The Music of Gustav Mahler

The music of Gustav Mahler: bridging the Romantic and Modern eras

Part I - The early period

POSTED JANUARY 19, 2021

"The symphony must be like the world. It must embrace everything." - Gustav Mahler

The music of Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) is among the most performed in the classical repertoire. Mahler was a bridge between the late Romantic and the Modern eras, and his symphonies are ranked among the greatest ever written. He composed only in the genres of song and symphony - with a close and complex interrelationship between the two. His works often include folk music and song, sometimes added ironically in the midst of a serious piece. Spiritual conflict and struggle were as much a part of Mahler's art as Beethoven's emotional struggles were a part of his: "In terms of the personal content of his art, it can be said of Mahler, more than of any other composer, that he lived out the spiritual torment of disinherited modern man in his art, and that the man is the music." [1]

Mahler was one of the last major composers of the Austro-German Romantic line which includes, among others, Beethoven, Schubert, Liszt, Wagner, Bruckner and Brahms. From his predecessors Mahler drew many of the features that were to characterize his music. Thus, from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony came the idea of using soloists and a choir within the symphonic genre. From Beethoven, Liszt and Berlioz came the concept of writing music with an inherent narrative or "program," and of breaking away from the traditional four-movement symphony format. The examples of Wagner and Bruckner encouraged Mahler to extend the scale of his symphonic works well beyond the previously accepted standards, to embrace an entire world of feeling. [2]

Among the many twentieth century composers that Mahler himself influenced are Arnold Schoenberg, Aaron Copland, Kurt Weill, Italy's Luciano Berio, Russia's Dmitri Shostakovich, England's Benjamin Britten and the American composers Leonard Bernstein and Samuel Barber. Elements in Mahler's works foreshadowed the methods employed in the 20th century. These elements include progressive tonality*; atonality**; a "breakaway from harmony produced by the entire orchestra in favor of a contrapuntal texture (based on interwoven melodies) for groups of solo instruments within the full orchestra; the principle of continually varying themes rather than merely restating them; ironic quotation of popular styles and of sounds from everyday life (bird calls, bugle signals, etc.)". [1, 2]

Mahler's Early Period

As with Beethoven, music experts categorize Mahler's musical development into three periods - early, middle, and late. Mahler was one of the most renowned conductors of his time, and composing was often a part-time vocation. His long first period stretched from songs written in 1880 to his Symphony No. 4 completed in 1900.

Mahler's Symphony No. 1 in D Major debuted in 1889. It was not well received by the Viennese audience. Used to Beethoven and Brahms, they did not know what to make of its massive size, odd sounds, and bits of folk melodies. The symphony begins with what Mahler likened to "a sound of nature." The second movement is a folk dance. The third movement is a funeral march, with Eastern European and Jewish folk accents, based on the "Frere Jacques" melody. The stormy finale begins with an alarming bang and builds to a huge climax. [3] Mahler had given his 19th century audience more than they could handle. Today, it is piece that is hard to resist. [link below]

Symphony No. 2 in C Minor, "Resurrection", was written over a period of 6 years and performed for the first time in 1895. Unlike Symphony No. 1, the five-movement piece was welcomed with storms of applause. Despite its subtitle, Symphony No. 2 is not an exclusively religious work, with Mahler "keen to emphasize life and death in all its terrifying...mortal splendor." Classic FM calls it a "heart-shattering" work of genius." It is a massive work - even more so than Symphony No.1 - running to an hour and a half. Music writer Stephen Coburn describes it:

Its enormous resources -- huge orchestra, soprano and alto soloists, chorus, and organ, as well as its epic theme of death and resurrection -- represent Mahler at the pinnacle of his earlier heaven-storming style and aesthetic. The transformative theme employed here will eventually become the common thread of every subsequent symphony. It is quintessential Mahler and covers a vast panorama of style and emotion, culminating in one of the most breathtaking and moving conclusions in the symphonic repertory.

In the summer of 1893, Mahler established a pattern of composing that he would employ for the rest of his life. He spent that summer on the shores of the Attersee near Salzburg. He found the location so well suited to composing that he had a hut built there and became a "summer composer" - alternating summer composing with his city conducting and administrative chores. For his Symphony No. 3 in D Minor, Mahler chose as his subject Nature - a subject that he absorbed daily in his mountain retreat, staring out the window as storms swept across the lake, or walking in the forest after a long day's work. He later wrote to the soprano Anna von Mildenburg: “Just imagine a work of such magnitude that it actually mirrors the whole world—one is, so to speak, only an instrument, played on by the universe. . . . My symphony will be something the like of which the world has never yet heard! . . . In it the whole of nature finds a voice.” [4]

Although the symphony was later condensed to six movements, here is the schematic program for the symphony as Mahler envisioned it in August 1895, at the end of the first summer's work [4]:

Symphony No. III - 'THE JOYFUL SCIENCE' [Die fröhliche Wissenschaft] - A Summer Morning's Dream

I Summer marches in.

II What the flowers in the meadow tell me.

III What the beasts of the forest tell me.

IV What the night tells me. (Alto solo.)

V What the morning bells tell me. (Women's chorus with alto solo.)

VI What love tells me. Motto: 'Father, behold these wounds of mine! Let no creature be unredeemed!' (from Des Knaben Wunderhorn)

VII Heavenly life [Das himmlische Leben]. (Soprano solo, humorous.)

The final symphony of Mahler's early period is also his most frequently performed - Symphony No. 4 in G Major. Though his most sophisticated score yet, it possesses a simplicity as Mahler explores themes of childhood, innocence, and spirituality. Its origin – and a clue to its understanding – lies in Mahler’s preoccupation with the folk world of Des Knaben Wunderhorn, a collection of poetry published nearly a hundred years earlier purporting to be German folk poetry. Romantic era composers drew endlessly on this source, "full of the innocent joys of spring, of flowers and birds and a world free of all cares save the eternal she-loves-me-she-loves-me-not." [5, 6]

The first movement begins with sleigh bells and this is followed by one lovely Schubert-inspired melody after another. The second movement features a solo violin tuned higher than normal to suggest a country fiddler. There are ghostly shadows in this music, mildly threatening perhaps, but set aside by the pleasant quality of the pace. The slow third movement is the heart of the symphony; Mahler said that it reminded him of his mother’s smile. The movement is a double theme and variations: the first is a tender melody that first appears in the cello; the second, a more plaintive, melancholy line in the oboe. The two alternate, "building to a heart-wrenching climax before dying away. During the denouement, a fast, carnivalesque passage threatens to overwhelm the meditative mood, only to be reined in by the horns. Then, everything comes to a halt, and the orchestra explodes into a wall of sound representing the gates of heaven....The last movement entrusts the vision of heaven to a soprano soloist, whose first melody has been foreshadowed in earlier movements, but now we hear it whole, with the words 'We enjoy heavenly delights.' The child imagines a carefree life in heaven, full of dancing and playing, good music and good food (asparagus, beans, hare, fish, wine), and full of saints and martyrs too." [5, 6]

A performance of this peaceful, joyful work conducted by renowned Italian conductor Claudio Abbado is in the link below.

The music of Gustav Mahler: bridging the Romantic and Modern eras

Part II - The middle period

POSTED MARCH 4, 2021

The Music of Gustav Mahler: Bridging the Romantic and Modern Eras, Part I [above] provides an introduction to Mahler and his music as well as a discussion of compositions from his early period. This long first creative period stretched from songs written in 1880 to his Symphony No. 4 completed in 1900. In this early period, songs and symphonies were closely related, and the symphonic works were programmatic*.

The fusion of song and symphony had been a characteristic of Mahler's early works. In his middle compositional period (1901-1907), a change of style led Mahler to produce three purely instrumental symphonies (No.5, 6, and 7). The Eighth Symphony, marking the end of the middle period, returns to a combination of orchestra and voice. Mahler's middle period was one of concentrated composition with his works free of programmatic content and marked by a fierce dynamism**. Mahler's middle period came to an end when he left for New York at the end of 1907. In New York, Mahler would conduct works at both the Metropolitan Opera and the New York Philharmonic until February 1911. [1, 2]

Symphony No. 5

Composed during the summers of 1901 and 1902 during Mahler's annual holiday from his job as director of the Vienna Opera, the Fifth Symphony occupies a pivotal place in Mahler’s work. It was his first purely instrumental symphony since the First, which had its world premier in 1889. Mahler had met Alma Schindler, the beautiful daughter of a famous landscape painter in the winter of 1901 and proposed to her in the fall of 1901. The five movement symphony, with its trajectory from mourning to triumph, reflects the composer’s personal life. Perhaps the most famous passage is the fourth movement, the Adagietto (at 44:57 on the video below). Scored only for the strings and a solo harp, it is Mahler's "love letter" to Alma. [3]

Symphony No. 6

Composed during one of the happiest times of Mahler's life - the summers of 1902 and 1903, Symphony No. 6 in A minor is the darkest of his symphonies. It may be “the first nihilist work in the history of music”, as Conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler described it. Conductor and friend of Mahler’s Bruno Walter found the piece too expressively dark for him to conduct, since it “ends in hopelessness and the dark night of the soul”. In what seems a prophetic statement, Mahler imagined the finale of the Sixth Symphony as a scenario in which “the hero” is assaulted by “three hammer blows of fate, the last of which fells him as a tree is felled.” The summer of 1907 brought him three such blows: a daughter’s death, the discovery of his own severe heart disease, and the end of his directorship of the Vienna Opera. [4, 5]

Symphony No. 7

Mahler's Symphony No. 7 is one of the least performed of his works. It is also one in which the composer's genius is most on display. The innovative orchestration of this symphony includes important roles for instruments rarely used in symphonies, such as the tenor horn, guitar and mandolin. Mahler also uses standard orchestral instruments in unusual ways. In the first movement, he has violins and a solo trumpet playing to the extremes of their upper register, representing, perhaps, the agony of his own existence. In the third movement, the composer gives the cellos and double basses a dynamic marking that instructs them to ‘pluck the string so hard that it hits the wood’. Program notes from the Oregon Symphony Orchestra succinctly describe the flow of the work: "Its five movements form an arch, with the quasi-sinister Scherzo as the central anchor, flanked by the two "Nachtmusiks", which are themselves encompassed by the vast energy of the opening and closing sections." [6, 7]

Symphony No. 8

Its nickname, the "Symphony of the Thousand", tells you much of what you need to know about this massive choral work. Symphony No. 8 requires huge instrumental and vocal groups and is a return to the fusion of song and symphony that characterized Mahler's earlier symphonies. The structure of the work is unconventional; instead of the normal framework of several movements, the piece is in two parts. Part I is based on the Latin text of a ninth-century Christian hymn for Pentecost, Veni creator spiritus ("Come, Creator Spirit"), and Part II is a setting of the words from the closing scene of Goethe's Faust***. The two parts are unified by a common idea, that of redemption through the power of love, a unity conveyed through shared musical themes. [1] It was the last of Mahler's symphonies to be premiered in his lifetime. Some musicologists have compared Mahler's Symphony No. 8 (in its scope and ambition, at least) to Beethoven's Ninth. Below is a live performance conducted by Mahler super-fan Leonard Bernstein with the Vienna Philharmonic.

*Program music is a term usually applied to any musical composition in the classical music tradition in which the piece is designed according to some preconceived narrative, or is designed to evoke a specific idea and atmosphere, and extra-musical elements like sights and incidents. This is distinct from the more traditional absolute music popular in the Baroque and Classical eras, in which the piece has no narrative program or ideas and is simply created for music's sake. [1]

**In music, the dynamics of a piece is the variation in loudness between notes or phrases. [1]

***The final scene in Goethe's Faust takes place on the steep and rocky side of an unidentified mountain - representing the "cosmic axis," which occurs in many mythological traditions, or the sacred mountain that is at the center of the world and connects earth and heaven. Mystics, shamans, medicine men, yogis, etc. ascend this mountain in their trance states and enter heaven in order to bring back divine knowledge, to heal people in their community, etc. [8]

References: [1] Wikipedia [2] Britannica [3] LA Philharmonic [4] The Guardian [5] San Francisco Philharmonic [6] Classic FM [7] Oregon Symphony [8] Class Notes University of Tennessee Knoxville

Symphony No. 10 (unfinished)

Symphony No. 10 by Gustav Mahler was written in the summer of 1910, and was his final composition. At the time of Mahler's death the composition was substantially complete in draft form, but not fully orchestrated, and thus not performable.

Already having suffered the loss of a daughter and having been diagnosed with a heart problem, Mahler now learned of his young wife's infidelity in the midst of the composition. Mahler underwent a profound personal crisis that led him to consult Freud, leading the Guardian's music critic Tim Ashley to call the Tenth "the ultimate musical act of agonized self-revelation."

Several composers have completed the work, but how well they reflect Mahler's intention is a matter of debate. Ashley concludes his piece in the Guardian noting that "Many conductors have refused to perform the completed score[s]. This is regrettable, for Mahler's Tenth, in any version, is a great work, traversing an unremitting arc of emotion, at times almost unendurable in intensity."

Performances of Mahler's works grew less frequent after his death and fell into relative obscurity. In the 1950's there was a revival of interest in Mahler. Deryck Cooke argues that Mahler's popularity escalated when a new, postwar generation of music-lovers arose, untainted by "the dated polemics of anti-romanticism" which had affected Mahler's reputation in the inter-war years. Robert Carr's simpler explanation for the 1950s Mahler revival is that "it was the long-playing record rather than the Zeitgeist which made a comprehensive breakthrough possible. Mahler's work became accessible and repeatable in the home." In the United States, Leonard Bernstein was an ardent admirer, proponent and conductor of Mahler. In the years following his centenary in 1960, Mahler rapidly became one of the most performed and most recorded of all composers, and has largely remained thus. [2]

Mahler had a great influence on succeeding generations of composers. Mahler's first "disciples" included the founders of Second Viennese School. Arnold Schoenberg and his pupils Alban Berg and Anton Webern, influencing their move to atonality. Among other composers whose work carries the influence of Mahler are America's Aaron Copland, the German song and stage composer Kurt Weill, Italy's Luciano Berio, Russia's Dmitri Shostakovich and England's Benjamin Britten. The American composers Leonard Bernstein and Samuel Barber were also influenced by Mahler's work. The British music writer Donald Mitchell concludes his study of Mahler's influence with the statement: "Even were his own music not to survive, Mahler would still enjoy a substantial immortality in the music of these pre-eminent successors who have embraced his art and assimilated his techniques." [2]

References: [1] SF Classical Voice [2] Wikipedia [3] Mahler Foundation [4] Utah Symphony [5] Tennessean [6] The Guardian