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!