Symphony No. 9
Gustav Mahler (1860-1911)
Andante comodo; Im Tempo eines gemächlichen Ländlers. Etwas täppisch und sehr derb;
Rondo-Burleske: Allegro assai. Sehr trotzig; Adagio. Sehr langsam und noch zurückhaltend
The numerous layers of mythology, psychological speculation and invention that wrap Gustav Mahler’s final years stem from a confluence of facts and occurrences during the first decade of the 20th century. Mahler harboured morbid thoughts causing him mental and spiritual anguish, his obsession with the death of children being tragically magnified by the death of his own daughter, Maria, aged five, in 1907. Soon after, he learned of his own incurable heart abnormality. This led to ruminations on life and death and a race to complete three major compositions: Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth), the Ninth Symphony and the Tenth Symphony, the last of which he failed to finish. None was performed prior to his death in 1911. Meanwhile, Alma, the wife he adored, had begun an affair with the architect Walther Gropius, whom she later married. The Mahlers agreed to stay together. The sparks that once flew between them still kindled at times despite Alma’s continued association with Gropius. To understand and possibly alleviate this turmoil, Mahler visited Sigmund Freud for a consultation. This background to his final years provides ample fuel for ingenious guesswork and commentary.
Suggestions that one or another movement of his Ninth Symphony almost literally ‘describes’ Mahler’s angst, despair, joy, love or anything else can only be speculative because of scant supporting evidence. This symphony might seem to suggest heightened emotion, more so than any other by Mahler, perhaps. The moments of exuberance or aggression are indeed astonishing and riveting, but they are not precise messages where music has been substituted for words. Because he is not saying anything specific, we cannot claim ‘In this passage Mahler is articulating x or y’. On the other hand, he once declared that ‘Anyone who knows my music, knows me.’ We know W.A. Mozart because we know his music, which is brimful of inspired invention, perfect control and exquisite proportion, but no specific verbal statement can be extracted from any of it. The same is true of Mahler and his music.
Part of the mythology is engendered by the number nine. After Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ninth and last Symphony, the ‘Choral’, many composers have regarded the number with irrational awe, fearing a ‘ninth symphony’ would be their last. This was true of Franz Schubert, Antonín Dvořák and Anton Bruckner, who failed to finish his ninth in 1896, the year he died. Several of Mahler’s symphonies include voices, so it is reasonable to suggest that he might have named Das Lied von der Erde ‘Symphony No. 9’. Two contradictory facts emerge. Mahler entitled his Das Lied von der Erde as ‘A symphony for tenor, alto (or baritone) and orchestra’, but he also named his instrumental work ‘Symphony No. 9’, so both are symphonies, but only one is numbered. Mahler’s use of the title ‘Ninth Symphony’ for the orchestral work suggests he overcame superstitions about numbers. (Other composers who failed to progress beyond their ninth symphony include Ralph Vaughan Williams and Malcolm Arnold.)
It has been suggested that Mahler’s entire symphonic oeuvre forms one gigantic symphonic event or statement, comparable to Richard Wagner’s ‘Ring’ Cycle. By the end, the musical impact is incalculable. Arnold Schoenberg wrote:
…the composer hardly speaks as an individual any longer. It almost seems as though this work must have a concealed author who uses Mahler merely as his spokesman, as his mouthpiece.
Although the Tenth Symphony is 90 minutes long, it never meanders. The canvas is huge and, like certain landscapes by visual artists, it is packed with incident and drama. The outer movements are slow, the central movements more rapid. This unusual arrangement seems to echo that of Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony, the Pathetique, but further comparisons must be offered with caution, bearing in mind Mahler’s verdict on Tchaikovsky’s Sixth: ‘…a shallow, superficial … work, no better than salon music...’. At many points, in all four movements, Mahler either quotes some of his earlier works directly or alludes to them through musical hints. Such references can have no meaning for listeners who are unfamiliar with the original sources, so we conclude that Mahler’s self-quotation was something of a private matter. On the other hand, the four movements contain musical allusions to each other which contribute towards cohesion across the work as a whole. Commentators have suggested that the symphony marks not only its composer’s preoccupation with his impending death but with the ‘death of tonality’ as well. The use of discord and the increasingly frequent deviations from the familiar major and minor scales reveal Mahler’s awareness of the disintegration of a central pillar of western music. Certainly, Schoenberg, Anton Webern and others, seized upon this aspect of the symphony to judge it a prophetic work, regarding it as a John the Baptist-like precursor to their own Messianic atonal compositions.
The first movement is indeed built on a discord, but so discreetly and persuasively, the listener hardly notices. It is around half an hour in length – longer than any entire symphony by Josef Haydn. We might think that such a massive musical essay requires several memorable and hummable tunes to sustain our interest. Several? No. Hummable? Sort of. Tunes? Hardly. Memorable? Definitely! And brilliantly so because Mahler revisits the principles that govern the structure of symphonies by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Johannes Brahms. His ‘tunes’ are motifs, plainly stated and rich in potential for musical metamorphosis and development. Among the motifs that emerge from the mist is one consisting of two notes, the second a single step below the first. This tiny musical idea becomes seminal to the whole movement. Two other pithy musical ideas appear later and all three are worked in a wide variety of ways, drawing upon a magnificent dynamic range from the almost inaudible to the sensationally noisy, and on a tonality stretching from rich romanticism to harsh discord verging on atonality, and magically ingenious orchestration. Even if we fail to follow the musical argument all through, we sense that Mahler is almost rescuing symphonic form from the diluting sweetness of extended romantic melody as found in the symphonies of Tchaikovsky and Serge Rachmaninov. He seems to be returning it to a pedestal of seriousness, compelling us to listen and to respond with our mind as well as our heart. The American critic, Michael Steinberg wrote, ‘The Ninth’s first movement is the high point of Mahler’s own practice in the deep and subtle art of transition, of organic expansion, of continuous variation.’
The second movement, half the length of the first, is essentially a Ländler, used by Mahler in several of his symphonies, also by Bruckner and even Dmitri Shostakovich at times. An antecedent of the waltz, the Ländler is a rustic Austrian dance characterised by a heavy peasant-like tread within a clear pattern of three beats. In Mahler’s hands it can take on a sinister character through frequent use of the unexpected. We think the tune will go this way. Oops, no it doesn’t! With brazen discords, bizarre harmony and entertaining quirks of orchestration, it leads us through a labyrinth of varying tempi and tonalities. In plainer language, the speeds stretch from a lumbering clog-dance to a nimble yet devilish swirl of skirts and cloaks, of desperate joy and sweaty energy. The tonalities refer to Mahler’s use of keys. Sometimes we are comfortably settled in a familiar ‘major’ mode, almost like a nursery song, at other times the shifts are reminiscent of nightmares: no secure footing; no centre for navigation; no control; we just cling on and hope. Some commentators have suggested that the movement depicts the desperate state of Mahler’s psychology with its changes of mood and direction. One might also or alternatively regard it as a kind of joke akin to a theme park ride, designed to scare, thrill and amuse all at once.
Though a little fanciful, the suggestion that the third movement retells the story of the second in a different way has some traction. The movement is marked Burleske, and as such it plays the fool in an almost frightening manner. Two main themes are presented in turn, the first angular, fugal and restless. The second is more friendly and settled, but pretty soon they are mixed up with each other so we lose track of which is which. The overall impression is one of turmoil, a state close to anarchy yet, underlying everything, is a sense of fun, as might have been discerned in the second movement. Is this another fairground attraction, flinging us around because, for some strange reason, we relish such thrills? It’s not a bad idea to get all the joy you can from this movement because the next takes us into a very different musical world.
The expansive finale is about the same length as the first movement. It is profoundly slow being built on a distinctly recognisable melody with a variety of countermelodies. This melody is recognisable because the first four notes are the same as the hymn, ‘Abide with Me’. However, the astonishing change of harmony beneath the fourth note (‘Me’) prompts a surprise, repeated often enough for it to become the norm. We expect it to recur and indeed it does, always producing a frisson that causes us to question what the movement is about. Again, it is most unlikely that it is ‘about’ anything that can be expressed verbally. We may feel that it sounds like a ‘farewell’ uttered by a profoundly ill composer, yet Mahler was some way into his next symphony before death overtook him, so we should be careful. The final bars, elongated to the maximum degree, are entrusted to the strings alone, exposed like the most intimate chamber music. The symphony seems to leave a musical question hanging in the air, a question that only our inner responses can answer.
Premièred in 1912 under the baton of Bruno Walter, the symphony was neglected outside Vienna for a long time. It was first performed in the UK in 1930, and the USA in 1931. Japan had to wait until 1967 before the citizens of Tokyo could hear a live performance. That the symphony has received so little attention remains a mystery. The performances of Mahler’s other symphonies have been numerous; commentary upon them has been voluminous. The Ninth Symphony seems to come with a Keep off the Grass notice attached. Is it too profound to handle; too precious and intimate to discuss; too mysterious to fathom? More likely, the edifice of speculation around Mahler’s final years has generated its own carapace, and a fragile carapace at that. Maybe it is time to listen with fresh ears: to strip away the speculation and quasi-psychological analysis. After all, Mahler himself appeared to have no obsessions or anxieties about it when he sent the completed score to Bruno Walter: ‘…(this)… is a very satisfactory addition to my little family.’
Gustav Mahler (1860-1911)
Andante comodo; Im Tempo eines gemächlichen Ländlers. Etwas täppisch und sehr derb;
Rondo-Burleske: Allegro assai. Sehr trotzig; Adagio. Sehr langsam und noch zurückhaltend
The numerous layers of mythology, psychological speculation and invention that wrap Gustav Mahler’s final years stem from a confluence of facts and occurrences during the first decade of the 20th century. Mahler harboured morbid thoughts causing him mental and spiritual anguish, his obsession with the death of children being tragically magnified by the death of his own daughter, Maria, aged five, in 1907. Soon after, he learned of his own incurable heart abnormality. This led to ruminations on life and death and a race to complete three major compositions: Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth), the Ninth Symphony and the Tenth Symphony, the last of which he failed to finish. None was performed prior to his death in 1911. Meanwhile, Alma, the wife he adored, had begun an affair with the architect Walther Gropius, whom she later married. The Mahlers agreed to stay together. The sparks that once flew between them still kindled at times despite Alma’s continued association with Gropius. To understand and possibly alleviate this turmoil, Mahler visited Sigmund Freud for a consultation. This background to his final years provides ample fuel for ingenious guesswork and commentary.
Suggestions that one or another movement of his Ninth Symphony almost literally ‘describes’ Mahler’s angst, despair, joy, love or anything else can only be speculative because of scant supporting evidence. This symphony might seem to suggest heightened emotion, more so than any other by Mahler, perhaps. The moments of exuberance or aggression are indeed astonishing and riveting, but they are not precise messages where music has been substituted for words. Because he is not saying anything specific, we cannot claim ‘In this passage Mahler is articulating x or y’. On the other hand, he once declared that ‘Anyone who knows my music, knows me.’ We know W.A. Mozart because we know his music, which is brimful of inspired invention, perfect control and exquisite proportion, but no specific verbal statement can be extracted from any of it. The same is true of Mahler and his music.
Part of the mythology is engendered by the number nine. After Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ninth and last Symphony, the ‘Choral’, many composers have regarded the number with irrational awe, fearing a ‘ninth symphony’ would be their last. This was true of Franz Schubert, Antonín Dvořák and Anton Bruckner, who failed to finish his ninth in 1896, the year he died. Several of Mahler’s symphonies include voices, so it is reasonable to suggest that he might have named Das Lied von der Erde ‘Symphony No. 9’. Two contradictory facts emerge. Mahler entitled his Das Lied von der Erde as ‘A symphony for tenor, alto (or baritone) and orchestra’, but he also named his instrumental work ‘Symphony No. 9’, so both are symphonies, but only one is numbered. Mahler’s use of the title ‘Ninth Symphony’ for the orchestral work suggests he overcame superstitions about numbers. (Other composers who failed to progress beyond their ninth symphony include Ralph Vaughan Williams and Malcolm Arnold.)
It has been suggested that Mahler’s entire symphonic oeuvre forms one gigantic symphonic event or statement, comparable to Richard Wagner’s ‘Ring’ Cycle. By the end, the musical impact is incalculable. Arnold Schoenberg wrote:
…the composer hardly speaks as an individual any longer. It almost seems as though this work must have a concealed author who uses Mahler merely as his spokesman, as his mouthpiece.
Although the Tenth Symphony is 90 minutes long, it never meanders. The canvas is huge and, like certain landscapes by visual artists, it is packed with incident and drama. The outer movements are slow, the central movements more rapid. This unusual arrangement seems to echo that of Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony, the Pathetique, but further comparisons must be offered with caution, bearing in mind Mahler’s verdict on Tchaikovsky’s Sixth: ‘…a shallow, superficial … work, no better than salon music...’. At many points, in all four movements, Mahler either quotes some of his earlier works directly or alludes to them through musical hints. Such references can have no meaning for listeners who are unfamiliar with the original sources, so we conclude that Mahler’s self-quotation was something of a private matter. On the other hand, the four movements contain musical allusions to each other which contribute towards cohesion across the work as a whole. Commentators have suggested that the symphony marks not only its composer’s preoccupation with his impending death but with the ‘death of tonality’ as well. The use of discord and the increasingly frequent deviations from the familiar major and minor scales reveal Mahler’s awareness of the disintegration of a central pillar of western music. Certainly, Schoenberg, Anton Webern and others, seized upon this aspect of the symphony to judge it a prophetic work, regarding it as a John the Baptist-like precursor to their own Messianic atonal compositions.
The first movement is indeed built on a discord, but so discreetly and persuasively, the listener hardly notices. It is around half an hour in length – longer than any entire symphony by Josef Haydn. We might think that such a massive musical essay requires several memorable and hummable tunes to sustain our interest. Several? No. Hummable? Sort of. Tunes? Hardly. Memorable? Definitely! And brilliantly so because Mahler revisits the principles that govern the structure of symphonies by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Johannes Brahms. His ‘tunes’ are motifs, plainly stated and rich in potential for musical metamorphosis and development. Among the motifs that emerge from the mist is one consisting of two notes, the second a single step below the first. This tiny musical idea becomes seminal to the whole movement. Two other pithy musical ideas appear later and all three are worked in a wide variety of ways, drawing upon a magnificent dynamic range from the almost inaudible to the sensationally noisy, and on a tonality stretching from rich romanticism to harsh discord verging on atonality, and magically ingenious orchestration. Even if we fail to follow the musical argument all through, we sense that Mahler is almost rescuing symphonic form from the diluting sweetness of extended romantic melody as found in the symphonies of Tchaikovsky and Serge Rachmaninov. He seems to be returning it to a pedestal of seriousness, compelling us to listen and to respond with our mind as well as our heart. The American critic, Michael Steinberg wrote, ‘The Ninth’s first movement is the high point of Mahler’s own practice in the deep and subtle art of transition, of organic expansion, of continuous variation.’
The second movement, half the length of the first, is essentially a Ländler, used by Mahler in several of his symphonies, also by Bruckner and even Dmitri Shostakovich at times. An antecedent of the waltz, the Ländler is a rustic Austrian dance characterised by a heavy peasant-like tread within a clear pattern of three beats. In Mahler’s hands it can take on a sinister character through frequent use of the unexpected. We think the tune will go this way. Oops, no it doesn’t! With brazen discords, bizarre harmony and entertaining quirks of orchestration, it leads us through a labyrinth of varying tempi and tonalities. In plainer language, the speeds stretch from a lumbering clog-dance to a nimble yet devilish swirl of skirts and cloaks, of desperate joy and sweaty energy. The tonalities refer to Mahler’s use of keys. Sometimes we are comfortably settled in a familiar ‘major’ mode, almost like a nursery song, at other times the shifts are reminiscent of nightmares: no secure footing; no centre for navigation; no control; we just cling on and hope. Some commentators have suggested that the movement depicts the desperate state of Mahler’s psychology with its changes of mood and direction. One might also or alternatively regard it as a kind of joke akin to a theme park ride, designed to scare, thrill and amuse all at once.
Though a little fanciful, the suggestion that the third movement retells the story of the second in a different way has some traction. The movement is marked Burleske, and as such it plays the fool in an almost frightening manner. Two main themes are presented in turn, the first angular, fugal and restless. The second is more friendly and settled, but pretty soon they are mixed up with each other so we lose track of which is which. The overall impression is one of turmoil, a state close to anarchy yet, underlying everything, is a sense of fun, as might have been discerned in the second movement. Is this another fairground attraction, flinging us around because, for some strange reason, we relish such thrills? It’s not a bad idea to get all the joy you can from this movement because the next takes us into a very different musical world.
The expansive finale is about the same length as the first movement. It is profoundly slow being built on a distinctly recognisable melody with a variety of countermelodies. This melody is recognisable because the first four notes are the same as the hymn, ‘Abide with Me’. However, the astonishing change of harmony beneath the fourth note (‘Me’) prompts a surprise, repeated often enough for it to become the norm. We expect it to recur and indeed it does, always producing a frisson that causes us to question what the movement is about. Again, it is most unlikely that it is ‘about’ anything that can be expressed verbally. We may feel that it sounds like a ‘farewell’ uttered by a profoundly ill composer, yet Mahler was some way into his next symphony before death overtook him, so we should be careful. The final bars, elongated to the maximum degree, are entrusted to the strings alone, exposed like the most intimate chamber music. The symphony seems to leave a musical question hanging in the air, a question that only our inner responses can answer.
Premièred in 1912 under the baton of Bruno Walter, the symphony was neglected outside Vienna for a long time. It was first performed in the UK in 1930, and the USA in 1931. Japan had to wait until 1967 before the citizens of Tokyo could hear a live performance. That the symphony has received so little attention remains a mystery. The performances of Mahler’s other symphonies have been numerous; commentary upon them has been voluminous. The Ninth Symphony seems to come with a Keep off the Grass notice attached. Is it too profound to handle; too precious and intimate to discuss; too mysterious to fathom? More likely, the edifice of speculation around Mahler’s final years has generated its own carapace, and a fragile carapace at that. Maybe it is time to listen with fresh ears: to strip away the speculation and quasi-psychological analysis. After all, Mahler himself appeared to have no obsessions or anxieties about it when he sent the completed score to Bruno Walter: ‘…(this)… is a very satisfactory addition to my little family.’