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GUSTAV MAHLER (1860-1911)
Symphony No. 5

Gustav Mahler, one of the last great figures of the late Romantic Movement, was at the same time one of the harbingers of twentieth-century music. His volatile, complex personality and his display in his music of emotional and physical suffering, were out of sync with the mood in turn-of-the-century Europe, which hid behind a façade of political and emotional stability. The public revered him more as a conductor of the prestigious Vienna Opera, than as a composer. Most of Mahler’s music expresses his ongoing battle with fate and the uncertainty of existence – which may explain how he could have written two of the Kindertotenlieder (Songs on the Death of Children) immediately following the birth of his second daughter. Perhaps it is our uncertainty in the future that has made Mahler’s music so popular since the mid twentieth century.

All of Mahler’s symphonies are expansive, intense dramas, usually with specific musical references to events in the composer’s life alongside the universal challenge to overcome grief and death. Until the Fifth Symphony, all of his instrumental music contained at least one specific allusion to his previously composed vocal music, mostly his settings of songs from the folk anthology Des Knabens Wunderhorn (The Youth's Magic Horn). The Fifth Symphony is the first one with neither singing nor song references; it was the first to which he refused to add a programmatic description, letting the music speak for itself. Yet he still maintains the musical imagery of the human struggle in some of his most evocative music, the tempo markings at the beginning of each movement – especially the first two – transparently substitute for the Symphony's plot.

Mahler completed his Symphony No. 5 in the summer of 1902, the final work in a burst of creativity that included the six Rückert Songs. It was the first composition following his marriage to the scintillating 22-year-old Alma Schindler, the daughter of a famous Austrian landscape painter and a talented pianist and composer in her own right. Gustav and Alma had met in Paris in November 1901 and were married four months later. This marriage – which lasted for 10 stormy years until the composer’s death – was the subject of endless gossip. It was definitely considered a social advancement for Mahler, a Jew (although converted to Catholicism) from a small town in Bohemia, the backwater of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It gave him the long-sought introduction to the intellectual elite of Vienna, including theatrical producer Alfred Roller, who became Mahler’s innovative designer at Vienna’s Hofoper.

Alma wrote out much of the orchestration of the Symphony at Gustav’s direction, and he considered it “their” music. As in all his previous symphonies, Mahler used a gigantic orchestra, although often interlaced with the subtle, chamber-music effects of small ensembles. However, the original orchestration was so percussion-heavy that, after a test run with the Vienna Philharmonic, Alma wrote, “…I could not hear [the themes] at all! Mahler had over-scored the percussion instruments and kettledrums so madly and persistently that little beyond the rhythm could be recognized.” Mahler himself was aware of his musical blunder and immediately red-penciled much of the offending percussion and timpani parts before he premiered it in Cologne in 1904. But he was still dissatisfied with the orchestration and continued to make revisions at least until 1909. According to Alma, the symphony was re-orchestrated for nearly every performance he conducted.

Although funereal music was one of Mahler’s signatures, there has been some speculation that the opening funeral march in the Fifth reflects the composer’s brush with death from an abdominal hemorrhage, and the triumphant conclusion of the Symphony to the completion of his beautiful villa on the Wörthersee and his new wife. The Symphony is in three parts divided into five movements; the first and third parts comprise two movements each. The first two movements, however, are thematically related and can be seen as an expanded introduction and Allegro in classical sonata form. The fourth and fifth movements – also thematically related – fulfill the same function. The centerpiece of the Symphony is the expansive Scherzo – a novel concept for what is normally the most lightweight movement in the Classical symphonic literature.  

While so many of Mahler's symphonies depict a journey from darkness into light, the specific qualities of the two extremes are quite different in each symphony. In Symphony No. 2, (the "Resurrection"), the passage is decidedly spiritual and universal. Here, the enlightenment of the final movement reflects the release from personal despair, yet without transcendence.

The first movement is marked "Trauermarsch. In gemessenem Schritt. Streng, wie ein Kondukt" (Funeral march. In measured step. Strict, like a cortège). The Symphony opens with a trumpet fanfare – although in the minor mode – which is used as a refrain throughout the movement. The funeral march proper begins as a grim melody in the strings. In the middle of the movement there is a sudden increase in tempo and complex counterpoint that seems like an outburst of grief that can no longer be contained by the tempo constraints of the march. Upon the return to the march, Mahler engages in a wonderful spinning out of the themes with new variations, harmonies and orchestration. The recapitulation contains a parallel outburst – although less strident and more controlled than the first – before the quiet relentlessly sad monotony of the march returns and the fanfare fades into the distance.

But grief has not finished running its course, witness the tempo marking of the second movement: "Stürmisch bewegt, mit grösster Vehemenz" (Stormy, with greatest vehemence). It begins with another outcry, this time a shriek in the woodwinds with cacophonous, stuttering accompaniment in the basses and a chaotic section of fragmented themes and ideas. A second theme is related to the funeral march from the first movement. With it comes a definite progressive softening of the mood that increasingly allows bright moments of sunlight through the gloom. The following storminess suggests determination, rather than emotional relief.

The Scherzo, the central and longest movement is a waltz, probably the longest scherzo in the literature, although still retaining the Classical ABA structure. It is one of music's greatest showpieces for the horns. It is also the emotional turning point of the Symphony, containing series of themes representing everything from heady euphoria to confused despair and more rational recovery. A fanfare for the horn introduces the waltz; yet already with the second strain of the dance, the waters become muddied with conflicting musical ideas and feelings. The trio section begins optimistically with a moment of extreme tenderness, but then descends into compulsive agitation. There follows the defining theme of the movement, a horn motive that later will literally call a halt to the whirling conflict of feeling, and come to represent a voice of moderation. The Scherzo is a signature example of Mahler’s ability to continually transform and redefine the meaning of his themes – and rattle his own and his listeners' emotional chain.

Out of the emotional maelstrom of the Scherzo emerges the Adagietto, one of Mahler’s most gentle and sublime utterances. Scored for strings and harp alone, it forms an instrumental and emotional counterpoint to the loud brassiness of the preceding three movements, supplying the comfort that has heretofore been lacking. The expansive melody, which Mahler spins out in free variations, redefines the emotional meaning of the Scherzo as a desperate fling, an attempt to divert grief rather than acceptance. Both Mahler and Alma had manuscripts of this movement, which many musicians perceive as a love letter to Alma, expressing the composer’s intense feelings for his new wife.

The Finale, marked Allegro giocoso (playful) is a rondo, albeit with the theme always returning in a modified form. It begins with another fanfare, this time a three-way conversation between solo horn, oboe and bassoon – the first appearance in this Symphony of Mahler’s characteristic birdcalls, and a principal theme of the movement. The entire movement – while quixotic in its leaping back and forth among themes – is a series of dancing ideas, representing different facets of unattenuated joy. A huge buildup of complex counterpoint resembling a Bach chorale prelude, a symbol of salvation, concludes the Symphony.

Program notes by:

Joseph & Elizabeth Kahn
www.wordprosmusic.com

GUSTAV MAHLER (1860-1911)
Symphony No. 5

Gustav Mahler, one of the last great figures of the late Romantic Movement, was at the same time one of the harbingers of twentieth-century music. His volatile, complex personality and his display in his music of emotional and physical suffering, were out of sync with the mood in turn-of-the-century Europe, which hid behind a façade of political and emotional stability. The public revered him more as a conductor of the prestigious Vienna Opera, than as a composer. Most of Mahler’s music expresses his ongoing battle with fate and the uncertainty of existence – which may explain how he could have written two of the Kindertotenlieder (Songs on the Death of Children) immediately following the birth of his second daughter. Perhaps it is our uncertainty in the future that has made Mahler’s music so popular since the mid twentieth century.

All of Mahler’s symphonies are expansive, intense dramas, usually with specific musical references to events in the composer’s life alongside the universal challenge to overcome grief and death. Until the Fifth Symphony, all of his instrumental music contained at least one specific allusion to his previously composed vocal music, mostly his settings of songs from the folk anthology Des Knabens Wunderhorn (The Youth's Magic Horn). The Fifth Symphony is the first one with neither singing nor song references; it was the first to which he refused to add a programmatic description, letting the music speak for itself. Yet he still maintains the musical imagery of the human struggle in some of his most evocative music, the tempo markings at the beginning of each movement – especially the first two – transparently substitute for the Symphony's plot.

Mahler completed his Symphony No. 5 in the summer of 1902, the final work in a burst of creativity that included the six Rückert Songs. It was the first composition following his marriage to the scintillating 22-year-old Alma Schindler, the daughter of a famous Austrian landscape painter and a talented pianist and composer in her own right. Gustav and Alma had met in Paris in November 1901 and were married four months later. This marriage – which lasted for 10 stormy years until the composer’s death – was the subject of endless gossip. It was definitely considered a social advancement for Mahler, a Jew (although converted to Catholicism) from a small town in Bohemia, the backwater of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It gave him the long-sought introduction to the intellectual elite of Vienna, including theatrical producer Alfred Roller, who became Mahler’s innovative designer at Vienna’s Hofoper.

Alma wrote out much of the orchestration of the Symphony at Gustav’s direction, and he considered it “their” music. As in all his previous symphonies, Mahler used a gigantic orchestra, although often interlaced with the subtle, chamber-music effects of small ensembles. However, the original orchestration was so percussion-heavy that, after a test run with the Vienna Philharmonic, Alma wrote, “…I could not hear [the themes] at all! Mahler had over-scored the percussion instruments and kettledrums so madly and persistently that little beyond the rhythm could be recognized.” Mahler himself was aware of his musical blunder and immediately red-penciled much of the offending percussion and timpani parts before he premiered it in Cologne in 1904. But he was still dissatisfied with the orchestration and continued to make revisions at least until 1909. According to Alma, the symphony was re-orchestrated for nearly every performance he conducted.

Although funereal music was one of Mahler’s signatures, there has been some speculation that the opening funeral march in the Fifth reflects the composer’s brush with death from an abdominal hemorrhage, and the triumphant conclusion of the Symphony to the completion of his beautiful villa on the Wörthersee and his new wife. The Symphony is in three parts divided into five movements; the first and third parts comprise two movements each. The first two movements, however, are thematically related and can be seen as an expanded introduction and Allegro in classical sonata form. The fourth and fifth movements – also thematically related – fulfill the same function. The centerpiece of the Symphony is the expansive Scherzo – a novel concept for what is normally the most lightweight movement in the Classical symphonic literature.  

While so many of Mahler's symphonies depict a journey from darkness into light, the specific qualities of the two extremes are quite different in each symphony. In Symphony No. 2, (the "Resurrection"), the passage is decidedly spiritual and universal. Here, the enlightenment of the final movement reflects the release from personal despair, yet without transcendence.

The first movement is marked "Trauermarsch. In gemessenem Schritt. Streng, wie ein Kondukt" (Funeral march. In measured step. Strict, like a cortège). The Symphony opens with a trumpet fanfare – although in the minor mode – which is used as a refrain throughout the movement. The funeral march proper begins as a grim melody in the strings. In the middle of the movement there is a sudden increase in tempo and complex counterpoint that seems like an outburst of grief that can no longer be contained by the tempo constraints of the march. Upon the return to the march, Mahler engages in a wonderful spinning out of the themes with new variations, harmonies and orchestration. The recapitulation contains a parallel outburst – although less strident and more controlled than the first – before the quiet relentlessly sad monotony of the march returns and the fanfare fades into the distance.

But grief has not finished running its course, witness the tempo marking of the second movement: "Stürmisch bewegt, mit grösster Vehemenz" (Stormy, with greatest vehemence). It begins with another outcry, this time a shriek in the woodwinds with cacophonous, stuttering accompaniment in the basses and a chaotic section of fragmented themes and ideas. A second theme is related to the funeral march from the first movement. With it comes a definite progressive softening of the mood that increasingly allows bright moments of sunlight through the gloom. The following storminess suggests determination, rather than emotional relief.

The Scherzo, the central and longest movement is a waltz, probably the longest scherzo in the literature, although still retaining the Classical ABA structure. It is one of music's greatest showpieces for the horns. It is also the emotional turning point of the Symphony, containing series of themes representing everything from heady euphoria to confused despair and more rational recovery. A fanfare for the horn introduces the waltz; yet already with the second strain of the dance, the waters become muddied with conflicting musical ideas and feelings. The trio section begins optimistically with a moment of extreme tenderness, but then descends into compulsive agitation. There follows the defining theme of the movement, a horn motive that later will literally call a halt to the whirling conflict of feeling, and come to represent a voice of moderation. The Scherzo is a signature example of Mahler’s ability to continually transform and redefine the meaning of his themes – and rattle his own and his listeners' emotional chain.

Out of the emotional maelstrom of the Scherzo emerges the Adagietto, one of Mahler’s most gentle and sublime utterances. Scored for strings and harp alone, it forms an instrumental and emotional counterpoint to the loud brassiness of the preceding three movements, supplying the comfort that has heretofore been lacking. The expansive melody, which Mahler spins out in free variations, redefines the emotional meaning of the Scherzo as a desperate fling, an attempt to divert grief rather than acceptance. Both Mahler and Alma had manuscripts of this movement, which many musicians perceive as a love letter to Alma, expressing the composer’s intense feelings for his new wife.

The Finale, marked Allegro giocoso (playful) is a rondo, albeit with the theme always returning in a modified form. It begins with another fanfare, this time a three-way conversation between solo horn, oboe and bassoon – the first appearance in this Symphony of Mahler’s characteristic birdcalls, and a principal theme of the movement. The entire movement – while quixotic in its leaping back and forth among themes – is a series of dancing ideas, representing different facets of unattenuated joy. A huge buildup of complex counterpoint resembling a Bach chorale prelude, a symbol of salvation, concludes the Symphony.

Program notes by:

Joseph & Elizabeth Kahn
www.wordprosmusic.com