Overture Magazine - 2018-19 Season FINAL_BSO_Overture_May_June | Page 28

MAHLER SYMPHONY NO. 9
I have never known till now.” To Walter:
“I see everything in such a new light.…
How foolish it is to allow oneself to be
submerged by the brutal vortex of life; to
be untrue even for a short hour to one’s
self and to the highest things above us.…
Strange! when I hear music—even when
I am conducting—I hear quite specific
answers to all my questions—and am
completely clear and certain. Or rather,
I feel quite distinctly that they are not
questions at all.”
These words strongly contradict the
Ninth’s reputation as Mahler’s sorrowful
farewell to life. This idea comes mostly
from its last movement: a long, elegiac
Adagio that seems to leave Earth
regretfully behind. But most of this
80-minute work is a vigorous struggle
between the composer’s passion for life
and the specter of death. A secondary
theme is the battle between pursuing
false values (symbolized by movements
two and three) and embracing what
makes life truly worth living.
Listening to Mahler’s Ninth
Many commentators have hailed the
epic first movement as the composer’s
greatest achievement. It is a nearly
30-minute battle between the joy of living
(represented by the key of D major) and
the fear of death (the key of D minor).
The music begins with odd, hesitant
rhythms and a tolling harp—motives that
will permeate the movement. Leonard
Bernstein suggested these rhythms
reflected the irregular heartbeat Mahler
was so painfully conscious of whenever
he exerted himself. Violins then begin
singing a tender, yearning lullaby in
D major, which seems to embody
Mahler’s love for life. Notice also a
downward-sighing two-note motive:
Mahler called this “Farewell,” and it was
inspired by a similar motive in Beethoven’s
“Les Adieux” Piano Sonata.
But soon the sweetness of life is
assaulted by louder, tormented music in
D minor: the threat of death. The music
rises to the first of the movement’s
big climaxes before the now troubled
life theme can reassert itself. All this
material is presented and developed
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in a rich counterpoint of independent
instrumental lines; elaborate
counterpoint will fill the Ninth.
We will hear four alternating cycles
of these opposing musical worlds. Each
assault becomes progressively longer, faster,
louder and more brutal in its climax. From
the final climax, the life theme emerges
staggering and badly wounded. Then,
the music fragments and fades away with
the two-note farewell in the winds and a
solitary violin whispering the life theme.
After such sublime music, the second
movement comes as a rude shock. Mahler
scholar Donald Mitchell stresses that both
of the Ninth’s middle movements are
meant to be satirical — the second in a
naive, rustic way and the third movement
using the utmost musical sophistication.
It begins rather innocently as a rustic
Austrian ländler dance for woodwind
band and strings, which Mahler asks to
be played “rather clumsily and coarsely.”
The first movement’s descending farewell
motive is very prominent here —now
sounding rather mindless. In a faster
tempo, an aggressive, stomping waltz with
vulgar brass outbursts barges in. Yet a third
dance follows: an extremely sentimental
ländler featuring warm horns and afflicted
with a bad case of the trills. The eventual
return of the opening dance leads to a
hectic combination of all three. Ultimately,
the first dance, despite many attempts, is
unable to re-start itself, and the music again
fades into little fragments.
The remarkable third movement is
intense, concentrated music with elaborate
counterpoint that shows Mahler’s
devotion to Bach, while its unhinged
tonality and dissonance point ahead into
the 20 th century. Marked “very defiantly,”
it sounds like a wild march built out of
the little melodic fragments we hear in
its belligerent opening measures. The
composer emphasizes the shrill cries of
high woodwinds. A contrasting section is
a littler milder, as the violins in their lower
range present a jaunty, football half-time
theme. As the first march returns and the
counterpoint grows more hectic, all this
resembles a sound portrait of Mahler’s
frenetic existence in New York. Suddenly,
the hurly-burly is arrested by a cymbal
crash, and we hear a radiantly uplifting
passage as solo trumpet and strings
sing a marvelous transformation of the
previously wild ideas. Significantly, the
key is again the “life” key of D major. But
the frantic march returns, whirling faster
and faster.
Mahler frequently closed a symphony
in a different key from the one in which
it began: a strategy known as “progressive
tonality.” After all the pain and struggle
that has taken place, the original key of
D major seems no longer attainable, and so
Mahler slips downward to D-flat major for
his great Adagio finale. The violins cry out
a unison plea for mercy, and then the full
string section pours out a noble, consoling
chorale, richly harmonized. Twice, a
ghostly bassoon interrupts, eventually
transforming the chorale into plaintive,
weeping music featuring solo viola and
violin. The chorale resumes, becoming
heavier and riddled with dissonance.
Suddenly, the key shifts, and we hear
ethereal, bucolic music for English horn,
flute and other woodwinds over the tolling
harp from the first movement; it is the
loveliest of Mahler’s dreams of a rural idyll.
Again, the chorale returns and reaches a
great climax, topped by tragic brass.
With this, the Ninth’s last struggle
is over, and the music begins to fade
peacefully, becoming slower, almost
pulseless, and several times actually
stopping altogether. Near the close, violins
sing a beautiful, yearning melody arcing
upward. This is a quotation from Mahler’s
earlier Kindertotenlieder (“Songs of the
Death of Children”); its words speak of
the sunshine on the heights where the
dead children dwell. Mahler biographer
Michael Kennedy suggests this is a fleeting
memorial to Mahler’s little daughter Maria.
On this tender, consoling thought, the
Ninth closes in peaceful acceptance.
Instrumentation: Four flutes, piccolo, four
oboes including English horn, three clarinets,
bass clarinet, E-flat clarinet, four bassoons
including contrabassoon, four horns, three
trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani,
percussion, two harps and strings.
Notes by Janet E. Bedell, © 2019