MAHLER’ S TITAN
a Mahler clique) applauded warmly. For in what was probably the most remarkable and daring first symphony ever written( only Berlioz’ s Symphonie fantastique can match its shock value), Mahler revealed himself as fully and radically himself, and audiences simply were not ready for that.
Strangely, Mahler had expected an easy success. As he later told his friend Natalie Bauer-Lechner:“ Naively, I imagined it would be child’ s play for performers and listeners, and would have such immediate appeal that I should be able to live on the profits and go on composing.” Yet he was also fully aware of the originality of his artistic vision. Of his first two symphonies he wrote:“ My whole life is contained in them: I have set down in them my experience and suffering … to anyone who knows how to listen, my whole life will become clear.”
When Mahler was composing this work, he would have dearly loved to have been able“ to live on the profits,” for he was leading a rather precarious existence. There were no summers off or peaceful cottages deep in the woods for him then, and any composing he accomplished had to be done in odd hours, often late at night. He jumped rapidly from one opera house to another, as assistant and eventually conductor. Symphony No. 1 was composed during the winter of 1887 – 1888 in moments stolen from his work as co-conductor of the Leipzig Stadttheater; by May, he had been forced to resign. In September, he signed a contract with the Royal Opera House in Budapest, but that too lasted little more than a year.
The symphony the Budapest audience heard was different from the one we hear today. Already an innovator in matters of symphonic form, Mahler had originally created a five-movement work, including a slow movement,“ Blumine,” that he eventually tossed out. He called it a“ Symphonic Poem.” The subtitle“ Titan,” after a novel by Jean Paul Richter, was later added, then dropped as Mahler grew uneasy with having non-musical programs attached to his symphonies. Unsatisfied, he returned many times to revise this work: reducing it to the conventional four movements and refining its orchestration. The version we hear now is his last word from 1906.
Mahler admitted the work was inspired by a passionate love:“ The symphony begins where the love affair ends; it is based on the affair which preceded the symphony in the emotional life of the composer.” It also incorporated themes from the composer’ s early song cycle, Songs of a Wayfarer, written in 1884.
Mahler marked the slow introduction to the first movement“ Wie ein Naturlaut”—“ like a sound of nature.” He compared it to life awakening on a beautiful spring morning. A quiet pedal on A, stretching from highest violins to lowest basses, hovers expectantly. Gradually, little motives come to life: a pattern of descending notes in various woodwinds, a military fanfare on the clarinets( Mahler grew up in an army garrison town), woodwind bird calls. Then the tempo accelerates, the key solidifies on D major, and we hear in the cellos the jaunty walking theme of the second song of the Wayfarer cycle, in which the disappointed lover strides out into the countryside to drown his grief in nature’ s beauty. Notice how parts of the theme are tossed chamber-music style from instrument to instrument; this is a Mahler trademark you will hear throughout the work. Later, the walking song returns and gradually builds to a big climax, the only loud moment in this subtle movement. En route to this climax, listen for a series of heavily accented, downward swoops in the violins; this anguished music will return much later in the symphony’ s finale.
The second movement is a robust peasant ländler dance based on the composer’ s 1880 song,“ Hans und Grethe,” and likely inspired by his rural Bohemian childhood. The clattering sounds are the violas and cellos striking the strings with the wooden part of their bows. The middle section is very sentimental, even a little boozy, with lurching glissandos for the strings and some tipsy dissonant harmonies for the woodwinds.
The funeral-march third movement in D minor is what really outraged Mahler’ s first audiences, for it mixes tragedy and levity,“ vulgar” music with“ serious” symphonic themes in a schizophrenic manner unique to this composer. The stifled sound of a muted solo bass lugubriously introduces the German children’ s song“ Brüder Martin”( better known to us as“ Frère Jacques”) as a funeral dirge, which spreads solemnly in canon through the orchestra. Then Mahler abruptly launches an incongruous episode of up-tempo popular music, circa 1880, mingling traces of klezmer with the schmaltz of a Hungarian gypsy cafe. And then amid all this craziness, he offers up a lyrical section of great peace and loveliness, using the melody of the last of the Wayfarer songs, in which the unhappy lover finds solace under a linden tree.
“ The cry of a wounded heart”( Mahler’ s description) assaults us in the screaming, violently dissonant opening of the finale. Hysteria reigns for many moments, only to yield unexpectedly to peace: one of Mahler’ s most beautiful spun-out melodies shared between the cellos and violins. The frenzy returns, but trumpet fanfares hint of triumph to come. But first we return to the slow morning music with which the symphony began. In a final struggle, the heavy downward-swooping violin motive from that movement finds resolution in the trumpet victory theme. Following Mahler’ s instructions, the seven horn players rise to their feet and play“ as if to drown out the entire orchestra” in one of the most thrilling conclusions in the symphonic repertoire.
Instrumentation: Four flutes including two piccolos, four oboes including English horn, three bassoons including contrabassoon, seven horns, four trumpets, three trombones, tuba, two timpani, percussion harp and strings.
Notes by Janet E. Bedell, © 2018
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