Overture Magazine 2019-20 BSO_Overture_Mar_Apr_final | Page 21

MAHLER SYMPHONY NO. 3
well as other drums and percussion.
Added to this is an alto soloist for the
fourth and fifth movements, as well as
women’s and children’s choirs for the
fifth. And yet during most of the work’s
100 minutes, Mahler uses only a small
portion of his forces, instead presenting
chamber-like groups of instruments with
superb sensitivity for their colors and
expressive qualities. As he wrote: “The
aspect of instrumentation in which I
consider myself ahead of past and present
composers can be summed up in a single
word: clarity. …Each instrument must
be employed only in the right place and
for its own qualities.”
Mahler called the first movement
“the wildest thing I ever wrote.” Its
long D-minor introduction—“Pan
Awakens”—opens unforgettably with the
eight horns blaring out in unison a four-
square theme Mahler called the “Waking
Call.” Sleeping nature begins slowly to stir
with the rumble of drums, a mysterious
swing of major and minor chords that
we’ll hear later in the fourth movement
and a snarling, dissonant motive from
muted trumpets. Soon one of Mahler’s
signature funeral marches lumbers into
action: the deadly weight of Winter. A
solo trombone twice presents a fanfare-
based melody. We also hear an ethereal
lullaby for high flutes over tremolo
violins, plus a tender theme for solo violin
representing the sleeping Pan.
As woodwind-birds call, a much
more festive march approaches, and the
main part of this stretched-out sonata-
form movement begins now in F major.
This is Summer’s march, and it has a
popular, even vulgar cast to it that is a
characteristic feature of Mahler’s music,
with a brassy melody and snare drum
borrowed from military bands.
After a climax with harp glissandos,
the development section opens with the
trombone-solo theme played by horns.
This gradually builds into a frenzied,
dissonant section Mahler labels “The
Mob!” An accelerated march in distant
keys announces the beginning of a battle
between the forces of Summer and
Winter. As defeated Winter marches off
to a snare-drum retreat, the eight horns
return with the opening theme for the
recapitulation. Eventually, the Summer
march dominates, building to a finish
that is “wild” indeed.
The second movement, “What
the flowers of the meadow tell me,”
provides complete contrast. Mahler
loved the flower-filled meadow outside
his composing cottage, and it inspired
this lovely minuet and trio. The middle
trio section features faster, slightly more
intense music with whirling sixteenth
notes and fuller, but still transparent
orchestration. “It is carefree as only flowers
can be,” Mahler wrote. “Everything
hovers in the air with grace and lightness,
like flowers bending on their stems and
being caressed by the wind.”
The third-movement scherzo, “What
the animals of the forest tell me,” is
longer and more emotionally complex.
It begins with a perky, birdlike melody
in the woodwinds, taken from Mahler’s
song “Ablösung in Sommer,” which
mourns the cuckoo who fell to its death
from the tree and was replaced by the
mellifluous nightingale. The music
is a polka with typical slides in the
brass, inspired by Mahler’s Bohemian
childhood. A middle section introduces
a variety of trumpet (traditionally a post
horn, but also commonly played on
flugelhorn) that seems to represent man
as the hunter; it sings a benign and very
nostalgic melody as if from a distance.
The animals react by returning to their
polka, reaching a point of near riot before
the now more distant horn returns,
this time magically answered by high,

divided violins. But all this loveliness
cannot tame the animals, who react with
an amazing orchestral crescendo from
pianissimo to triple forte.
The fourth movement, “What man
tells me,” begins very slowly with an
oscillation in muted cellos and basses, and
the alto soloist gravely intoning the words
of Nietzsche’s “Midnight Song” from Also
sprach Zarathustra. The entire movement
swings between D major and D minor,
representing the two poles of “Jo” and
“Woe”: mankind’s hope vs. his earthly
condition. The cries of the solo oboe
represent Nietzsche’s Bird of Night in this
deeply felt, mystical music.
In the fifth movement, suddenly the
joyous voices of children imitating bells
break in as the women’s chorus launches
a bright, naive chorus taken from the
German poetry collection Mahler loved,
Des Knaben Wunderhorn (“The Child’s
Magic Horn”). Women and children
represent the angels above mankind, and
they offer a message of celestial comfort
and salvation. Midway through, the alto
soloist enters pleading for mercy for her
sins, but the angels tell her not to weep.
Symphony No. 3 ends with a long,
intensely beautiful slow movement,
“What love tells me,” referring to nature’s
highest plane: the divine love of God.
This D-major movement is in the form
of a theme (actually more than one) with
continuous variations. It begins with
strings presenting the first of the themes,
all of which aspire upward toward the
divine. Gradually, instruments are added,
and the movement builds to two climaxes
in which the heavens almost seem to open.
But the greatest climax is saved for the
final moment: a glorious blaze of D major
that brings this monumental symphony to
a cathartic close.
Instrumentation: Four flutes including four
piccolos, four oboes including English horn,
five clarinets including bass clarinet and
two E-flat clarinets, four bassoons including
contrabassoon, eight horns, four trumpets, four
trombones, one tuba, two timpani, percussion,
two harps and strings.
Notes by Janet E. Bedell, © 2020
M A R – A P R 2020 / OV E R T U R E
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