Mitchell, Mahler's Symphony No. 1 (Discovering Mahler 2007)

7/28/2019 Mitchell, Mahler's Symphony No. 1 (Discovering Mahler 2007)

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II 8 SCRUTI"'Yin his diary, 'Lovely little pieces, exquisitely scored - a lesson to allthe Strausses and Elgars in the world' (and a lesson Britten himself>Vas quick to learn, one might add); and indeed the instrumentation of the cycle is of a clarity and refinement that anticipate thechamber-musical textures of Ki11dertotelllieder and Das Lied. Th elargest orchestra Mahler deploys in the Geselle11 cycle is heard onlyin the tumultuous third song; the first song uses virtually a chamber orchestra, while the last excludes the brass entirely, bu t for themost sparing use of three of the four horns in sixteen bars only,tour of those for horn solo!

There is no doubt that from the outset Mahler envisaged theGesellell cycle as an ore hestral song-cycle - so much is clear tromthe title-page of the earliest manuscript of the work known to us,for voice and piano. It seems probable, however, that Mahler didno t get down to orchestrating the work until there >vas a possibilityof a premiere tor the cycle in its orchestral guise of some importance. Perhaps the cycle may have had a performance in its voiceand-piano version before I 896, bu t if there were one, \Ve have norecord of it; which leaves I 896 as the year in which the cycle madeits first appearance in orchestral guise, when Mahler himself conducted the work in Berlin on I6 March I 896: the other \vork onthe programme \Vas his ow n First Symphony, a fascinating juxtaposition of r>vo \Vorks so intimately related. It \vas for this occasion,I believe, that Mahler at last brought to fruition the orchestrationof the Gesclletz cycle which had ahvays been his creative intention,helped, no doubt, by the experience he had no\v had of workingon the orchestration of the symphony which itself had undergonemany vicissitudes.

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Symphony No. I:'The most spontaneous and

daringly composed ofmy works'~ : 1 9 9 6 : ~

In April I 896, when Mahler conducted performances of his FirstSymphony and the Geselle11 song-cycle in the same programme inBerlin, he remarked to his confidante Natalie Bauer-Lechne r:'Peoplehave no t yet accepted my language. They have no notion of what Iam saying or what I mean, and so it all seems senseless and unintelligible to them. Even the musicians who play my works hardlyknow \vhat I am driving at.'What possible re lationship could there be bet>veen the symphonyand the song-cycle? Th e bewilderment of Mahler's listeners, of hisplayers, can be understood. No t surprisingly they missed the wholepoint of the exercise, which, I believe, was Mahler's intention toelucidate - i lluminate - his symphony by mea11s of the song-cycle. Inshort, the song-cycle was to function as the explanatory note thatwas missing rom the programme.

When Mahler launched his first big work for orchestra alone inBudapest in I 889, it was no t described as a symphony at all, bu t asa 'Symphonic Poem', in nvo parts and five (not four) movements.Apart trom the 'A Ia po111pes .fzmebres' inscription for the slow movement, Vl!hich in any case only confused the audiences at the premiereby contradicting its expectations of a dignified funeral march, there\Vas no programme. Discouraged no doubt by the hostile reaction ofhis listeners, Mahle r then contrived a 'scenario' by \vay of elucidation.

For a later performance in I 893 at Hamburg, for example, hedescribed the first movement as 'Frz'ihli11p, rmd kei11 Ende' ('Spring

Liner note tOr the 1 recording of Mahler's first Symphony by Riccardo Chailly andthe Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. Decca - t - 4 ~ ' - S I J - 2 .


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12 2 SCRL'Tl:-IY

von

GlAVMAinER.--- ~ ...__Cover of the tlrst edition of Mahler's Symphony No. T ( TS9X)

SYMPHO:-IY :-10. r: 'THE MOST SPO:-ITAKEOUS 12 3

back to the ashes of a disappointed love represents some of themost original, provocative, prophetic and calculatedly bizarre musicMahler \Vas ever to unleash. Small wonder that his early audiencesand players were disconcerted by it.

After the shock of the parody funeral march, a further andimmediate shock \Vas in store tor audiences: a triple j(me on thecymbal - struck with wooden drumsticks - and then a piercingdissonance - 'a horrii)ing scream', as Mahler described it, \vhichinitiates an outburst of stormy, agitated, despairing F minor music.Th e audience at the Budapest premiere was duly scandalized; i t \Vasreliably reported, indeed, that the cymbal crash caused one lady toadd to the clatter by dropping her handbag.

Th e finale, however, for all the unconstrained violence of itsrhetoric, is brilliantly organized, while at the same time making theimpression of an exceptional freedom of torm and feeling. Whatwent unrecognized by the \vork's first audiences was the link withthe tlrst movement and its prophetic development section. It is precisely at the point when the development of the first movementanticipates the finale that the music significantly asserts F minor,the very tonality that is to emerge so powerfully in the finale, to beovercome, eventually, bu t only after prolonged struggle and conflict, by a D major that carries all betore it. F minor it \Vas in whichMahler, in three unforgettable bars, brings the funeral-march songand the entire Geselleu cvcle - to an end.

Ho w the music has spoken to us determines how \Ve 'read' thatcold unmitigated F minor: does the hero dream - or die? What iscertain, hmvever, is that for Mahler it \Vas a tonality symbolic ofhis hero's unhappy end, his tragic fate. Hence the re-emergence ofF minor in the finale of the symphony and the important dramaticrole allotted to it.

Yet more fascinating, what Mahler himself is recorded as havingsaid about the finale contlrms, I believe, the association ofF minorand death, no less:

A horrif)ing scream opens the final movement, in which we nmvsee our hero altogether abandoned, with all the sorrows of thisworld, to the most terrible of battles. Again and again he gets


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knocked on the head . . . by Fate whenever he appears to pull himself out of it and become its master. Only in death [my italics] atl:erhe has overcome himself (and the wonderful reminiscence of hisearliest youth [another Proust-like recovery of the past?] hasbrought back with it the themes of the first movement) does heachieve the victory (magnificent victory chorale!).Th e 'victory chorale' materializes, along with the final, irre

sistible affirmation of D, as an exultant transformation of the veryopening bars of the symphony, in which the slo\v sequence offalling fourths first appears in the woodv.r:ind. Thus the slow introduction to the first movement and the chorale in the last satisfYinglybind together the entire work in logical evolution, uniting the\vork's beginning and its end, a triumphant end, but in the light ofMahler's O\Vn words, no t altogether free of ambiguity. Perhaps it isonly in the ensuing Second Symphony, \vhere the narrative of thepreceding symphony is resumed, and specifically in the Resurrection celebrated in its choral finale, that Mahler's hero achievesthe ultimate transcendence of death that may have eluded him inthe First.

TMahler's Hungarian Glissando

1991

When I \vas in Budapest at the end of last year I passed by thesplendid Vigado, facing the Promenade along \vhich residents andtourists stroll to enjoy a magnificent view of Buda, across theDanube.

Th e Vigado was built bet\veen I 859 and I 864 in \Vhat the guidebooks tell us \vas a 'Hungarian Romantic style'; and it \Vas there, inthe concert hall (Redoutensaal) that Mahler's First Symphony wasfirst performed on 20 November I 8 89, the composer conducting.At the time, Mahler was Director of the Royal Budapest Opera, apost to which he had been appointed a year earlier, in a countrywhich, he exclaimed, \viii probably become my new homeland!'

Naturally enough, as I sauntered along, the symphony began tounroll in my mind like some accompanying soundtrack. More particularly, and perhaps stimulated by the overt attempt at somethingspecifically Hungarian by the architect of the Vigado, Frigyes Feszl,a few bars from the slmv movement insistently returned, demanding my attention.

Th e bars that haunted me \Vere bars 58 and 59 of the slo\vmovement, the famous funeral march - A Ia ponzpes _(lmebres, as itwas first described in the I 889 programme. I reproduce the barsoverleaf; it which it is easy to recognize the brief but arresting eventthey embody: in particular, a glissando for the strings \vhich thecomposer clearly intended us not to miss.

Th e exaggerated dynamics, which accelerate from pp to f. f andback top again- the dynamic high point coinciding \Vith the peakof the glissando - and the very intervention of the strings

Probrramme note written fOr a London perfOrmance of the F i r ~ t Symphony by theVienna Philharmonic Orchestra under Claudio Abbado scheduled for 1H Februarv 1991bur cancelled due to the First GulfVlar: f i r ~ t published in DMC\'. pp. r;s-So. It a-ppearshere in a signitlcamly revised form.

Documents

Mitchell, Mahler's Symphony No. 1 (Discovering Mahler 2007)