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Introduction | Chronology | Filmography

SYMPHONY NO. 5

Composition

During the night of 24/25 February 1901, Mahler almost died from an intestinal haemorrhage. The doctors told him the following morning that he would indeed have died if they had not treated him promptly. This no doubt explains the almost exclusively funereal and despairing character of the music he composed in the ensuing summer months—four Rückert-Lieder, three Kindertotenlieder, and the first movements of the Fifth Symphony. The only exception was the movement he composed first of all, the Scherzo, which can be considered to be another 'Dankgesang eines Genesenen' (Song of thanks of one restored to health), like the Largo in Beethoven's 15th Quartet. It does indeed reflect one of Mahler's rare moments of optimism and breathes happiness and joie de vivre throughout. On the other hand, the first two movements could not be more sombre and desperate, and everything seems to indicate that Mahler at least sketched them out during that same summer. The following year Mahler completed the Symphony with a last 'part' comprising the celebrated Adagietto and the Rondo Finale. He thus chose a structure for the Fifth which he was to use again with only slight differences for his Seventh Symphony. But he would never again repeat what he did here, making the Scherzo the nucleus, the true centre of the work. Nor did he ever compose another Scherzo as vast, complex and polyphonic as this one.

When Mahler returned to Maiernigg at the end of June 1902, he was starting a new life. He was accompanied by his young and radiant wife. Henceforth Alma was to take his sister Justi's place as mistress of the house. Alma was musical, she composed, she played the piano well, and was soon to put her musical training to good use, helping her husband by copying the score of the new symphony. Mahler, enclosed in his Häuschen, his studio hidden in the midst of the forest, usually came down only late in the morning to have a swim in the lake before lunch. He did not keep his wife informed of the progress of his creative work but composed in secret for her a song, 'Liebst du um Schönheit', which is one of the most beautiful declarations of love ever written in music.

On 24 August, three days before returning to Vienna, Mahler wrote to two of his friends to tell them he had completed his work. And now was the time to share with Alma his joy in a completed work. 'Almost ceremoniously' he took her by the arm and led her up to the Häuschen, where he played through the entire symphony on the piano. Alma said she was impressed by the work as a whole but nevertheless criticised the final apotheosis, the brass chorale that she found 'churchlike and uninteresting'. Mahler reminded her of Bruckner and his chorale apotheoses but refrained from revealing to her all the ambiguity of his own chorale, which reproduces note for note one of the melodic fragments thrown off by the clarinet in the first bars of the Rondo.

During the winter, as was his custom, Mahler worked on the details of his score. The final copy was not completed until the autumn of 1903 after his wife had finished hers. But the story of the Fifth had only just begun. True, one of the great German publishing houses, C.F. Peters, immediately offered to publish the symphony, something quite new in Mahler's career as a composer. And the director of the celebrated Gürzenich Konzerte in Cologne decided to make the première of the Fifth the outstanding event of the 1904/5 season. Unfortunately, as soon as the first reading rehearsal with the Vienna Philharmonic was held in September 1904, a month before the performance was due to take place, Mahler began to have doubts about his instrumentation. Alma had confirmed his doubts by telling him: 'But what you've written is a symphony for percussion instruments!' And it was true that for the first time the absolute mastery he had acquired in orchestration had proved inadequate to cope with the development of his style, the problem now being to establish clarity within a polyphonic texture more closely woven than ever before. And so the interminable story of the various versions of the Fifth began. Bruno Walter was later to declare that the advance payment made by Peters to Mahler was entirely spent on paying for the endless stream of revisions and corrections to the score already in print. The last version dates from 1909, but Peters never published it, in spite of the promise made to Mahler shortly before his death. It got into print only in 1964. In fact the director of the firm, Henri Hinrichsen, was completely discouraged by the setbacks the work encountered and the sums of money it had cost him. He even told Arnold Schoenberg that he planned to melt down the plates. Schoenberg's answer is known because it took the form of a long article or lecture on Mahler he wrote in 1912.

The first performance of the Fifth thus took place in Cologne on 18 October 1904. Two years after his first triumph as a composer, with the Third Symphony in 1902, Mahler had at last established his reputation in Germany. And yet neither the public nor the critics seemed prepared to follow him in the new direction his music was now taking. There was much booing mingled with the applause, and the next day the press delivered a harsh verdict. One year later, Robert Hirschfeld, the most outspoken and anti-Mahlerian of the Vienna critics, called Mahler 'the Meyerbeer of the Symphony' after the Vienna première. He admitted that there had been loud applause in the hall but blamed it on the bad taste of the Viennese who, not content with contemplating the 'freaks of nature' now only had ears for 'freaks of the mind'.

A new Style

Nowadays we see things very differently, of course. Everything in the Fifth seems to be the work of a composer who was conscious of his maturity and powers but who nevertheless felt a profound urge to renew himself. Richard Specht saw in the Fifth a first attempt to 'reshape (gestalten) the world starting from the individual self'. It was a trend towards abstraction, the abandonment of any references to the past (the Knaben Wunderhorn), childhood or paradise (the Fourth), or the great philosophico-religious themes (the Second), or even pantheism (the Third), and also an attempt to find new orchestral language; an enrichment of the palette of sounds; a denser, more coherent and harmonious symphonic form (frequent recurrences of themes, interdependence of the first and second movements forming Part I and of the fourth and fifth movements forming Part III of the Symphony). However, there are still clear thematic links between the Fifth and the Lieder Mahler composed during the same period. With the Fifth Mailer took a decisive step towards a purely orchestral art that he was to practise until the end of his short life, except for the Eighth and the Lied von der Erde.

Analysis

Part I

1. Im gemessenen Schritt. Streng. Wie ein Kondukt (At a measured pace. Sternly. Like a funeral cortège.), 2/2, C-sharp minor. Like the Second Symphony nine years earlier, the Fifth begins with an epic Funeral March. The symphonic hero is 'laid to rest'. But this time the imaginary onlooker (or symphonic commentator, perhaps) does not revolt against fate but faces it with noble and lofty resignation. The feeling expressed—deep, impersonal mourning—is interrupted only by the outburst of the first contrasting episode and the elegiac sweetness of the second. The absence of any real conflict can be seen as the cause—or the consequence of the abandonment of the sonata form. The thematic material continually develops from an ensemble of cells according to a procedure characteristic of Mahlerian composition at this time. Mahler uses progressive tonality throughout: the work begins in C-sharp minor and finishes in D major. The initial Funeral March contains two episodes, which one hesitates to call 'Trios', though they are both clearly intended to provide the expected contrast. Both use themes and motives derived from previous material. The trumpet signal that establishes from the start the character of the movement is a memory from Mahler's childhood, when he heard the distant bugle-calls from the Iglau barracks and watched the military band marching past his parents' house. The signal returns several times like a refrain to link the various episodes or couplets of the March. The real theme (on violins and cellos) belongs to the same world as that of the last Wunderhorn-Lied, Der Tamboursg'sell, composed during the same summer of 1901. After its second exposition (violins and woodwinds), it is followed by a new 'consolatory' element (A-flat) in sixths, which has the same dotted rhythm.

In the first of the Trios (Plötzlich schneller. Leidenschaftlich. Wild [Suddenly faster. Passionate. Savage], B-flat minor), grief, until now restrained, bursts into rapid, feverish motifs in quavers, supported by syncopated chords on the horns. The reprise of the march theme and the 'consolation' episode restores calm and leads to the second 'Trio'. Its plaintive gentleness contrasts as much as it can with the outburst of the preceding trio, and yet the thematic substance consists only of variants of earlier motifs. Particularly noteworthy is the effect Mahler obtains in the last bars by a new method, the flute echoing the ascending arpeggio of the trumpet, as if the March were fading away into the distance.

2. Stürmisch bewegt. Mit grosser Vehemenz (Tempestuously. With great vehemence), Alla breve, A minor. Mahler's letters to his publisher, C.F. Peters, show that he considered this Allegro in sonata form to be the real first movement of the symphony. The beginning of the exposition does not contain a real theme but only a short ostinato on the basses, followed by an agitated motif in ascending and descending scales. The true first subject only appears later, in the first violins. As for the second theme (Bedeutend langsamer [Significantly slower]), it is an almost literal quotation from the second 'Trio' in the opening March. The exposition is followed by a broad Durchführung in which anguish and rage rise to paroxysms rarely surpassed in the symphonic repertoire. Such is the violence of the feelings unleashed here—revolt, frenzied despair—that one is not surprised when the following reprise makes nonsense of the classical criteria. Just when one expects the return to the first subject, it is the second that reappears in E minor. However, it quickly takes over the main motifs of the first, so that the two subjects, previously so strongly contrasted, end up merging together. At the end of the reprise the ascending 'optimistic' elements seem to gain the upper hand. The brasses strike up a hymn of triumph in chorale form. But this victory is short-lived, and the movement ends in gloom, anguish and mystery. 'The old tempest dies away to an echoing whimper', as Theodor Adorno so aptly put it.

Part II

Scherzo: Kräftig, nicht zu schnell [Vigorously, not too fast], 3/4, D major. The change in tone is abrupt between the despair of the Allegro and the radiant good humour of the Scherzo. This is Mahler's longest movement (819 bars) and one of the only movements in which there is no element that could be interpreted as ironic or parodic. Everything about this Scherzo is surprising, not only its gigantic proportions but also its thematic elaboration, which is as complex as that of a sonata movement. The first horn 'obligato', which plays a solo role in most of the movement, states the main subject of the Ländler—a highly stylized Ländler of course, since its rhythm is contradicted by a counter and asymmetrical melody that also runs counter to the ternary rhythm. The secondary episode is a fugato in quavers, whose presence in a dance movement is, to say the least, unusual. Nevertheless, it is to play an essential role in the developments to come.

The gracefully hesitating rhythm of the first Trio (etwas ruhiger, [somewhat calmer]) is more suggestive of a city dweller's waltz than a countryman's Ländler. This first Trio is separated from the second by a reprise of the Scherzo and a first development of the fugato episode. The sound of the horns, romantic instruments par excellence, defines the mood of the second Trio that carries us from the dance floor to the enchanted world of nature. Later, however, the various rhythmic and melodic elements of the three different episodes are closely intertwined and developed, often simultaneously. They become inextricably mixed in the final coda. The Viennese waltz has just reached its climax when it is interrupted with almost Beethovenian abruptness by a double return of the initial motif of the Scherzo.

Part III

1. Adagietto. Sehr langsam [very slow], 4/4, F major. After such a display of joie de vivre it would have been inconceivable to end the symphony in a tragic mood, and even more so to follow the Scherzo immediately with another movement of the same character. A contrast had to be provided, and that is the principal raison d'être for the celebrated Adagietto, a 'song without words' played on the strings and discreetly accompanied by the harp. The central episode develops and amplifies the initial theme, passing through a wide range of different keys before being restated in a much modified form. The mood is one of gentle meditation, as in the Lied Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen which is so close in thematic content. Should this little movement be taken as another one of Mahler's messages of love for Alma, as Willem Mengelberg has claimed? The testimony of a conductor who was Mahler's close friend and devoted admirers cannot be easily dismissed, yet one wonders why Alma who, in later life, took pride in her 'trophes', in the declarations of love she had received from the four great men in her life, never mentioned the Adagietto among them.

Be that as it may, those who would condemn the immediate appeal of this gentle rêverie as too facile would be well advised to examine the score and note its exquisite craftsmanship; to note for example the way in which Mahler creates an effect of weightlessness by omitting the bass note of the chord, i.e. the tonic, in the first two bars; or the effect of suspension of time obtained at the end of the movement by retardations in each melodic line, as if each note were reluctant to take its place within the perfect chord. Six years later this was exactly the device Mahler was to use again to suggest eternity at the end of the Lied von der Erde.

2. Rondo Finale: Allegro giocoso, 2/2, D major. The introduction on the woodwinds unfolds like a carefree, humourous improvisation. But the various motifs, seemingly tossed out by chance, all play an essential role in later developments. One of them is borrowed literally from a Wunderhorn Lied of 1896, Lob des hohen Verstandes (In praise of high intelligence), a satirical account of a singing contest between a cuckoo and a nightingale at the end of which the donkey, the highly expert judge, condemns, Beckmesser-like, the nightingale's song as too complicated and awards the prize to the cuckoo. Mahler's original title for this Lied was: 'In praise of criticism'. In quoting it here, he was perhaps thinking of the 'infernal judges' of the press who would be sure, like the donkey, to condemn the symphony. Such a faithful self-quotation could hardly have been unintentional.

The first subject of the Rondo proper descends directly from that of the Finale of Beethoven's Second Symphony. It is Beethoven too who inspired the general form—half sonata, half rondo—and Mahler also took from him the idea of introducing fugal elements. The first of these fugatos comes immediately after the exposition of the main theme. As counter-subject Mahler uses the motif that the clarinet had so casually thrown off in the introduction. The Wunderhorn theme is then used as material for a new grazioso episode. But this peters out after a few bars and is taken over by a reprise of the first subject, complete with its introductory divertissement. The following episode, this time developed at length, combines several familiar motifs but introduces a new element, grazioso, on the strings, which is soon discovered to be a complete, varied restatement, in quick tempo, of the central development of the Adagietto! The second re-exposition of the main section (rhythmically varied this time) is followed by another fugato still more developed than the previous one and embellished with echoes of the Adagietto. After a false reprise of the main subject (in A-flat, on the low strings), the third development, based on the melody of the Adagietto, gradually gathers speed and ends in whirling scales, leading to the brass chorale to which Alma had objected in 1902. It is partly related to the one in the second movement but is in fact based on the carefree little melody played by the clarinet in the Introduction, which now symbolises the final victory of the forces of life and creation. This hymn of victory only confirms the feeling of euphoria developed from the start by the abundance of themes and motifs, a magic kaleidoscope of sounds in which melodic fragments and cells keep recurring, always familiar and recognisable as themselves, and yet always new.

Theodor Adorno rightly observes that the bars that follow the chorale and bring the movement to a close have a suggestion of parody and distortion about them, a 'whiff of sulphur'. In this, his first brilliant Finale, Mahler seems to be attempting to revive the vigour of classical forms and techniques. Yet a feeling of uneasiness, a slight flavour of irony shows through the shining surface. In Die Meistersinger, Wagner had already demonstrated how a 'learned' style could lend itself to caricature, how narrow the margin is between the pedant and the clown. Does this busy Rondo perhaps suggest the bustle of everyday life as a destructive force for the artist whom it diverts from his creative mission?

Obviously, whichever way one interprets it, the final paean of triumph at the end of the Fifth is ambiguous. Could it have been otherwise with a composer who never ceased to express the uncertainty and doubt, the anguish, the ambiguity that marked his epoch and that still hangs over ours? This ambiguity is indeed one of the main subterranean streams that feed his art, something that gives it its inexhaustible richness and perpetual relevance. If Mahler had concluded with a simple, straightforward apotheosis, he would not be challenging us as he never ceases to do. This is no doubt why his music has lost none of its fascination, its capacity to question, stimulate and surprise.