that his friend was convinced it was offered “in memory of Bülow.” Förster described the memorial service at Hamburg’s St. Michael Church: “Mahler and I were present at the moving farewell.... The strongest impression to remain was that of the singing of the children’s voices. The effect was created not just by Klopstock’s profound poem [Auferstehen — ‘Resurrection’] but by the innocence of the pure sounds issuing from the children’s throats. The funeral procession started. At the Hamburg Opera, where Bülow had so often delighted the people, he was greeted by the funeral music from Wagner’s Götterdämmerung [conducted by Mahler]. “Outside the Opera, I could not find Mahler. But that afternoon I hurried to his apartment as if to obey a command. I opened the door and saw him sitting at his writing desk. He turned to me and said: ‘Dear friend, I have it!’ I understood: ‘Auferstehen, ja auferstehen wirst du nach kurzen Schlaf.’ I had guessed the secret: Klopstock’s poem, which that morning we had heard from the mouths of children, was to be the basis for the finale of the Second Symphony.” On June 29, 1894, three months later, Mahler completed his monumental “Resurrection” Symphony, six years after it was begun.Mahler once wrote, “What is best in music is not to be found in the notes.” Music, he believed, reflected the greatest thoughts of man, and the creative musician needed to bring to his work not only a technical skill but also the best qualities of a man of letters, a philosopher and a painter. There was no higher calling in Mahler’s world than the one to which he had been summoned. “What one makes music out of is still the whole — that is, the feeling, thinking, suffering human being,” he wrote to his protégé Bruno Walter. Mahler’s symphonies, especially those incorporating the sung word, carry transcendent messages of hope, as though, wrote Philip Barford, “In the background of his mind there seems always to be the image of a ladder up which humanity can climb to heaven.” After the funeral rite of the Second Symphony’s opening (and the two intervening intermezzo-like movements), the surpassingly beautiful Urlicht for contralto soloist, with its symbolism of holy light leading the soul out of the darkness of death, serves to introduce the vision of resurrection — the resurrection of the body in Klopstock’s poem and the transfiguration of the spirit as it soars toward eternal light in verses added by Mahler.In its concept, musical realization and emotion, the “Resurrection” Symphony is an overwhelming experience. Though its foundations in structure and technique are unshakable, this work seems to scorn technical analysis in favor of identifying its progression of images and feelings. The composer himself wrote of the emotional engines driving this Symphony, and his thoughts are given here as a guide to the unfolding of the work:“1st movement. We stand by the coffin of a well-loved person. His life, struggles, passions and aspirations once more, for the last time, pass before our mind’s eye. — And now in this moment of gravity and of emotion which convulses our deepest being, our heart is gripped by a dreadfully serious voice which always passes us by in the deafening bustle of daily life: What now? What is this life — and this death? Do we have an existence beyond it? Is all this only a confused dream, or do life and this death have a meaning? — And we must answer this question if we are to live on.“2nd movement — Andante (in the style of a Ländler). You must have attended the funeral of a person dear to you and then, perhaps, the picture of a happy hour long past arises in your mind like a ray of sun undimmed — and you can almost forget what has happened.“3rd movement — Scherzo, based on Des Antonius von Padua Fischpredigt. When you awaken from the nostalgic daydream [of the preceding movement] and you return to the confusion of real life, it can happen that the ceaseless motion, the senseless bustle of daily activity may strike you with horror. Then life can seem meaningless, a gruesome, ghostly spectacle, from which you may recoil with a cry of disgust!“4th movement — Urlicht (contralto solo). The moving voice of naïve faith sounds in our ear: I am of God, and desire to return to God! God will give me a lamp, will light me to eternal bliss!“5th movement. We again confront all the dreadful questions and the mood of the end of the first movement. The end of all living things has come. The Last Judgment is announced and the ultimate terror of this Day of Days has arrived. The earth quakes, the graves burst open, the dead rise and stride hither in endless procession. Our senses fail us and all consciousness fades away at the approach of the eternal Spirit. The ‘Great Summons’ resounds: the trumpets of the apocalypse call. Softly there sounds a choir of saints and heavenly creatures: ‘Rise again, yes, thou shalt rise again.’ And the glory of God appears. All is still and blissful. And behold: there is no judgment; there are no sinners, no righteous ones, no great and no humble — there is no punishment and no reward! An almighty love shines through us with blessed knowing and being.”
* * *
In March 1902, Mahler and his new bride, Alma, made a trip to St. Petersburg for concerts of his music. Of that visit Alma recalled, “We saw a good deal of high society.... Among them there was a beautiful old lady of hysterical tendencies who ... told Mahler that she felt her death to be near, and would he please enlighten her about the other world, since he had said so much about it in his Second Symphony.” She was disappointed that Mahler could not frame in mere words what he had so eloquently said in music, but perhaps she should have recalled the maxim of Mendelssohn about the finely honed emotional expression of which the art is capable: “It is not that the thoughts expressed in music are too indefinite to be put into words, but on the contrary, are too definite.”
©2005 Dr. Richard E. Rodda
* * *
In March 1902, Mahler and his new bride, Alma, made a trip to St. Petersburg for concerts of his music. Of that visit Alma recalled, “We saw a good deal of high society.... Among them there was a beautiful old lady of hysterical tendencies who ... told Mahler that she felt her death to be near, and would he please enlighten her about the other world, since he had said so much about it in his Second Symphony.” She was disappointed that Mahler could not frame in mere words what he had so eloquently said in music, but perhaps she should have recalled the maxim of Mendelssohn about the finely honed emotional expression of which the art is capable: “It is not that the thoughts expressed in music are too indefinite to be put into words, but on the contrary, are too definite.”
©2005 Dr. Richard E. Rodda
