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Mahler, Symphony No. 1, 4th movement

Saturday, August 29th, 2009

When I was in high school, WOSU-FM, the classical radio station in Columbus, used to broadcast symphony orchestra concerts on weeknight evenings.  One night, slaving away on homework, I heard an incredible sound pouring forth from the speakers of my radio.  I hadn’t realized that such music was possible, and I wasn’t sure what to think.  It was unfamiliar to me, and I remember trying to puzzle out who the composer might be.  After a thunderous ending, applause erupted, and the announcer explained than Daniel Barenboim had led the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 1.  I had heard the music I now write about.

As an experiment, largely hypothetical, I trolled some orchestra websites to see whether, in the next  year or so, I would be able to see in concert, in America, the Mahler symphonies I have yet to hear in live performance, the Seventh, Eighth and Ninth (the answer, financial considerations aside, would appear to be “no”).  What I did find was that the First Symphony is by far the most commonly performed of Mahler’s work in this country.

Why might this be?  Its size, perhaps.  It is Mahler that still fits the second half of a program rather than taking an entire concert by itself.  It requires no voices, yet still has the grand sonorities and climatic utterances that thrill audiences.  It is, in a way, Mahler without the difficulties of Mahler.  Orchestras that would never consider the Sixth or the Seventh happily program the First.

To the movement at hand.  I have a feeling that the opening sonorities–a cymbal crash, followed by a diminished seventh chord scored piercingly in the winds, with a low bang in the timpani and strings–has been shocking audience members out of their slow-movement-reveries since the premiere.  The upper strings answer with a rhythmically treacherous lick from high to low and back, so that the brass can introduce a motive that appears throughout the movement, answered duly by sinister descending chromatic triplets.  Two more times, taking longer each time, the upper strings give this cadenza-like material, each time becoming more winded.  It is the bass solo from Beethoven’s Ninth gone horribly wrong, or inverted.  My Forms students could cite this as an example of phrase extension by interpolation.  The final violin soliloquy overlaps the winds’ chromatic motives and leads to the countermelody at rehearsal 6, the entrance of the main theme for this movement (do-re-fa-sol).

Despite the sprawling, multi-faceted nature of this movement, like any good Austro-German composer, Mahler is sparing in his use of motivic material.  The other important motives in the material introduced in this (for Bernstein) twenty-minute span are all derived from the theme at rehearsal 6, either by inversion or by multiple transformations.  At rehersal 8, where Bernstein slows the tempo despite no indication for it, we reach a developmental section (rehearsal 9 instructs “zuruckhalten” or roughly, “ritard,” however).

The music so far has been in the rather remote key of F minor; Mahler touched on this key in earlier movements, but never dignifying it with a key signature.  This third-relationship between keys is something to look for in Mahler’s subsequent work.  The inclusion of “Blumine,” by the way, brings yet another key center to the piece (C major).  Perhaps we see another possible reason for its eventual omission.

The melody at rehersal 11 is related to the rehearsal 6 motive by inversion (although not precise).  Measure 149 begins a fascinating transitional section–as though the movement has run out of steam, but for a few last gasps.  One wonders more about Mahler’s program for this piece.  We relax into the still-more-remote key of D-flat major.  A brilliant orchestrational moment at rehearsal 17 sees the oboe taking over the melody from the strings, which step into the middleground, only to step back a few measures later.  The handoff here is sublime.

Rehearsal 18-19 is a study in effective string doubling, with the violas saving the day (with this and another passage down the road, I think the violas here demonstrate their usefulness and become the orchestrational heroes of the piece).

At rehearsal 21, Mahler begins to bring back large swathes of material from the first movement, beginning with the spooky chromatic melody from rehearsal 3 in that movement.  Almost a third of this movement is material recalled from the first movement, making this piece cyclical in a way that dwarves the use of motto themes by Berlioz and Tchaikovsky.  Over the next few decades, some last movements become recapitulations in their own right–the first examples I can think of are Janacek’s Sinfonietta and Orff’s Carmina Burana.  In both these cases, the first movement isn’t merely repeated, but augmented, and it seems possible that this movement was the inspiration.

Note the fantastic dovetailing at rehearsal 24.  This is the kind of technique that makes this piece treacherous for the less-experienced player.

At rehearsal 26, the music presents a tiny chorale for trumpets and trombones in C major, and then continues in C major.  This chorale returns on two other occasions, more forcefully each time, and also moving the music into D major, the key of the symphony. 

Between the second and third “attempts” to bring the movement to an end, another large chunk of the first movement reappears–the portion that leads to the climax of that movement.  Perhaps the most memorable moment in the first movement is the tutti fanfare, and that is what is brought back here.  Instead of the rousing horn melody from the first movement, we are given the brass chorale, fully-voiced and leading us to the home stretch.  The music stays firmly in D major this time, and we are brought to the triumpant conclusion.  Compositionally, there is more repetition here than I would consider appropriate, but it has been, afterall, nearly an hour since we started into Mahler’s paracosm.

Strangely enough, while as a teenaged I at first was thrilled by the bigness of this ending, I now find the little moments most fascinating–I leave you with two of them.  The measure before rehearsal 40 gives us a preview of coming attractions–a string moment that sounds like it stepped out of Copland’s Appalachian Spring.  Then, before rehearsal 45, the violas, my heroes for this movement, lead a transition to the final energetic music that is just perfect.

So–on to another, much bigger piece this month.  I am gratified that I have demonstrated that I can pull ideas and compositional techniques from a piece on this scale.  With one exception, they only get bigger from here, but I entreat all of you to come with me on this trip.  Now, for two months of the Second, beginning, as Mahler said, with the Titan’s funeral march.

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Mahler, Symphony No. 1, “Blumine”

Monday, August 24th, 2009

As a working composer, I am always very interested in false starts, incomplete pieces, works which composers abandon at any stage of composition, even after performance.  The process of composition is just as important to me as the product.  It is only fitting, then, that I at least take a peak at the “missing” movement, titled “Blumine,” from Mahler’s first symphony.

In the original 1889 symphony, “Blumine” was the second of five movements, with a programmatic scheme.  By the time of the original 1899 publication, Mahler had dropped the program of the symphony, and with it, this movement.  The score ended up in the hands of one of Mahler’s pupils, and came to light in the 1950s.  It was subsequently published and recorded in the late 1960s.  Since then,  most performances and recordings have kept to the four-movement plan which seems to have been Mahler’s final intention, but “Blumine” occasionally pops up.

As a composer, I must ask myself why an entire completed and performed movement was deleted from this piece.  Compositionally, the piece works.  It is beautiful, well-scored, unambiguous and basically successful.  As always, Mahler’s use of the orchestra, while not as adventurous as in the other movements of the symphony, is flawless.  From this composer, I would expect nothing less.  But Gustav Mahler was his own worst critic, and frequently made extensive revisions during rehearsals and after the premieres of his symphonies (his Tenth symphony was probably left incomplete because of the time spent on a major revision of the Third Symphony).  It is believed that many works by Mahler simply have not come down to us because the composer destroyed them, guarding his legacy carefully, perhaps.

So why would Mahler have excised “Blumine?”  One flaw of the piece is that it is somewhat limited thematically, and feels at times more like a strophic song than a symphonic movement.  I have been discovering that Mahler’s use of repetition is a key to understanding his ability to build large forms, and here the repetition is not unwelcome–the piece works–but it is somewhat unabated.  There is a single theme, based on a single motive.  There is some development, but it is not extensive.

A second reason that suggests itself is that it just doesn’t seem to adhere to the composer’s style as expressed in the other movements.  This piece is very clearly an intermezzo, standing between the more significant first movement and the more forceful Landler that would become the second movement.  Mahler’s middle movements are rarely the sort of fluffy, friendly pieces that we see in “Blumine.”  Where is the angst, the drive, the seriousness?  In addition to the dramatic suggestions, the style simply seems dated.  It is more like Berlioz than Mahler.  Perhaps Mahler came to realize that the symphony became too disparate in sentiment with the inclusion of “Blumine,” and when it came time for publication, it seemed best to leave the piece behind.  The Wikipedia article on this piece suggests that it existed before the rest of the symphony as incidental music for a play unrelated.  While Mahler may have had good feelings for the piece, it lacks the passion, the irony, the dramatic import of the rest of the piece, and even seems mispaced harmonically (C-major, where the other movements are in D-minor or D-major).

An interesting diversion, to be certain.  Score and recordings are readily available (I found a good recording on the Naxos Music Library), and any serious Mahler fan should check them out.

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Mahler: Symphony No. 1, third movement

Saturday, August 15th, 2009

Mahler’s original title for this movement (before he dropped the programmatic titles in favor of tempo descriptions) was “Funeral March After Caillot,” in apparent reference to a satirical painting of a hunter being brought out of the woods on a funeral beir by forest animals.   Does anyone have an image of this painting?  Apparently it was reproduced quite frequently in 19th-century Europe.

To the music, and what I’ve been able to pull from it.  The name of the game in this movement is pedal point, along with the use of very slow harmonic rhythm in general.  There are only a few phrases in the entire ten minute duration that act as functional harmony.

The most famous aspect of this piece is the 4-part canon on a melody that most American’s would think of as Frere Jacques in a minor key; Mahler probably knew it as Bruder Martin, a mere translation (I’ll never forget Mrs. Worth teaching us the German words in third grade general music).  Although the can0nic technique is obvious, Mahler never treats it the way most young composers (including myself at one point with a different melody in the same key) would if they were writing such a piece.  The bassoon doesn’t wait on the bass to present the entire melody, instead jumping in two measures early.  After two measures of bassoons, the ‘celli enter, just after the bass finishes, but it is then another four bars before the third part, the tuba, enters.  This is a skillful use of canonic technique that seems to underscore the surreal nature of the movement–a children’s song turned into a dirge, the hunter borne by the hunted.

A note on the bass solo–perhaps a bassist can clue us in–is Mahler’s bowing (one bow per measure) the accepted bowing for performance?  It doesn’t seem to be what the bassist on my recording (Bernstein with Amsterdam) is doing…

This d-minor section gives us about two minutes on basically one chord.  The interest lies in the clear use of canon, and perhaps in Mahler’s deviation from a completely strict manner of bringing the voices in.  Note the very interesting doubling of horns and harp from m. 29.

More surrealism follows–Mit Parodie–as a klezmer band interrupts the funeral march, in a different key.  The effect is nearly Ivesian, and has antecedents in opera at least back to Mozart (the party scene in Don Giovanni).  We are meant to feel the same sort of rustic or amateurish (in the modern denigrating sense) notion as Mahler gives us in the second movement, and it is interesting to note the hypermetrical shift at measure 50, where a melody that began with the measure now begins in the middle of the measure.  

After this interlude, the canon theme returns (m. 71), but not in its entirety.  This sumary technique is something to look for as we progress through Mahler’s works.  It brings coherence and clarity to the formal structure, along with a sense of closure, but does not overburden the piece in the way that a complete repeat would. 

At more or less the half-way point of the movement, then, comes a contrasting section in G major.  The material has motivic similarities to the first theme, and a very pastoral, blissful feel, all over a G-major pedal point (is pedal point a cue for pastoral settings in other music?).  The music suggests not merely simplicity now, but an idyllic, serene moment.  There is wonderful scoring here–notice the switch from muted 2nd violins to unmuted 1sts at measure 101, for example.  A very telling timbral change at the highlight of a line.

Mahler’s counterpoint is very interesting.  Voices involved in counterpoint are rarely as independent as one would find in a more deliberately contrapuntal texture (a fugato section in a Beethoven development, perhaps).  An example is m. 95, where the violins and oboe engage in a sort of heterophony, and the more complex violin parts reinforce the main melody in the oboe.

This section ends with a fantastic transition to G-minor that darkens the mood.  (A great effect with horns, harp, pizzicato bass and pp percussion in mm. 109-110, by the way).  Instead of returning to D-minor by the same common-tone modulation, we get a direct remote modulation to E-flat minor, and again a summary of the opening section (the initial two minutes of canon is here compressed to about a minute).

Measures 135-137 are an orchestration lesson in themselves.  While the first violins play a line col legno that modulates down a half-step to the home key, the woodwinds (and stopped horns) double that line in an intriguing pontilistic texture.  I need a trumpet player to enlighten me on how you would deal with the instruction gestopft, however… simply use a mute?  Very intersting measures.

As the music accelerates, we get a final complete presentation of the Bruder Martin theme in bassoons, horns and harp.  This is partnered with another klezmer melody.  The D pedal point that begins here is maintained for the remainder of the movement, with the exception of a single measure of F-major (m. 145).  My theory students should take note–the III here is not a functional chord, but a neighbor to the i on either side.  Again, Mahler is not adhering to what we would expect him to do with the theme, for the sake of taste (break up the monotony a little) and mood (the absurdity is heightened). 

One final orchestrational gem–in m. 158, the countermelody to Bruder Martin, begins in the bassoon only to be tantalizingly torn apart two measures later.

A brief note–through Interlibrary Loan, I was able to get my hands on the score to the “lost” movement, Blumine.  This movement deserves a look, if only to figure out why Mahler might have discarded it after two performances.  As my doctoral research dealt with a similar situation, I have an interest in Mahler’s reasoning here.  Look for a post on Blumine in the next few days.  Then, on to the Finale!

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Symphony No. 1, first movement

Thursday, July 16th, 2009

Since there are four movements in Mahler’s first symphony, I’m giving myself about two weeks on each one.  Truthfully, I’ve been working on the first movement and the scherzo over the last couple of weeks, and I’ll keep coming back to this movement, but I want to get some of my thoughts down right now.

The opening sonority seems to always elicit comments, because it’s just reall interesting–every A on the piano in the strings, mostly using harmonics.  Myorchestration students will be flustered to know that Mahler simply indicates that the notes are to be played as harmonics and lets the players figure out how to produce them.  For shame!   Although, they are all octaves of open strings, so it isn’t as crucial, I suppose.

Then, this falling fourth motive–many of the themes in this movement begin with the falling fourth, and it is like Mahler from the beginning is telling us what to expect in this movement.  The beginning evokes night to me–especially night in August when the cicadas are out making lots of noise.  To what extent is this about a day in the life of the artist?  The fourths become a chain of notes–in bassoons and oboes in m. 7.  The first time, this theme is presented, the double reeds hold the penultimate note, Bb over the multi-octave A while the clarinets give a distant fanfare.  By measure 13, when the Bb resolves deceptively to B-natural, Mahler has given us the bulk of the material he uses in this movement. 

Dr. Russel Mikkelson, the director of bands at Ohio State, likes to say that composers are like bad poker players in that they show us their cards at the beginning of each hand.  I would amend that by saying that *good* composers do this. 

The second statement of the falling fourth theme goes directly to its goal–the A.  Fantastic orchestration–piccolo, oboe, English horn and bass clarinet give a very interesting four-octave spread.

The offstage trumpets bring the fanfare closer–over the next few pages, the movement gathers steam–cavalry fanfares and cuckoo calls.  The falling fourths theme begins to metastasize, virtually falling all over itself beginning in m. 49.  As we begin to gather strength for the “Hauptzeitmass” (principal tempo), a snaky, chromatic line in the cellos and basses pull the pitch center from A (the dominant) toward D, the tonic key of the piece.

I am amazed at how much of this movement emphasizes the key of A.  I haven’t done a measure-by-measure census, but it feels as though there is more music in A than in D.  Is this harmonic scheme part of what allows Mahler to write a larger scale piece?  When you write in the tonic, you can end at any time, because you are home, but in the dominant, you are always having to get home.

I’m beginning to get a feel for Mahler’s use of repetition as well.  The melody that begins at m. 62 (just before the repeat sign) appears in more or less complete form eight times before the end of the repeated section.

I’ve been struggling to deal with the large repeat here as well.  It performs much the same function as the first division in a binary movement–introduces the tonic key (which we haven’t yet heard), and moves to the dominant (which we’ve heard a lot).  I think I’ve decided that it does a great deal to balance the movement.  Mahler isn’t a composer we associate with formal balance the way we do, say, Hadyn, but I have no doubt that “successful project” (Persichetti’s phrase) has a great deal to do with balance.  In order to balance the fairly extended opening, Mahler needs a fairly long fast section at this point.  However, given the development that is to come, it would be a mistake to simply present theme after theme at the outset.

Fantastic orchestrational moments:

  • the bass clarinet counterline against the first presentation of the song theme (m. 64ff)
  • the very cool unison E5s in measure 88-90 in cello harmonics, harp and solo oboe.  What an amazing effect!
  • the momentary parallel fourths between violins, flute and oboe in measure 98

The developmental section after the repeat is back in the slow tempo (beginning m. 163).  The flute echoes a motive pulled from the song theme, in the manner of yet another bird call. (Messiaen was not the first composer to listen to birds!).  A lovely transition to F major, brought about by the ‘cellos use of a cell from the main theme, first using F# (m. 170), then F-natural ((m. 176).  The octave-As from the beginning are shown to be a common tone to the new key.

Then–I love the use of the lowest strings of the harp in m. 189–I’ve borrowed this effect in my own music.  The horns have a melancholy little tune in D minor, which sets up a return to the home key, although the bass remains F-natural.  The return to D-major is accomplished by an inverted augmented sixth chord, which makes the D-major horn call at 207 that much fresher.  Again, we see a fourth, only this time rising instead of falling.

D-major leads to A major (m. 227), then C# (later enharmonically spelled as Db, at m.243).  Harmonically, this is a development section, but there is also much non-developmental activity–repetition and exposition of new themes.  In addition, we keep expecting the “song theme” from the repeated section, but it keeps getting put off. 

I keep wanting to think that this is a sonata-form movement, but I just can’t find the evidence.  I would like to suggest that there is a sonata principle at work here, but that Mahler has left sonata form behind.  Any takers?

The song theme finally reappears at m. 283.  There is a sort of recapitulation happening, but not in the right key (we are still in F major!).  Nonetheless, one by one, the themes come back, and even the keys.

The climax gives us first the fanfare material and then a glorious forte version of the D major horn melody, both in their original keys.  The crescendo into this moment reminds me greatly of what Beethoven would write just before the triumphant return of the main theme.  However–the preparatory material is tonally ambiguous, instead of the “standing on the dominant” that typically ends Beethoven’s sonata forms.  The fanfare material is in D, but over the octave As again. 

It is as though the movement has come full circle–the fourths motive has carried us through, and the remainder of the piece is a final reminder of the song theme.  The ending always feels abrupt, but of course there is plenty more to come.

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From Beethoven to Mahler

Wednesday, July 1st, 2009

It’s the new fiscal year in many states, as I was reminded on NPR this morning.  It’s a big day for me in my intellectual life, too.  I have completed my survey of Beethoven’s piano sonatas, and have moved on to the nine Mahler Symphonies.  Hopefully, at least a few people will be taking this journey with me, one symphony every two months, from now until the end of 2010.  I’m writing these entries on my blog, www.martiandances.com/blog, but I’ve also fed the blog to Facebook, where it will appear as a “Note.”  Feel free to comment on either location, although since I’m in charge of the blog, and Facebook is in charge of Facebook…

I dropped my wife off at the airport today, which meant a two-hour drive home from Amarillo by myself.  As I pulled out of town, I dropped my reference recording of Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 (Bernstein with Amsterdam) into the CD player, and I got to thinking about some of the differences between Beethoven and Mahler.

Of course, there is more than half a century between Beethoven’s last sonata (Op. 111 from 1822) and Mahler’s first complete symphony (finished in 1888).  In that period are Schumann, Chopin, Mendelssohn (and his Bach revival), Smetana and the first round of nationalists, Liszt, most of Brahms and (the big one, at least in my received wisdom) Wagner.  I think it might be safe to say that for Mahler, the two most influential figures are Beethoven, the first composer for whom a symphony was always a major artistic statement, and Wagner.

Charles Rosen suggests that the Classical style was informed, at its root, by the dramatic and comic developments in operatic music.  It seems quite possible to me that for Mahler, who earned his daily bread conducting opera, not symphonic music, that we must look in many ways to the developments in opera by Weber (whose final opera Die Feen (or is it Der Drei Pintos?  help!) Mahler attemped to complete) and Wagner (whose operas Mahler helped to introduce in Vienna and which he guarded jealously from his assistant conductors throughout his career).

I’m particularly interested in how Mahler creates the scale of these works.  As a composer, I don’t feel confident about writing long movements, and I want to develop this ability.  Some observations based on my re-hearing of the “Titan:”

  • Mahler sometimes employs sectional forms, which allows (nay, demands) the repetition of vast swathes of music.  The second and third movements of the present piece are indicative of this.
  • Where Beethoven is more prone to repetition (and sequential writing) on the motivic level, Mahler seems more likely to repeat thematically.  Again, repeating long(er) passages is the result.  By comparison, my music repeats much less frequently than either of these two composers, although much more often than, say, Schoenberg in his Erwartung period.  The trick isn’t repetition–it is meaningful repetition.
  • In general, Mahler’s music is much more melody-driven than Beethoven’s (and mine).  This will be an excellent study for me, as it will give me a chance to see whether in the face of additional evidence I still truly believe that rhythm is of greater importance than melody or harmony.
  • It would be apples and oranges to compare the orchestration of Beethoven’s piano sonatas to Mahler’s symphonies.  That said, even over the noise from the “loud” pavement on US 287, I have begun to make notes of effects I want to look at more closely.  We are so fortunate to have recordings right at our fingertips… I heard a string passage this afternoon that I can’t wait to dig into, and the beginning of the fourth movement is a perfect illustration of when and why to use unmeasured tremolo in the strings.
  • Again… loud pavement makes for bad listening, but are Mahler’s harmonies in this piece a great deal simpler than Beethoven’s?  This is why I’m doing this project.  As many times as I’ve listened to this piece, I haven’t even begun to hear it.

I want to throw a question out there that was inspired by a liner note I once read about this piece:  Is Mahler, in writing this symphony, actually using collage (or even pastiche) techniques?  Many of the melodies (especially in the first movement) are derived from Mahler’s earlier works (particularly, Des Knabben Wunderhorn).  Other melodies are folk tunes, and still others bear resemblances to canonical works.  Is Mahler’s intent to somehow document a sonic realm of the imagination?  Is this a viable way to understand this piece?

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