Mahler, Symphony No. 5, first movement

March 11th, 2010

What a piece!  Like the last movement of Mahler’s Second Symphony, I find it difficult to think analytically about music of such moving emotion.  There are some questions I would love to be able to ask the composer, though.  What sort of funeral march is this?  For such grandiose, powerful music, who could possibly have died?  And then, as a funeral march, is it really effective?  True, there are no moments of levity, and I detect no hint of satire anywhere in the movement, but how can the solemnity of death be reconciled with what is, in a strange way, celebratory music?  Such questions are, of course, primarily aesthetic in nature, and I can’t answer them without living in Mahler’s time, and perhaps in Mahler’s life.  Throughout my study of Mahler’s music, I have striven to examine the music for its compositional attributes, and taken the music at face value, but such music as this cannot help but raise serious extra-musical questions.  I’ve been reading David Huron’s book Sweet Anticipation, in which he gives a valuable sentiment.  To paraphrase:  “Even if we are one day able to understand music, it will never cease to be beautiful.”

How many times did I hear this opening trumpet solo through practice room walls as an undergraduate?  My trombone teacher, Tony Chipurn, used to joke about the first round of trumpet auditions for the Cincinnati Symphony:  “ta-ta-ta–taaa,” “Thank you!”  But this music is no joke, not for even a moment, and this trumpet solo announces the key, the mood, the meter and the basic rhythm of the composition, all with just a few notes.  Those first four notes are that important, and a fine performance gives them direction.  It must not only state the notes, but provide the impetus for the rest of the symphony. 

No sooner has the key been established than the rest of the brass and the strings come in with a contrasting harmony.  The trumpet has named the key as c-sharp minor, but the enormous chord in measure 13 is A major, opening the world of this music up.  The double-dotted rhythms in the trumpet are, again, crucial to the expression, and Mahler makes persistent use of dotted and double-dotted rhythms throughout this movement; it is these rhythms that give this funeral march its character, whether as the trumpet’s double-dotted solo rhythms, the strings’ later use of dotted-quarter plus eighth-note rhythms to present both primary and secondary melodic material or the underlying martial rhythm, seen for example in measures 14-16 in the strings and winds.

The dotted rhythm introduces the primary march theme at the anacrusis to m. 35.  This melody is introduced by violins and celli in unison–in a relatively weak register for the violins, but in a more lyrical register for the celli.  In m. 43, the theme is developed, with the second violins, and then the violas, joining the first violins.

At m. 61, the original trumpet solo returns, at the original pitch, but harmonized instead in the key of F-sharp minor, and harmonized instead of alone.  Instead of the parallel chord of D major, as would be expected from the opening passage, the goal of this passage is the tonic chord of the movement, C-sharp minor.  This allows a return of the first-theme material at measure 89, now harmonized by a countermelody based on the same dotted-rhythm material as nearly every other utterance in the symphony so far.

Mahler is nothing if not consistent.  After a modulatory passage that brings the music to Ab major, the dominant, a secondary theme enters at m. 121.   Based on the dotted-rhythm motive of the primary theme, this presentation in thirds is highly reminiscent of material from the third movement of the First Symphony, the contrasting theme of that funeral march.  How funeral-march-like is this piece after all?  Much of the resemblance and mood breaks down in this section, which leads into a developmental section, introduced by the trumpet solo material.

This development section, beginning in earnest at m. 155, is centered around a rhythmic motive that is a transformation of the dotted-note motive that formed the core of the melodic material up to this point.  This consists of a half-note tied to the first-note of a quarter-note triplet, followed by the other two notes of that triplet.   This cell is the basis of nearly every important melodic motive for the next hundred bars.

At measure 233, the trumpet solo returns, bringing back the material from the exposition.  Measure 278ff has a fascinating melodic treatment–beginning in solo trumpet and solo viola, and over the next few bars, adding instruments to become a near-tutti texture in bar 286, at which point, the texture thins to solo clarinet, oboe and flute.  As expected in a classic sonata-allegro, the second theme now returns in the tonic key (m. 295).  In teaching third-year Analysis, I emphasize the importance of understanding the modifications composers make to their transitions to reconcile the two competing key areas.  Here, Mahler significantly shortens the transition to allow the secondary theme to reappear in the tonic key rather than moving to the dominant.  The music is in D-flat major, an enharmonic spelling of the parallel major that allows the second theme to remain in its original mode.

In measure 316, the timpani enter with a reminder of the opening trumpet solo, moving to a secondary developmental section, placed interestingly late in the game, almost 4/5 of the way through the movement.  In this A-minor section, the dotted-note motive of the exposition and the triplet figure of the development are combined in a sequential passage that leads to a final climactic chord at m. 369.  At this point, the music now must descend from E-major, the dominant of this second development section, to G-sharp major, the dominant of the piece.  It reaches its goal not through functional phrasing, but through a typically Mahlerian chromatic descent, with a deceptive goal at m. 393, when coloristic chords seem to imply another move away from C-sharp, but land on F-sharp, explaining to the ear that this has all been coda material.  Mahler has placed developmental material in the coda, following in the footsteps of Beethoven. 

The coda itself is given a coda, featuring the return of the solo trumpet material from the opening.  Instead of the entire melody, we are merely reminded of it.  The movement ends with a flute flourish–a rare moment highlighting this instrument among the Mahler symphonies so far–followed by a menacing pizzicato in the low strings.

Where does this movement fall in relation to the opening movements of the four previous symphonies?  The First Symphony began with what seemed like the beginning of the world ex nihilo.  The Second has its own funeral march.  The Third Symphony’s enormous opening movement (“Part One”) dwarfs the rest of the piece, despite Mahler’s best efforts.  The Fourth Symphony opens with music that is tautly related to the rest of the piece.  But here, in the Fifth Symphony, is music that draws in the listener to the point that it simply doesn’t feel as long as its fifteen-minute duration.  This is, afterall, the goal of any composer– the suspension or at least the reordering of time.  A great composition, like a great movie, feels like an otherworldly experience while keeping the audience’s attention.  In this movement, Mahler has done this successfully.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Mahler symphonies | Comments Closed

Mahler, Symphony No. 4, 4th movement

March 1st, 2010

First, some business.  Since Mahler’s Fifth has five movements, the two-weeks-per-movement plan of the last two months won’t work.  Since I, and many of my readers (I assume there are readers…) have Spring Break in March, the right move seems to be to spend 10 days on each of the first three movments, then fifteen days on the other two.  Three movements in March, two in April, with one day left (although I confess to not thinking about this project every day, so that isn’t entirely accurate).  Keep up with me!

To the music.  This movement is a lovely song setting.  In my reference recording, by Bernstein with Vienna, Bernstein took the indication that the voice be as child-like as possible to the extreme of assigning the part to a boy soprano.  There is an innocence gained through this, one that Bernstein used in his own Chichester Psalms to great effect.  The first time I heard this piece in performance, the Cincinnati Symphony used a grown woman rather than a child, and I don’t remember it as being any less effective.

Like the symphony, this movement begins in G major.  The form is basically strophic, and this means that there is a great deal of repetition both in the solo part and the accompaniment.  The introduction is very typical of the German lied in that it simply presents a melodic idea (in the clarinet) that is repeated as interlude and which also accompanies the solo part as a countermelody.  Like the third movement, Mahler’s harmonic language is centered around functional phrases rather than the long pedal points of some of his earlier work.  In this last Wunderhorn symphony, Mahler chooses to end with a movement that seems to suggest an earlier world.

Measure 36 and the following measures are the first appearance of material that three times will close the song sections.  Each time it ends on a different chord, but segues into material from the opening of the first movement–a somewhat unexpected tying together that brings the somewhat disparate expressions of the piece full circle.

In comparison to Mahler’s purely instrumental compositions, and especially, for example, the finale of the Second Symphony, this song setting is relatively simple, but therein lies its beauty and its charm.  Mahler’s previous use of children’s voices (again, not what is strictly called for here despite Mahler’s note about the soloist’s vocal quality) in the fifth movement of the Third Symphony is much more complex in texture and orchestration than this light, clear movement.

Only one aspect of the movement is really troubling to me, and that is Mahler’s decision to end it in a remote key–E major.  When the symphony so far has been very centered on the home key, G major, it seems very strange indeed that Mahler would end the piece elsewhere.  I have spent some time thinking of reasons for this decision, and the best I can come up with is that lowering the tonal center by a minor third has the effect of a relaxation, a release of tension in some way.  While so many popular songs in our era feature a modulation up to ramp up excitement, Mahler’s downward shift of key center may have the opposite effect.  It may also suggest that the piece, a setting of a poem depicting the heavenly life, is not really finished, just as the eternal life discussed has no end.

One strays from a purely compositional analysis here–into a realm of symbolism and implied extra-musical meaning that I have largely avoided here, but as the only vocal movement of the piece, it seems to cry out for this type of discussion.

What does one take, then, from this symphony, so unlike Mahler in so many ways?  Mahler’s compositonal technique is relatively unchanged from the previous two works–not for nothing are they grouped together.  Instead of the enormous orchestras with chorus, though, Mahler steps away, conforming to a standard symphonic plan in four movements for the first time since the First Symphony (and even that piece was not originally so).   Mahler is not the only composer to step back from gigantism–one thinks of Tchaikovsky following the bloated 1812 with the sublime Serenade in C, and of Liszt’s later works in comparison with the enormous symphonies of his middle years.  At any rate, Mahler’s orchestra is still very large by Mozart’s standards, and there are moments in the piece that are very reminiscent of the big moments in the other symphonies.  It is completely possible that my conceit of the Fourth as the “little one” is only the result of my own instrument being left out!  But there is none of the darkness here that one associates with the low brass in the earlier symphonies–the tuba of the First’s funeral march, or the trombone of the Third’s opening movement.  They simply aren’t necessary.

Onward, then, to the Fifth, a favorite of mine since I first encoutered it up close as an undergraduate!

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Mahler symphonies | Comments Closed

Mahler–Symphony No. 4, mvt. 3

February 20th, 2010

Since I’m a trombone player by training, and this is the only Mahler symphony that doesn’t include my instrument, I have always felt that Mahler’s Fourth was the “little” Mahler symphony, the runt of the litter.  If any of the music disproves that, it would be this movement.  There is a lightness to this music that doesn’t require three trombones and a tuba, or an entire regiment of percussionists.

After the second movment’s digression to the key of C minor, this movement is firmly rooted in the key of the symphony.  The narrative tonal scheme from the Third Symphony has been abandoned, and the piece opens in an explicit G major, with some wonderful string writing.  My Instrumentation students would do well to study how the cello is often the preferred melodic instrument in lines that would be perfectly playable by the viola.  The lower instrument simply has greater resonance and by placing the melody on the higher-pitched strings, Mahler achieves greater expressive power.  I am frustrated by most orchestration texts that include several pages of paean to the violin and then give shorter shrift to the viola, but there is something to it, I’m afraid.

Mahler has structured this opening section in very clear phrases with very clear cadences, which is not always his habit.  In m. 37, after an imperfect authentic cadence on the home key, there is a long extension and transition to the next key.  Mahler signals that the section is nearly over in the same way that Bach often did, by introducing the subdominant.  In this instance, it sounds oddly fresh, even though every first-year music theory student knows that the subdominant (or IV chord) is not at all a rare bird.  It’s just that Mahler has done an effective job of holding it in reserve and now (m. 47), lands on it in a significant way.

The transitional passage that follows is masterful.  The pizzicato bass line from the first few measures gives continuity while the horns and oboe sound the notes that pivot us into the new key, e minor.  Mahler’s use of musical material is tightly controlled–even though he introduces new themes here, they are built over a structure that is related to the accompaniment of the G-major section.    One also can’t help but admire the way that, for Mahler, the orchestra itself is an instrument, rather than being a collection of instruments.  A great example is the dovetailing of the melody in m. 66 from oboe to the first violins.  Those three overlapping notes allow a smooth transition of timbre–more like a pianist coloring notes by managing flow of wrist and hand than an organist pulling stops.  Throughout this passage, the oboe and violins seem to be doing this trading off–the effect is like an impossible instrument.

One instrument that is used sparingly in this movement is the bass clarinet.  I’m intrigued by Mahler’s approach to this instrument in all of his music, but in a twenty-minute movement (by Bernstein’s baton), there are barely ten notes, all within the texture.  Mahler calls for the third clarinetist to “double” on bass, but many of the changes seem very quick for that.

The e-minor moment doesn’t last long–it is developmental in nature and doesn’t have the cleanly defined phrase structure of the G-major section, and in fact shortly (by measure 91) lands on a pedal D to prepare for the G-major material which follows.  The sense of contrast, though, in tempo, scoring, tonality and formal construction is crucial to building a movement of this size and scope. 

Measures 97-99 again show a transition in melodic responsbility that struck me first as an interesting heterophonic approach to changing orchestral color, but on closer inspection reveal that Mahler is using canonic technique, a relatively rare tool for him and for his era.

The next G-major section, beginning in m. 107, is, according to Mahler’s score, a variation.  It is developmental in nature, but also shares constructive elements with the first section in that it is composed of discrete phrases with clear cadences.  Mahler indicates a faster tempo, and so we move quickly through this section, which isn’t as developmental as it might be–perhaps because there is more of a tonal plan reminiscent of rondo form, where the tonic key returns several times rather than a rounded binary in which the tonic is always the goal of the music.  Strangely enough, the tonic is not the ultimate goal!

Orchestrationally, mm. 179-191 are fascinating.  A trio between oboe, English horn (another instrument used sparingly here in this movement) and horn moves between key centers, implying (but not comfirming) g-minor.  A fantastic color follows this trio as four flutes in their weakest register take on the melody for a moment before passing it on to the cellos, reinforcing the crucial intervals.

A conductor from years ago used to state that small intervals create tension, but large intervals create drama.  To that, I would add another function, suggested in Peter Schubert’s book on 16th-century counterpoint–a leap establishes a musical space which steps must then fill in.  In this instance (mm. 188-190), the flutes emphasize these space-defining leaps and the cellos fill them in without assistance.

The goal of this transition has been C-sharp-minor, and on arriving there, Mahler writes a passage that could have come directly from the music of Jean Sibelius–mm. 195 to 200–but immediately after, he is back to Mahler.   C-sharp-minor morphs to one of Mahler’s major-minor moments in mm. 214-221, this time on F-sharp.  This would seem to be yet another common-tone modulation, as the ambiguity of chord quality allows the pitch F-sharp to become the aural focus.  Mahler takes advantage of this by shifting F-sharps role from fa to ti, and making it the leading-tone of the home key, G major.

Here begins a truly fascinating passage from a compositional standpoint.  To be successful, any slow movement must build to some sort of climax that instead of quiet and mediative is full-bodied, energetic and provides the necessary contrast to make a complete statement.  For Mozart, the technique was often the Romanza structure, as in the D-minor Piano Concerto or the Grand Partita serenade.  For Beethoven and Brahms, the technique is often rhythmic diminution combined with fugato, as in the Eroica symphony or the Brahms’ Second Symphony. 

Mahler approaches this moment through the dance, by reference to folk and popular idioms.  A 3/4 version of the opening theme morphs into a landler in m. 237.  This landler becomes a polka in m. 263, barely before we have understood the first dance.  Very quickly, this polka comes off the rails with the instruction to bump the tempo up another notch in m. 278, where the dance seems to lose control completely. 

Measure 283 is a return to the opening material, and this section would seem to suggest a calm recapitulation that will cadence nicely in the home key, buy Mahler has two more surpises in store.

The first is an ending to this abbreviated G-major section (suggestive again of rondo form) that moves toward a tonic note of E, just as it did the first time.  The music should be wrapping up, but clearly Mahler is on his way out again.  Instead of e-minor, however, in m. 315 there is an explosion in E-major, the fullest, strongest texture of the symphony so far.  The brass are in full force, and take the lead.  G-major to E-major is a remote modulation, and the E-major section leads (with a note from the bass clarinet darkening the texture wonderfully in mm. 330-331) to C major, the subdominant.  

From here, it should be a quick move to a cadence on the home key.  The dominant, D, appears, but when the music moves to G major, in m. 340, we realize that D isn’t the dominant, but a temporary tonic.  G feels like a subdominant, then, which means that the movement can’t be over.  Over the last few bars, though, there is no move to a dominant-seventh on D and G-major has appeared for the last time in this movment.  Mahler ends the movement on a dominant chord, a half cadence.  A peek ahead to the last movement reveals that it, too, is in G-major and begins on the tonic chord.  The last two movements are, thus, inseparable.  The third movement is incomplete without the fourth, and the fourth movement has a twenty-minute introduction.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Mahler symphonies | Comments Closed

Playing my own music

February 7th, 2010

Over the last eight days, I’ve played my own music in three different venues in three cities here in Oklahoma.  I played my trombone-with-electronics piece Let Everything That Has Breath Praise the Lord here in Guymon at a concert at my church.  Then on Friday, I premiered part of my unaccompanied trombone piece Twenty Views of the Trombone on a faculty recital at Oklahoma Panhandle State University.  Then, last night, Becky and I went to Norman, Oklahoma so that I could play both pieces as a featured composer at a Salon Concert of the Oklahoma Composers Association.  All the performances went well, and they bring me to a topic I’ve, understandably, been thinking about lately, and that is the need for a composer to write music for him- or herself to perform, and to perform it.

A Beethoven or a Gershwin could, of course, at the drop of a hat, find a piano and regale those assembled with any number of their original works; Schubert wrote for himself, and composers like Bach and Haydn had jobs that required them to compose, rehearse and lead their newest pieces in quick succession. 

No one can be as passionate a performer of a new piece than its composer, and there’s no better way to show how a new piece should be played.   If my ideal is to write with a performer in mind, then writing for myself is the closest relationship I can have with a performer. 

From a practical standpoint, playing my own music means that I can “take the show on the road” very easily–in my case, with only my trombone and perhaps a mute or the CD of the accompaniment.

While I avoided writing for the trombone for a while–I didn’t just want to be a trombone composer, and there were other media to explore–it will always be the instrument I understand best.  I love to play the trombone, and it will, hopefully, always be my primary instrument, even if I don’t get nearly the amount of practice I would like.   It only seems natural that I would combine my compositional and performing personae.

I would urge all composers to consider this avenue–and I intend to keep exploring it myself.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Closed

Mahler–Symphony No. 4, 2nd movement

January 30th, 2010

A day-and-a-half of snow days this week means that I can get to this a little bit ahead of schedule.

I’ve chosen to examine Mahler’s work from a purely compositional standpoint, but for a summary of Mahler’s programmatic and spiritual understandings, I would direct the reader to this excellent note by Chicago Symphony program annotator Phillip Huscher.

The tonal center of the movement is C major, but with a contstant yearning toward D, beginning with the opening material.  The overall progression of the movement, from C minor to C major, F major, twice, then to a D major section, finally ending in C again.

Like the first movement, there is a tautness, a motivic clarity that isn’t present in Mahler’s Second or Third Symphonies to the extent it is here.   There is barely a single bar in this movement that doesn’t contain motivic material introduced in the first twenty measures of the piece.  The various motives have differing roles throughout the movement–some thematic, some transitonal.

The movement begins with a horn solo that strangely emphasizes D–re in the key of the movement, and two keys removed from the tonic pitch.  There is a great deal of Mahler’s typical ambiguity between major and minor as the motives that are more thematic in nature begin to be revealed–first in the flutes, then in the strings.  If I had to type-cast the melody here, it would be moto perpetuo, in part because of the importance of the motive composed of six sixteenth-notes and that tends to run into itself. 

This reliance on motives allows Mahler to make extensive use of melodic sequences, just as in a Bach invention.  I’ve often told my students that the key to writing tonal music is to remember that there are basically two techniques–functional phrases and the sequences that connect them.  Mahler here is reinforcing my lesson.

The scordatura violin deserves a mention.  Mahler scores for it in such a way that when it is present, it is always at the orchestrational foreground.  Lesson–if you’re going to use a strange instrument, feature it.

The opening material returns in measure 110, preceded by a sequential modulation that points to the pitch D–the secondary center of the piece.  The recapitulation is largely similar to the first 100 bars, with some textural elaboration and rescoring.  At the end of this section, the sequential passage returns, and again leads to D–but this time to a large D major section.   This section seems to substitute for the C-minor section at the beginning of the piece, leading back to C major at m. 314. 

This brief C-major section leads to a coda a measure 329, substituting for the F-major music that ended the first two large sections.  What most impresses me is that the opening material here beomes the closing material.  The horn solo from the opening bars that acted as the door into this piece is now the door out.  Appropriately for a middle movement, the ending is somewhat abrupt.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Mahler symphonies | Comments Closed

Mahler, Symphony No. 4, first movement

January 18th, 2010

After the enormity of the Third Symphony, Mahler now gives us a much more managable piece, in length and in pallette, as though after two such pieces, another of this scope were simply unnecessary, or rather, it has now become necessary to step back, to reconsider more modest means.

The Fourth has always been, in my mind, the “little one,” lacking low brass and with triple woodwinds instead of quadruple, and missing even Mahler’s trademark in orchestral writing, the section of eight horns.  “Little,” however, is not the right word.  In scope, it is no less than the pieces that precede it, and in breadth, it is still a long piece by the standards of a Brahms or a Dvorak, and uses a much larger orchestra than those composers typically demanded.

The correct word is not “little” but “taut,” at least in this first movement.  Mahler’s timbral materials are somewhat reduced, but more interesting is the fact that there is none of the sprawling motivic or harmonic architecture of the previous pieces.  All of the basic motives of the piece are introduced in the first two key areas, and this economy of means is not surprising, but I haven’t seen Mahler taking it to this degree until now.  In addition, Mahler’s formal construction is very traditional–the closest yet to a sonata-allegro form in the “textbook” sense. 

The piece begins with a very characteristic texture–flutes in fifths doubling sleigh bells, followed by oboe and clarinet figurations.  These three measures set the stage in a very specific, very unique manner.  Mahler does not continue with this music, but brings it back at key locations throughout the piece, and the open fifths become a motor rhythm that gives a propulsive aspect to the “exposition” of this movement. 

The “first theme” begins on the anacrusis to m. 4 in the violins, but most importantly, the down beat of that measure features a falling sixth.  This interval and its rising form are another crucial motive for the movment.  Measure 5 and 6 also contain material that is developed later–six-sixteenth notes leading to the down beat and a rising dotted eighth-sixteenth rhythm. 

In this sonata form, the transition from first to second key area begins in m. 18 with a modified version of the first theme.  A spinning out of the sixteenth-note motive leads to m. 38 and the entrance of the second theme, beginning with a rising sixth–a motivic relation between the two very different themes. 

Following the rising 6th are three repeated notes, which are echoed in rhythmic diminution throughout the rest of the piece (for example, in the clarinets in m. 47ff.  Following a half cadence in m. 57, oboe and bassoon present music that appears to sum up, in a way, the second theme area.  It, too, receives the same sort of developmental treatment upon its repetition in the clarinets in m. 67, this time in the mixolydian mode. 

Measures 72ff see a return of the opening material, at the same pitch level despite the key signature indicating the dominant.  The development section begins at this point, returning to a key signature of G major at m. 77 with a reappearance of the first theme.  This development section moves through G major, then A major, E-flat minor, F minor, and a return to G major.  The development ends not with a “standing on the dominant,” but abruptly, with a caesura after m. 238, followed by the recapitulation without transition.

Oddly enough, the recapitulation begins with neither the sleigh bell motive nor the first theme, but depends heavily on the material from each.  At measure 263, the second theme appears in the tonic key, in the same way we would expect.  Measure 330 is the end of the recapitulation, leading to a very typical coda section, emphasizing the subdominant to indicate “after the ending” sentiment.

Posted in Mahler symphonies | Comments Closed

Mahler–Symphony No. 3, 6th movement

January 5th, 2010

Less than a week behind schedule now–I’ve been listening and studying the score, but to decide to sit down at the computer and type a bunch of words that maybe no one will ever read takes some fortitude.  Mahler’s 4th Symphony will follow, about two weeks on each movement through January and February.  I’m starting to think about what project will follow this one at the end of the year–let me know if you have ideas.

This movement conjours lots of memories, partly because in college we (that is, my brass player friends and I) were all crazy about it.  I’m hearing it with very different ears now than I had then.  All brass players who want to be more than just brass players have to work through their “louder, higher, longer” phase, and on the other side of that, I can say that I’m not as taken with this movement as I used to be.

Perhaps it’s because I’ve since read Philip Roth’s The Human Stain, in which the book ends (spoiler alert) with the protagonist’s funeral, which service is ended with this very movement.  Is this choice on Roth’s part meant to be ironic?  Who would actually play this entire movement for a church full of mourners?  The Bernstein recording lasts nearly 40 minutes, which I think may be a little bit drawn out.  I’m curious to know what Mahler’s tempi were in this case.

I’ve decided that this piece is musically meaningful because of several features, both internally and in relation to the rest of the piece.  In the overall structure of the piece, it is as much coda as it is finale.  Mahler is continuously bringing in plagal material–the subdominants and supertonics that have always signified the end of a tonal composition.  Just as Handel’s “Hallelujah” Chorus ends its portion of Messiah, this harmonic emphasis serves to signify that this enormous composition, this epic journey, is coming to a close.  This movement, like the epilogue to an expansive novel, celebrates what has come.  Ironically enough, there is no return of earlier thematic material or even the slightest reference to the other movements.  There is only pure, beautiful, very tonal music.

The internal structure of this movement is interesting, but not particularly surprising.  It seems to be cast in  rondo form, like many of the last movements of many Austro-German symphonies from Mozart on.  The refrain consists of the chorale that thrilled my friends and me back in college–the first forty measures, complete with their own coda (the long tonic pedal beginning in m. 29).

Measure 41, with its key change, presents for the first time a kind of transitional material, or perhaps it represents the first episode.  The music settles not in the written key of F# minor but in C# minor in measure 51.  The material that follows suggests F major, allowing the minor subdominant (g minor) of the home key to make an appearance that brings back D major, in a way, at m. 92.  Even though the tonic chord fails to appear, it is clear that the music is in D major from the presence of the dominant and by the return of the sequential theme from the refrain.  The refrain itself returns in m. 108.

As is typical of rondo form, the second appearance of the refrain is shortened–a mere reminder of the dominating material of the piece.  Measure 132 is the start of the second episode–after transitional material similar to that which appeared before the first episode, and beginning with material that is similar to m. 51ff, but which is now developmental in nature.  The sequential motive from the refrain and the do-sol-le-sol motive of the transitional material provide the fodder for this developmental section, which continues until measure 214, when the chorale theme begins to reappear.  We are back in the home key, but not yet truly home. 

The fullest tutti of the movement so far is in m. 220, and revealingly is a chord of undoubtedly plagal function–a minor subdominant, which further reinforces the coda-ness of this movement. 

The final refrain begins in m. 252 with the chorale theme in the brass.  Despite appearing over a dominant pedal instead of a full harmonization, it is clear that we have arrived at the end of the piece, and the basic structure of the refrain is intact.  From this point forward, any digression from tonic must inevitably lead back. 

The coda to this entire coda movement begins in m. 300, and from here the music speaks for itself.

This is the most extensive, most complex composition I have ever attempted to pull apart like this, and I am frankly still puzzled by it.  It is in many ways almost too large to understand in its entirety–while a painting can always be viewed from afar, I find it difficult to “step back” from this piece.  In many ways, too, it is a prototype for what is to come, for after the relative respite of the Fourth these next two months, the remaining pieces only get more difficult and more expansive in their scope, and four of them lack the tool of a song text to fall back upon.  I should be in awe, and a little bit intimidated, because this is the musical equivalent of hiking the Appalachain Trail.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Mahler symphonies | Comments Closed

Mahler–Symphony No. 3, 5th movement

January 5th, 2010

After the premiere of my Five Rhythmic Etudes for orchestra in 2007, a person whose opinion I trust came up to me and told me that the first movement was a tiny masterpiece.  I don’t know whether the rest of the world would agree, but it certainly felt good to hear it.  This movement feels much the same.  One reason I’ve chosen to study Mahler’s symphonies is because of their sprawling, rambling scope, similar to novels by Tolstoy.  This movement, though, is focused and concentrated in the manner of a tiny masterpiece.

Mahler’s text is from the venerable Des Knaben Wunderhorn, and as I mentioned in my previous post on the fourth movement, it seems to balance Nietzsche’s text.  The resources are somewhat different–children’s and women’s choruses and an orchestra without violins.  The music is wholly different in mood.  Where the fourth movement is solemn and seems to suggest a deliberate mode of expression, this fifth movement is joyful and exuberant.  The folk poetry of Wunderhorn recieves an simple, folk-like setting, as though we should know this song already.

A first for Mahler (at least in the symphonies) is the use of voices as a timbral resource rather than as pure textual exposition.  Throughout, the words “bimm, bamm,” to be performed “as the sound of a bell,” work in this fashion, but at other moments, the the voices perform similar roles, most strikingly in the highest women’s voices in mm. 96-99, where a melisma on the word “Stadt” contributes to the overall texture.

To break up the folk-like, sing-song approach to the text, Mahler frequently avoids strict hypermeter, with many three-bar phrases, and often constructing four-bar phrases in a 3+1 kind of structure (as in mm.13-16 and 96-99).  Another common hypermetrical structure here is groups of four bars plus two bars.  These asymmetries seem to break up the piece, giving it the same sophistication as other of Mahler’s movements.

Beyond the wonderful use of treble voices, the orchestration is fantastic.  The absence of violins (Brahms did this before, of course) immediately shifts the emphasis to the winds, with wonderful effects.  The bassoons and contrabassoons are featured in a way that hasn’t happened earlier in the piece, and is quite refreshing–by this time, it is necessary to exploit the orchestral palette a little bit to help maintain interest.  Measures 65-83 are an essentially instrumental treatment (the voices are treated timbrally) of the material, and work in the kind of developmental way that vocal writing doesn’t always permit.  While the shape of the movement is relatively small, the scoring isn’t.

The placement of this movement within the symphony is important.  Does the five-movement second part balance the gigantic single-movement first part?  We seem to contrast unity with variety, relatively organic form with a more sectional group of forms–a minuet, a scherzo, a recitative and a chorus, followed by the sixth movement.  Mahler’s world is fully articulated, as rich and as full as the natural world, compunded by the depth and variety of the creative world.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Mahler symphonies | Comments Closed

Mahler–Symphony No. 3, 4th movement

December 28th, 2009

If one is creating a world, as Mahler said he intended to do in his symphonies, how does one choose a text to sum up, in words, that world?

In the Second Symphony, the two texts deal with, roughly, death and ressurection, that is, the end of life and the hope for a new life.  Mahler’s texts in the Eighth Symphony also combine ideas of sacred and profane, and seem to suggest that both modes of thought can lead to redemption. 

Mahler was not a composer of opera (at least, not successfully), but he was primarily an opera conductor.  He thought in terms of the blending of music and words, and the idea that music can be about ideas is central to his understanding of music as an art form and his approach to composition.

So, to deal only with the fourth movement of the Third Symphony, why this particular text?  What is Nietzsche saying here that Mahler deems important enough to include in his world?  Not only that, if, as a composer, I wanted to make sure that my audience and musicians took a text seriously, I would set it just this way–slowly, deliberately, with an accompaniment that stays out of the way, and with very little repetition, ironically.  In song, repeated words often shed their meanings, threatening to become mere rhythmic and timbral elements of the composition.

This movement acts like a way station in the overall plan of the piece.  It begins and ends on A, the dominant pitch, as though the music enters the room already in progress and leaves before it is quite finished.  An interesting parallel here with Gregorian chant–some practitioners of chant believe that it is a continuous cycle of worship, always being sounded in either this world or some other dimension, and that when Gregorian chant is performed or perceived, we are only joining worship already in progress, never ending, never diminishing.  Perhaps Mahler means to suggest the eternity (ewigkeit) of Nietszche’s ideas in much the same way.

The music opens with a motive heard in the first movement–again, Mahler’s preview technique in action, just as in the Second Symphony.   The motive always returns to A, much as the music will at the first entrance of the soloist.  The chromatic mediant relationship is again a part of Mahler’s vocabulary here–FM to am, F#m to am to FM, and then a falling third into the tonic key of D major for the bulk of the movement at m. 18.

Once the tonic key is established, much of the music is played out over a pedal D, sometimes suggesting D major, at other times, D minor–again, a Mahler schema.  Measures 20-23 are a palette of orchestral color unto themselves, and they succeed in causing the listener to do what the singer demands: “Attend” (Gib Acht!). 

Perhaps one reason this text appealed to Mahler is the word tief (deep).  When I choose poetry for my vocal compositions, it is first and foremost the sounds of the words that appeal to me–I will read poems aloud while trying to select them–but ultimately, if they lack meaning or have meanings that I don’t wish to pass along, the poem will often fall by the wayside, or the project will fail.  Depth seems to be a very appropriate sentiment to this music–from the middle of this titanic symphony that is about creating a sound world.  By the time one is four movements in, quite a bit of depth has been undertaken, and I can’t help but wonder if Mahler recognizes this.

After a long pedal point, the music becomes more active beginning with m. 57.  The melodic material here seems to be related to many of Mahler’s other melodies.  Versions of it appear in the finale to the Second Symphony.  This interlude leads back to the opening statement, musically and textually, in m. 75.  The music is again centered on A for a recapitulation of earlier material from this point to the end of the movement.  The text is largely parallel, thus the music is as well.  The narrator’s sleep has been deep, and then his suffering, and at last his joy.

In parallel to the Second Symphony, then, this movement would seem to be Mahler’s explication of his belief in the human path to redemption, rather than a godly path.  Joy is possible in this world, of course, but only in balance with sorrow (Herzeleid).

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Mahler symphonies | Comments Closed

Mahler, Symphony No. 3, Movement 3

December 20th, 2009

Getting behind means I keep this one short–three more movements to hit by the first of the year, so a few questions for further thought.

The posthorn solo is, of course, the prominent aspect of this movement, although there is enough music here for a symphony in its own right.  Some questions–what is the significance of the most prominent musical element in a texture being placed off-stage–in a position of drastically reduced promienence?  Is the posthorn solo, with interjections from the orchestra, meant in someway to balance the trombone solo in the first movement?

A big question about the overall structure of the piece–do the two parts of this symphony balance each other?  Do five smaller movements hold their own against the enormous first movement?

Can Mahler’s style be addressed using schemata in the same way that, say, the Viennese Classical style can be?  Possible schemata–the alternation between major and minor chord qualities, found here, for example, in mm.57-58 on the small scale, and on a larger scale in the entire first section, alternating between C major and C minor.  Mahler also has a very typical cadence–for example, mm. 338-339.  Can these types of cliches be as important as those found in Haydn and Mozart?

As always, fascinating orchestration:  mm. 358ff, 437ff, especially.  I have come to feel that a hallmark of the Austrian symphonic tradition–from Mozart on–is the interplay between strings and winds, and Mahler is no exception so far, especially in interior movements.  Motivic material is frequently given to these two groups alternately in Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, and here in Mahler as well, although Mahler now begins to separate the woodwinds and brass (especially the horns, now in an expanded section).  I’ve commented on this before.

So–short but sweet tonight.  With luck, the rest of the symphony will follow in the next two weeks.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Mahler symphonies | Comments Closed

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »