Gustav Mahler (1860-1911)

Symphony No. 3 (1893-6, rev. 1906) Part I 1. Kräftig. Entschiedend Part II 3. Commodo. Scherzando. Ohne Hast 4. Sehr langsam. Misterioso. Durchaus ppp 5. Lustig im Tempo und keck im Ausdruck 6. Langsam. Ruhevoll. Empfunden

“I conduct to live… I live to compose” is perhaps the quintessential Mahlerian quotation and, with the passage of time, its veracity has been demonstrated. For during his lifetime, Mahler’s considerable fame on both sides of the Atlantic was very much for Mahler the conductor. But a century later, it is of course as a composer, especially of his ten symphonies, that we know and love Mahler. This remark, together with many of his other famous remarks, makes him sound rather arrogant. Combine this observation with his authoritative, suffer-no-fools demeanor as a music director and it is easy to draw a not entirely accurate picture of his personality as being over-confident. Yet inwardly, his persona was rather fragile, perhaps induced by his rough usage as a child by his father and his over-sympathetic relationship with his mother. And of course he suffered throughout his life, as he himself put it, for being a German-speaker from a Czech-speaking land, from being a Czech amongst Austrians, and for being a Jew among all men.

“I am so literally gripped with terror when I see where the path ordained for music leads that it has become my frightful responsibility to be the bearer of this gigantic work”. Although not a religious man, Mahler at times acknowledged a higher force or purpose in his writing, considering himself merely its earthly instrument. Often he expressed surprise at having written a certain passage, marveling at its provenance and meaning. This remark, which he wrote as the music of the third symphony was taking shape, helps us a little to understand better this apparent arrogance. He wasn’t boasting: merely explaining.

“A symphony must contain the entire world” he said - and this symphony, his third, is perhaps the closest to that goal of all his works. Certainly it is the longest symphony in the regular repertoire. But, strangely, it did not start out that way in the composer’s own mind. In fact, he at first wanted it to be a lighter, even humorous sequel to his second symphony, the Resurrection. He sketched out six or seven movements mostly with titles of the form “What the … tell me” - but those titles underwent constant revision as the music materialized. The seventh movement, “What the child tells me” was eventually moved to its place as the conclusion of the fourth symphony, for by that time, the symphony had taken on gigantic proportions and he felt that the Adagio was the appropriate ending. The chief contributor to this unwonted length was the first movement, weighing in finally at somewhat over half an hour! Surprisingly, the first movement was the last to be written and evidently caused its author the greatest labor. Much of the movement is taken up with the struggle between the static, ugly, decaying forces of winter (and the god Pan) and the life-giving, dynamic forces of summer. This contest parallels his own life in the sense that his conducting work (necessary to sustain life) took place during the fall, winter and early spring. His composing (the raison d’être of his life) took place in the summer. Ultimately and happily, as we have seen, both the summer of the first movement and the summers of his composition win their respective contests. Evidently, the contest was not an easy one.

“You needn’t bother to look at that - I’ve composed it all away”. This famous remark, addressed to the young Bruno Walter who had arrived at Mahler’s summer home not far from Salzburg and who stood gawking at the beautiful mountain scenery, refers specifically to the third symphony. It’s clear that Mahler was pleased with his work, but it also suggests that even he realized that the scale of the symphony had grown beyond anything easily tangible. His composing hut stood near the edge of the lake (the Attersee) away from the house [it is now part of a Mahler museum]. While he cannot have been oblivious of the sights and sounds of nature all around him, it was the duty of his sister and friends to ensure that no birds or whistling gardeners should intrude on his work. This might seem odd, until we bear in mind that the image of nature which Mahler wished to recreate in music was that of the Teutonic tradition. Unlike the idealized bucolic pleasantness of the English view of nature, epitomized by the paintings of John Constable, the German view was decidedly more realistic and terrific - Nature red in tooth and claw as Tennyson put it.

Mahler was born in a small village in Bohemia in 1860, when the empire of its occupiers, the Austrians and Hungarians, was at its peak, stretching from the borders of present-day Poland all the way to the Po valley in Italy. Almost immediately the family moved to Jihlava, a garrison town between Bohemia and Moravia. Growing up around the barracks helped give Mahler his love of military bands (a sound he enlists on the good side of the opening movement struggle) and in particular the trumpets and bugles. As a young man, he went to Vienna to study, and from there found himself in a succession of assistant conductorships then directorships at mainly provincial cities in the empire: Bad Hall (near Linz), Ljubljana, Olomouc, Vienna (the Carltheater), Kassel, Prague, Leipzig, Budapest, and by the time of the composition of the 3rd, Hamburg. His reputation as a conductor of opera grew with every appointment, culminating in the directorship of the Vienna Opera in 1901. In 1907 he came to New York, first as Music Director of the Metropolitan opera and then the New York Philharmonic. Nevertheless, to balance every new appointment, there was a less than cordial leaving. Impresarios and managers all competed to hire Mahler, but inevitably the new conductor would rapidly alienate most of the regular musicians and soloists on account of his unrelenting work schedule, attention to detail and lust for perfection. After his last break (with the New York Philharmonic) he was a very sick man and only just made it back to see Vienna one more time before succumbing at the age of 50.

Although written mostly in 1896, it was not until 1902 that the third symphony was performed in its entirety. Such neglect of Mahler’s works was not unusual during his lifetime. Finally, due to the intervention of Richard Strauss who, by contrast, had no trouble getting his music performed, it was scheduled for a music festival held in the Rhineland city of Krefeld. The premiere was a huge success and perhaps the most important single event in Mahler’s accession to the ranks of the great composers.

Any attempt here to introduce the listener to the details of the music would likely be in vain, for the written word can hardly do justice to the grandeur of this work. There are sounds from the orchestra which at the time were quite new, and even now have scarcely been rivaled. To mention just a few examples: the 8 (now usually 9) French horns calling in unison to open the piece (recall that 90 years earlier, Beethoven thought that three horns playing together was a lot); the extensive trombone solos of the first movement; the E-flat clarinet in the third movement shrieking out “kuckuck ist tod” (the cuckoo is dead); the post-horn of the third movement (not in itself a new sound, but Mahler directs that its long passages should be played as if in the distance, approaching or receding); the gut-wrenching upward glissandi of the oboe/English horn in the fourth movement imitating the so-called bird of the night. At times in the first movement, players are instructed to pay no attention to the conductor!

If you would like to know more about the details of this great work, there are many resources on the web. However, I highly recommend Ben Zander’s Telarc recording. Not only is it an excellent recording and brilliant interpretation, but it is worth buying just for the one whole disk devoted to Zander’s own introduction and analysis. Furthermore, it’s three disks for the price of one!

The final plan for the symphony is as follows:

Part One 1. Introduction: Pan awakes… summer marches in. Part Two 2. What the flowers in the meadow tell me. 3. What the beasts in the forest tell me. 4. What man tells me (or What the night tells me). 5. What the angels tell me (or What the morning bells tell me). 6. What love tells me.

Perhaps Mahler’s own titles and the few comments from above will suffice for the first three movements. The fourth movement is a setting for mezzo-soprano of part of Nietzsche’s Also Sprach Zarathustra. Note the repeated use of the word tief (deep):

	O Mensch! Gib Acht!	O man! Take heed!
	Was spricht die tiefe Mitternacht?	What says the midnight deep?
	Ich schlief!	I slept!
	Aus tiefem Traum bin ich erwacht!	From deep dream I am awakened!
	Die Welt ist tief!	The world is deep!
	Und tiefer als der Tag gedacht!	And deeper than the day could read!
	O Mensch!	O man!
	Tief! Tief ist ihr Weh!	Deep is its woe!
	Lust, tiefer noch als Herzleid!	Joy, deeper still than grief can be!
	Weh spricht: Vergeh!	Woe says: pass on!
	Doch alle Lust will Ewigkeit!	But all joy seeks eternity!
	Will tiefe, tiefe Ewigkeit!	Seeks deep, deep eternity.

The fifth movement is a lovely antidote to the gloom and seriousness of its predecessor. Mahler again turns for text to one of the poems from The Boy’s Magic Horn (Des Knaben Wunderhorn) on which all of his first four symphonies are to some extent based. Here, the mezzo is joined by women’s chorus and children’s chorus, the latter beginning by intoning the sound of bells (Bim!, Bam!):

	Es sungen drei Engel einen süssen Gesang;	Three angels were singing a song so bright
	Freuden es selig in dem Himmel klang.	It set the Heavens ringing with joy and delight.
	Etc.

The final movement is the first of Mahler’s great extended Adagios. To end the symphony with such a movement, breaking from all tradition, is a stroke of sheer genius (again Mahler relates that he’s not quite sure himself how this transpired). Here Mahler crowns his achievement with an absolutely beautiful description of love, borrowing much of the main theme from a Beethoven string quartet. By his own words the subject was divine love but, to my ears, the form and flow and the sheer passion of this movement suggest that the composer may, perhaps subconsciously, have been inspired by a much more earthly, even earthy, form of love.