Written by Anna Vorhes
BORN
July 7, 1860, Kalischt, Bohemia
DIED
May 18, 1911, Vienna
COMPOSED
Primarily in Mahler's composition summer work of 1895 and 1896. He did draw from earlier material of his own. Final preparation was completed in 1899.
PREMIERED
Krefeld, Germany, on June 9, 1902, with the composer conducting
INSTRUMENTATION
four flutes (all = piccolo), four oboes (4th = English horn), four clarinets (3rd = bass clarinet, 4th = E-flat clarinet), four bassoons (4th = contrabassoon), eight horns, four trumpets, flügelhorn (offstage), four trombones, tuba, timpani (two players), percussion, two harps, strings, women's chorus, and mezzo-soprano soloist
DURATION
100 minutes
SOMETHING INTERESTING TO LISTEN FOR
Mahler said, "A Symphony must be like the world. It must contain everything!" This symphony offers this philosophy presented in the actual music. The orchestra is large and presented to the best advantage. The addition of a mezzo-soprano and a women's chorus seems perfectly logical. Yet Mahler says this is not really a symphony in the expected style of four movements in a predictable pattern. Listen to how Mahler uses each of the colors from his vast palette to draw us in to an experience that leads from considering his view of the outdoors to the final movement when the composer invites us to experience a living relationship with the sense of God, a huge and relatively abstract concept. The relationship is presented as pure love, culminating Mahler's examining what he learned from various aspects of the world. Many of his original melodies sound like music we have heard before, using the idioms that make us think of fold melodies and marches, without sinking to the trite and overused. The melodies and their settings are all original to Mahler. Perhpas this is part of the power of Mahler: assembling a whole that is much larger and more powerful than any part.
PROGRAM NOTES
Summers were composition times for Mahler. He had complex duties during the fall, winter, and spring. When those ended for the year, he retreated to areas where he could hide away and compose. The summer of 1895 found him in his rustic cabin at Steinbach. All the movements of this symphony, except the first, were composed in that short period of time. The following summer he returned to Steinbach and composed the long first movement. Movements of the symphony were performed bit-by-bit throughout Europe, but work wasn't presented in its entirety until 1902.
The stages of composition of this massive work began with Mahler outlining seven movements he intended to create. These were revised several times. Ultimately, he withdrew the titles. Here is his discussion of the topic in correspondence with a conductor friend, Josef Krug-Waldsee:
"Those titles were an attempt on my part to provide non-musicians with something to hold on to and with a signpost for the intellectual, or better, the expressive content of the various movements and for their relationships to each other and to the whole. That it didn't work (as, in fact, it could never work) and that it led only to misinterpretations of the most horrendous sort became painfully clear all too quickly. It's the same disaster that had overtaken me on previous and similar occasions, and now I have once and for all given up commenting, analyzing all such expediencies of whatever sort. These titles...will surely say something to you after you know the score. You will draw intimations from them about how I imagined the steady intensification of feeling, from the indistinct, unbending, elemental existence (of the forces of nature) to the tender formation of the human heart, which in turn points toward and reaches a region beyond itself (God). Please express that in your own words without quoting those extremely inadequate titles and that way you will have acted in my spirit. I am very grateful that you asked me [about the titles], for it is by no means inconsequential to me and for the future of my work how it is introduced into "public life."
This leads to the contemplation of how words and music, especially orchestral music, interact. Storytelling in instrumental music was common and expected in Mahler's time. He also was very comfortable inserting vocalists, both as soloists and as choirs, to make his point. But he also was annoyed by his audiences putting too much emphasis on what the words had to offer about the piece. He believed his communication to be much more powerful without needing to explain what his intentions were.
With the inclusion of singers, specific words are necessary. The fourth movement is a setting of the words of Frederich Nietzsche's "Midnight Song" from Also Sprach Zarathustra. The fifth movement is drawn from Des Knaben Wunderhorn ("The Youth's Magic Horn"), a combination of "Three Angels Sang" and the "Armer Kinder Bettlerlied" (Poor Children's Begging Song) from Des Knaben Wunderhorn, the story of a young boy begging his mother for food as she puts him off, citing the need to complete other tasks. With this we hear the sound of church bells sung as "bim bom".
It is interesting to contemplate Mahler's developing philosophy through his symphonies. His second symphony, called the "Resurrection Symphony" examines a traditional view of God and humankind. This symphony becomes more humanistic, while acknowledging a God who is love. The Mahler Foundation, on their website, offers this reflection:
"The essential difference in Mahler's approach to redemption in both symphonies is that in the second, humankind is subservient to God's grace achieved through belief, while in the third, God and humanity come together, not as equals, of course, but as partners in life's traversal, their mutual love providing the highest achievement in existence, that is also the long sought after redemptive resolution to human suffering, Mahler's own world was beginning to evolve during the 1890s when he wrote the third; his personal quest for life's meaning in the face of suffering and death, was deeply affected by his encounter with the works of Friedrich Nietzsche's."
