classical music - andante

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SYMPHONY NO. 1

At age 20, Gustav Mahler had only one aim in life: to become a composer. Later he said that the conservative jury that in 1881 had refused to award him the Vienna Beethoven Prize was entirely responsible for the long years he had to spend in the 'prison', the 'hell' of the theatre. 'If you want to compose', he said at the end of his life to the young Alban Berg, 'avoid the theatre at all costs'. But to survive at a time when all he possessed were his gifts and his hopes, what else could a young musician do?

And yet Gustav Mahler was a born composer! Das klagende Lied, the great ballad or cantata for solo voices, chorus and orchestra which he submitted for the famous prize, proved it, in his opinion, at least. But since the 'infernal judges' of his time had decided otherwise, he had to prove his talent in another field. And so, at 20, Mahler threw himself into the profession of orchestral conductor with a seriousness and an ardour bordering on the fanatical. For four years he gave up composing, his activities in the theatre affording him not the slightest respite. He took up the composer's pen again only by the force of an unhappy love affair. Four years earlier, in 1880, a similar experience had driven him to compose Das klagende Lied. It seemed that love alone, and particularly disappointed love, was the stimulus which, at that time, could induce the young Mahler to 'find the way back to my true self' through composing.

Composition

In 1884 the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen were the outcome of his infatuation with a soprano at the Kassel Theatre, where he held the post of Kapellmeister. This cycle of songs for voice and orchestra was destined to remain undisturbed among his papers for almost twelve years. Meanwhile another hopeless love affair—the object of his affection this time was married and a mother of four children—again triggered the creative process: 'these emotions had reached such a degree of intensity in me that they suddenly burst out in an impetuous stream'. That was in 1888. Mahler, now 27, was conductor at the Leipzig Theatre. The lady in question was none other than the wife of Weber's grandson, wife of the man who had provided to Mahler the unfinished sketches for a comic opera by his grandfather, the great Karl Maria. By completing Die drei Pintos, Mahler achieved the first notable success in his career as composer, as the task involved as much original composition as rearrangement. His passion for Marion von Weber thus plunged him into the deepest despair, for he could never forget that his relationship with her involved a betrayal of the generous friendship her husband offered him. Early in the new year, 1888, the Leipzig Opera was closed—Germany was in mourning for its emperor Willhelm I—and for a few short days Mahler could devote himself without interruption to composing. Begun in January, his Symphonic Poem, later to be called his First Symphony, was finished in March. It had five movements, for Mahler had inserted a little Andante borrowed from an earlier piece of stage music.

First Performances

'I was totally unaware', Mahler confessed later, 'that I had written one of my boldest works. I naively imagined that it was childishly simple, that it would please immediately and that I was going to be able to live comfortably on the royalties it would earn'. So much for the illusions of a young composer! The following summer he moved heaven and earth to have his work performed—in Prague, Munich, Dresden and Leipzig—but in vain. He finally had to conduct the first performance himself at the Budapest Philharmonic on 20 November 1889. And even then his Symphonic Poem was only included in the programme because its composer was none other than the already celebrated director of the Hungarian Opera. Alas, on the evening of the unfortunate première, the conservative Budapest public reacted with stupefaction that quickly gave way to suppressed indignation. The violence of the Finale left the audience dazed, and the closing chords were followed by a deathly silence, finally broken by some timid applause interspersed with booing. Mahler understood that he had just been preaching in the desert. Even his best friends were dismayed: 'Afterwards everyone avoided me; no one dared to talk to me about my work'. The critics were as hostile as the audience had been. He was accused of deliberately indulging in nonsensical bizarrerie, crazy cacophony, brazen vulgarity—in short blaspheming all the canons of music. Lonely and despairing, Mahler wandered through the streets of the Hungarian capital 'like a plague victim, an outcast'.

In 1891, Mahler left Budapest for Hamburg to take up the post of first conductor at the Stadttheater, one of the more important German opera houses. One evening in October 1893, in one of the Hamburg concert halls, he conducted a 'Popular Concert in Philharmonic style' composed entirely of first performances of his works, one of which was entitled 'Titan: a musical poem in symphonic form'. The audience's reaction was slightly more favourable than in Budapest, but the Hamburg critics again accused Mahler of a total lack of discernment in his choice of material, of giving free rein to his 'subjectivity', and of 'mortally offending the sense of beauty'.

After a third setback in Weimar, Mahler tried again in 1896 in Berlin. The work was henceforth shorn of its Andante and bore its definitive title of 'First Symphony'. Every two or three years until the end of his life Mahler conducted this accursed 'First', which almost always disappointed audiences by even after they became familiar with his style and language. The taint of this 'Sinfonia ironica' (the term was invented by the Viennese critic Max Kalbeck) hung over it long after Mahler's death. During the 1920s and 30s it enjoyed a measure of popularity, but this was mainly because of its relatively modest proportions in comparison to his other symphonies and the smaller amount of orchestral resources it called for.

Programmes

To enable the public to understand it more easily, Mahler drew up several 'programmes', all more or less along the same lines, for his 'Symphonic Poem' later to become a Symphony. From the start he made it clear that the original title of the work—'Titan'—had nothing to do with the celebrated novel by Jean Paul Richter, and that the famous As in harmonics at the beginning evoke a morning scene in the forest, when the summer sun 'vibrates and sparkles' through the branches. The programme in 1893, when the Andante was still part of the work, was as follows:

Part I

'Memories of Youth': fruit, flower and thorn pieces

1. 'Spring goes on and on' (Introduction and Allegro comodo).
The introduction describes nature's awakening from its long winter sleep.

2. 'Blumine' (Andante).

3. 'Full sail' (Scherzo).

Part II

4. 'Aground!' ( A funeral march in the style of Callot).

The following will help to explain this movement: the initial inspiration for it was found by the composer in a burlesque engraving: 'The Huntsman's Funeral', well known to all Austrian children, and taken from an old book of fairy stories. The animals of the forest accompany the dead huntsman's coffin to the graveside; hares carry the pennant, then comes a band of Bohemian musicians, followed by cats, toads, crows, etc., all playing their instruments, while stags, deer, foxes and other fourlegged and feathered creatures of the forest accompany the procession with droll attitudes and gestures. This movement is intended to express a mood alternating between ironic gaiety and uncanny brooding, which is then suddenly interrupted by:

5. 'Dall'Inferno' (Allegro Furioso)

the sudden outburst of despair from a deeply wounded heart.

This text, which devotes more space to the grotesque Funeral March than to all the other movements combined, shows that Mahler was aware of the March's originality and feared that it might puzzle the audience. The same indeed might be said of the whole of the work, with its mixture of sorrow and irony, the grotesque and the sublime, tragedy and humour. None of this can be explained without the literary references that Mahler himself readily provided from the start. Not only are some of the original 'titles' of the movements borrowed from Jean Paul, but the whole work is steeped in the atmosphere of German romantic literature and finds its themes and underlying inspiration in the permanent conflict between idealism and realism to be found in the works of E.T.A. Hoffmann and Jean Paul, between the demands of a spirit animated by the cult of beauty and goodness and the degrading realities of everyday life. The 1893 'programme' mentions the French engraver Jacques Callot (1592-1635), so dear to the hearts of the German Romantics, and Hoffmann in particular, though it must be said that the well-known engraving of 'The Huntsman's Funeral' was in fact the work of the Austrian painter Moritz von Schwind, friend of Schubert and Grillparzer.

Various Versions

Composed in 1888, the First Symphony was entirely revised by Mahler in January 1893. It was then that he cut out an episode from the Finale (just before the coda) and replaced it with one of the most astonishing passages in the score, the angry unison motif of the violas that gradually brings back the first theme. But later he changed many other details, something he was always going to do every time one of his works was performed anew. The most important of these were made in 1897 when a first edition of the work was published, while others occurred in 1906 when the definitive version was published by Universal Edition.

Instrumentation

The orchestration of the First Symphony as we know it today dates more or less from 1897. It requires four of each of the woodwinds but a large number of brass (7 horns, 5 trumpets, 4 trombones, a tuba), two drummers and a plentiful supply of percussion. The refinement and sometimes even the novelty of the sonorities never cease to surprise and astonish, especially since most of the boldest innovations were already in the 1893 manuscript. When his faithful friend Natalie Bauer-Lechner asked him about this in 1900, Mahler replied: 'That comes from the way I use the instruments. In this first movement they disappear behind a radiant sea of sounds, just as a lamp becomes invisible behind the brilliance which it gives out. In the March movement the instruments are disguised and go round dressed as strangers. Everything has to sound deadened and muffled, as if ghosts were parading past us. To ensure that in the canon each new entry comes over distinctly, with a surprising tone colour that draws attention to itself as it were—that caused me a real headache! Eventually I got the instrumentation right, so that it produced that weird, otherworldly effect you noticed today. And I don't think anyone has yet managed to work out how I achieve it. When I want to produce a soft, restrained sound, I don't give it to instruments which can produce it easily, but to one which can produce it only with effort, reluctantly, indeed often only by forcing and going beyond its natural limits. So I often make the double basses and the bassoon squeak out the highest notes, while the flutes are puffing away deep down below...'

Analysis

One of the most characteristic features of Mahler's works is the close link between Lieder and symphonies, the Lieder being as it were the sources that nourish the symphonic river. In the First, the thematic material of the initial Allegro is almost entirely derived from the second of the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, while the second Trio of the Funeral March is a literal quotation from the concluding passage of the last Lied in that cycle. To give greater cohesion to the whole, Mahler builds up most of his themes from an ascending or descending fourth. Already in the introduction we hear the fourth symbolising the awakening of spring with the cuckoo's song (slightly modified here, since in reality the cuckoo sings a descending third).

1. Langsam. Schleppend. Wie ein Naturlaut. [Slow. Dragging. Like a sound of Nature]. 4/4, D minor. Few composers have succeeded in evoking so poetically and with such simple means the romantic magic of nature's awakening: its birdsongs, its legendary hunting horns and distant fanfares. We can almost see the young Mahler here, as he has described himself—a child, lost interminably in his dreams, all alone, motionless, in the heart of the forest, in a trance, listening to the slightest sound from near or far. Between the development and the reexposition of the first movement comes a varied reprise of the introduction with numerous modifications, as always with Mahler.

—Immer sehr gemächlich [Very restrained throughout], 2/2, D major. In this Allegro, which consists almost entirely of a single theme, Mahler amplifies and continuously develops the second of the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen without ever giving an impression of effort or repetitiveness. This 'Symphonic Fantasia' always seems to flow from its source with an air of spontaneity and freedom that are the acme of art.

2. Kräftig bewegt, doch nicht zu schnell [Vigorous and lively, but not too fast], 3/4, A major. This is undoubtedly the most rustic of all Mahler's Scherzos in Ländler form, but it is also one of the most enjoyable. Several motifs in it are derived from a Lied Mahler composed when he was 20 years old, Hans und Grethe. In the Trio (Recht gemächlich. Etwas langsamer [restrained. Somewhat slower], F major), the dance becomes more graceful; the shadow of Bruckner can be glimpsed here, no doubt because the Ländler and waltzes come from the same Austrian folklore sources.

3. Feierlich und gemessen, ohne zu schleppen [Solemn and measured, without dragging], 4/4, D minor. This grotesque Funeral March is certainly the most fascinating movement of the four. Its originality surprises us even today and strikes us as prophetic in many respects. No wonder it upset and scandalised the audiences of the time. The canon ('Frère Jacques' in the minor) is introduced by a double bass solo in its highest register. It is then taken up successively by the bassoon, the cellos, the tuba, then by various instrumental groups. The sounds are 'disguised and camouflaged', just as Mahler wanted them to be. Quite soon the oboe superimposes a first 'grotesque' motif on the canon. The crescendo that then gradually builds up comes not from louder playing but by the gradual increase in the number of instruments brought in. Then everything is interrupted by the entry of the 'Musikanten' (street musicians) who, with their popular refrains and Bohemian glissandi, introduce an element of deliberate 'banality' and 'vulgarity'. Street music, simple and unadorned, intrudes here for the first time in the sacrosanct domain of the symphony. One can easily understand why the guardians of musical propriety were profoundly shocked. It should be remembered however that the offending music belonged to an 'imaginary folklore' whose sources would be impossible to trace in any of the popular song collections of the time.

After returning once more to the March, the music passes without transition from the grotesque to the sublime with 'Auf der Strasse steht ein Lindenbaum', the coda section of the last of the Gesellen-Lieder. The whole of the melody is played in G major on the strings. And then, at once, the March resumes inexorably, this time in the key furthest removed from the remainder of the movement, that is to say E-flat minor. In this new key, the 'Musikanten' come in with a restatement of their first 'refrain'. The initial key of D minor is reestablished as if by magic in the space of two bars, and we are back again to the canon, on which Mahler uses all his contrapuntal skill to superimpose a hyperexpressive version of the second 'refrain'. Everything ends in a long, ghostly diminuendo, after which the sudden explosion of the Finale produces one of the most celebrated 'surprises' in the symphonic repertory (comparable to the one that opens the development of the first movement of Tchaikovsky's Symphonie pathétique).

4. Stürmisch bewegt [Tempestuous] Energisch. Mit grosser Wildheit [Vigorous. With great ferocity], F minor/D major, 2/2. This movement, in sonata form, is the only big dramatic movement in the symphony. There is a short introduction that presents, in quick review, fragments from most of the later thematic material. The principal theme, expressing determination, pride and warlike ardour, is one of those ascending motifs that, in all Mahler's works up to the Lied von der Erde, appear every time he wishes to suggest aspiration to transcendence and to a higher order.

The somewhat Tchaikovskian character, very exceptional in Mahler, of the second thematic element (Sehr gesangvoll [very songlike], D-flat major] has often been noticed, but the mystical stillness of the long violin cantilena is also intensely Mahlerian. Its character is so remote from that of the first theme that Mahler was obliged to exclude it completely from the development that follows. The only element of contrast is provided at the end by an unexpected restatement of the introduction to the first movement. This flows quite naturally into a reprise of the second theme, which itself announces the recapitulation.

The form of this Finale is difficult to grasp at first, but it fascinates us today with its violent outbursts of conflicting emotions that suggest to us the influence of Berlioz and Liszt much more than of Bruckner. What is astonishing about this symphony is of course the novelty of its style and instrumentation, but even more the way it turns its back on contemporary trends, and in particular the world of Wagner, a composer whom Mahler idolised, in order to return to the sources of German romanticism, the novels of Jean-Paul and the tales of Hoffmann as much as the songs of Schubert and the operas of Weber. Mahler was right after all when he spoke to Richard Specht of the curse that hung over him at the beginning of his career as a composer. Did not Beethoven's style, in his first works, owe much to Haydn and Mozart? Had not Wagner's music in his early years imitated the style of Meyerbeer? Why therefore did he, Mahler, at 20, have to be so totally himself?