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Cleveland Orchestra Plays Neuwirth and Mahler

Friday, September 27th, 2019

Last night, September 26, 2019, I returned to the Cleveland Orchestra for the first time in the 2019-2020 season. After the orchestra addressed some of my concerns in personnel and programming, I am, again, for the time being, a subscriber. I particularly appreciated the addition of an option this year to build my own series instead of choosing a curated series and then having to swap out tickets to get to see what I wanted to see.

This was my first encounter with the music of Olga Neuwirth, an Austrian composer less than a decade older than me. Masaot/Clocks without Hands was a fascinating work, and the main reason that I chose the concert: while I love Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, I didn’t expect it to be a completely new experience (more on that to follow). I was able to examine a blurry online perusal score from Ricordi prior to the concert, but there appears to be no commercial recording available, which is unfortunate, as my experience last night suggests that the work would bear repeated listening. A tribute to Mahler, Masaot/Clocks without Hands captures that composer’s eclecticism in very direct ways–a klezmer-type ensemble keeps making appearances in a texture that is otherwise mostly concerned with sound masses and subtle timbral shifts. The look of the score belied the experience (again, I only had access to a tantalizing image of the score in my preparation)–I had expected a more driving, rhythmic sound, but got instead the subtle, nebulous textures that Franz Welser-Most seems to favor in new music; his approach on the podium was nearly as metronomic as the three metronomes in the score (but what other choice did he have, with them ticking away like that?). Ms. Neuwirth is clearly concerned with time and the perception of time, and that worked successfully in this piece. If there is a motivic structure, it was difficult to perceive on first hearing (again, another chance to listen would help), but there was sufficient interest that 20 minutes was not too long, and I will be interested to hear more of this work and others by its composer.

This was, of course, not my first encounter with Mahler’s C#-minor symphony. I was able to review my notes in my copy of the score and reread my blog posts from nine years ago on the piece, and it brought back some of my questions about the work from that period. While last night’s performance helped answer some questions, it raised others. In his pre-concert talk, Baldwin Wallace Professor Michael Strasser played exceprts from Bruno Walter’s 1947 recording of the work, which seemed unbelievably fast to me in comparison to the Bernstein recording that I have used as my reference for the last 25 years. Walter, of course, knew Mahler’ personally, so there is more authority to his reading, although he also had to take the limitations of his media into consideration in his preparations. At any rate, Welser-Most’s interpretation last night was deeply affecting, if not as free as Bernstein’s. I was able to appreciate a more brisk approach to the piece–the Adagietto does indeed come off better when it is around 7 or 8 minutes (by my timing) than a lugubrious reading that labors over each note. I was troubled by the decision to bring principal horn Nathaniel Silberschlag to the front of the stage–in the position between the concertmaster and conductor, as a concerto soloist–during the scherzo. I’m not sure what this added musically to the performance–the first horn part is extensive, of course, but it the movement never struck me as a feature for the horn. Mahler writes for the horn in a particular way, namely, as a fourth section of the orchestra. This is evident from the First Symphony on, as the eight horns in that piece (six in the Fifth Symphony) provide a counterweight to either strings, woodwinds, or heavy brass. To me, this is the exact reason Mahler favored a larger horn section. Taking the leader of that section away from the group–a good 30 to 40 feet away–makes him less able to lead in the section passages. I can only wonder if this is some kind of hazing, or a trick of the “dog and pony show” type that the orchestra engages in from time to time. Despite Mr. Silberschlag’s highly accurate and especially prominent performance, I’m not sure that the decision to feature him in this way was the right one. The orchestra played impeccably, and Michael Sachs’ opening trumpet solo struck the right balance for the entire work.

I look forward to my next trip to Severance Hall, in a mere three weeks, for music by Andrieesen, Prokofiev, and Beethoven, led by a conductor I have heard about but not yet seen, Jaap van Zweden.

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The Middle

Tuesday, February 5th, 2013

My last post described some things that I learned from another art form, woodcarving, through my father and his teacher, Spirit Williams.  Here’s another in the same vein, purely by chance, mind you.

I firmly believe that other art forms have a great deal to tell us about composing, which means that if I have a chance to chat up an artist during a plane ride, I’m going to take it. Last Spring, I met Kiersi Burkhart on a plane from somewhere to somewhere (I think it involved Denver, a city where I one day hope to see more than the airport and the hotel where the airline sends me when my flight is screwed up). She writes young adult novels, and also a blog. This post showed up the other day, about how to help the middle of a novel.   Her five suggestions have me thinking about the middle of pieces, so here are my thoughts about Kiersi’s thoughts and how they might relate to composing.

1. Raise the stakes. This “tip” gets thrown around a lot, and for a long time I wasn’t really sure how one could implement such broad-sided advice.

The easiest way I’ve found is to first work out what your characters’ goals are (both small and large), and then determine: what are the consequences of your characters not achieving those goals? Now make them even more dire. Life and death. Death and destruction. Whatever you can do to make the repercussions of your characters’ not achieving their goals worse, do it.

I think the best way to raise the stakes in a musical composition is to move beyond your starting material in some way.  I’m not suggesting that you string together theme after theme after theme (although it worked occasionally for Mozart), but if you’ve focused on one melodic idea up until this point, say, a third of the way in to the composition, it’s time for some contrast.  This new material should relate to earlier portions of the piece in some way–a similar harmonic framework, or a motivic relationship–but there is a need for variety as well.

Another way to raise the stakes might be to employ a change in texture–if things have been very homophonic up to now, it’s time for some counterpoint; if you’ve been writing lots of interwoven lines, it’s time to pare the texture down.  All kinds of great things can happen in the middle of pieces–the classical approach to creating a movement has a middle that is much more loosely-constructed than the beginning, and even in the middle of a Bach fugue, we can go long stretches without either a cadence or the fugal subject, just riffing on little ideas that have come up.  Speaking of riffing, think of the structure of a bebop jazz performance, with its tightly-constructed presentations of the head at the beginning and end and the loosely-constructed solos in the middle.

2. Lower the low points. The best part of middles is when it seems all hope is lost–that there is no possible way your character can achieve his purpose.

Remember in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, when Han Solo gets trapped in carbonite? Even worse, he’s shipped off with a bounty hunter to see Jabba the Hut, and our heroes are too busy trying to save Luke to chase him down.

At this moment in the story, we (the audience) feel somewhat defeated, like there’s no possible way Han can be rescued from his terrible fate. And in Return of the Jedi, this situation only gets worse when Leia is enslaved by Jabba.

Find that low point in your story (make one, if it’s not there already) and then make it worse. While you’re beating your hero into the ground, beat harder. Did something go wrong in his heist plan? Find three other things to go wrong, too. And it’ll be really satisfying to your audience when your clever protagonist manages to worm her way out of this ridiculous bind.

I think what Kiersi is getting at here is dramatic tension–the middle is the place where we really aren’t sure how things are going to work out, and as such, it has the possibility of being the most exciting part of a piece of music.  Certainly, as a composer, I often view my pieces this way when they are in process: there comes a point when I know what the rest of the piece is going to look like, and I know that I will be able to finish it.  Composing the middle, though, can be frustrating for exactly that reason–I don’t know how I’m going to get out of the situation in which I’ve placed myself.  There’s a famous moment in the first movement of Beethoven’s Eroica where the texture devolves into these dissonant, repeated chords, as though Beethoven threw up his hands, smacked the piano keyboard, and wrote down the results.  Beethoven takes this almost-mistake and slowly winds his way out, with a diminuendo and resolutions of dissonant notes that leads back to the main theme–the beginning of the ending.  In my own Piano Sonata, about three-quarters of the way through, the relatively-complex rhythms and texture dissolve into a single line, notated in stemless noteheads, a moment of repose for performer and audience, and a summation of what has come so far in the piece, and preparation for some of the breathless material that lies ahead in the push to the climax.

3. Up the conflict. Are your characters friends, lovers, or comrades in arms? Are they getting along, smooching, snuggling and heisting in perfect harmony?

This is the primary way in which I find middles sag: the character relationships stale. Either they are at peace with one another for too long, or they’re at odds without any moments of relief.

Cause some conflict. Stir up some drama. But be wary of falling into common conflict traps: misunderstandings that would be easy to resolve, unlikely coincidences, or blowing up a small issue into a big one (this is my biggest complaint with romantic sub-plots).

Use inherent character flaws to guide your conflicts. Is one of your characters prideful? Have that pride lead her to hurt the other character in a way that seems irreparable.

Again, we have to turn to Beethoven, who can’t seem to write a middle section of a symphony movement without a fugato (and who was imitated by countless others).  As Kiersi mentions, though, it’s easy to fall into some common traps, and fugato is one of them (why does Brahms turn every movement of Ein Deutsches Requiem into a fugue?  I submit that it may have been youthful inexperience).  Unless your piece has been somewhat contrapuntal up to now, throwing a fugue in seems kind of desperate (Berlioz writes scathingly about this practice in his orchestration treatise).  But the beauty of fugue is that it does have that “cool” factor, and it’s critical to find something to do with your materials that propels the piece forward.  Look for the same kinds of rhythmic intensification that fugue can provide–change the position of motives within the bar, let them happen sooner, and closer together.  Foil the listener’s expectations about when things will happen: sooner (more drama), later (more tension).

4. Comic relief. I might be the only writer with this particular problem, but I have a hunch that I’m not. Why so serious? If things are getting intense in your middle–as it probably should–be cognizant of how your reader is feeling. In the middle of drama and conflict, give your reader the occasional break.

The break doesn’t always have to be comic. Let your characters have moments of tenderness or insight into one another. In a romance, let passion momentarily override conflict (leading to more conflict, of course). In a thriller, let your protagonist feel victory–short-lived victory. A good middle is a combination of low and high points, leading up to your dramatic finale.

This can be hard to remember, but great music can be funny, not just serious.  Whether it’s Bach’s quodlibet in the Goldberg Variations with its use of street songs (not funny to us, but probably hysterical to Bach), or the trio of the Scherzo in Persichetti’s Symphony for Band, where a little group of instruments, pulled along by a muted trombone, plays a little march that sounds like it would go with a Dr. Seuss story, there is humor in good music.  A composer is a human being, and being human means being both tragic and comic.  Some composers do this better than others: think of the burlesque version of the march from Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony that shows up in Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra.  I’m sure that Shostakovich laughed the first time he heard it, because his own music is filled with irony and parody as well.

That said, it’s easier to plant comic relief in a dramatic work–the Papageno subplot in Mozart’s The Magic Flute, for example, and of course the dark humor of the graveyard scene in Hamlet that adds levity while staying on topic–the downstairs view of the goings on at Elsinor, perhaps.  Kiersi also suggests that intimate moments in the middle provide a break–it works in music, too, as in the piano-cello duet in the second movement of John Corigliano’s Symphony No. 1–intimate not only in texture but in meaning as well.

5. Escalate tension. A good climax is the tip of the highest peak of your story arc. Leading up to that peak are your second, third, and fourth-highest peaks.

I suggest doing this with “post-outlining”: now that you know all the plot points of your story (all the “ups” and “downs,”) organize them in order of severity. Your lowest lows and your highest highs should come near the end, leading up to your finale.

This is especially important when revealing important plot information. You don’t want to save all of your high-value cards and staggering reveals for the very end; drop some of your big bombs (but not your biggest bomb) during that sagging middle section, then escalate leading up to that super mondo finale–and hopefully leave your readers panting.

This suggestion may or may not apply to a given situation–sometimes the beginning of the end of a piece of music is a moment where tension is released–the recapitulation of a sonata-form movement, for example, or the beginning of the “Simple Gifts” variations in Copland’s Appalachian Spring.  The ending of a piece is inevitable once it begins, and layering coda upon coda (in the way Tchaikovsky does in his Fifth Symphony, for example) doesn’t move the beginning of the ending anywhere closer to being the middle.  In good music there is a crucial difference between music of the beginning, music of the middle, and music of the end.  Some great middle moments, though–the trombone chorale in the last movement of Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony comes to mind–are the last moment of calm, an eye in the hurricane.  The birdsong section of the slow movement of Dvorak’s New World Symphony is a change of character that builds into a critical statement of the motto theme of the symphony before the return of the main theme for the movement.  It would behoove all of us to study the Romanza movements that Mozart frequently uses in his later piano concerti–the quick middle Sturm und Drang sections like the one in K.466 are the uber-middle–the middle part of the middle movement of the three-movement structure.  The formal considerations of music are somewhat different than those of the novel, of course, because of the way that repetition is a critical component of good composition, but the dramatic concerns are similar.

Ralph Vaughan Williams is said to have said what every composer (and author) knows: something to the effect that starting a piece is easy, but getting to the end is hard.  This is the difference between being a tunesmith and being a composer:  a song is all theme, but a composer has to be able to take themes (or the equivalent) and connect them in meaningful ways, constructing the musical equivalent of a novel.

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Mahler, Symphony No. 9, 4th movment

Sunday, January 9th, 2011

We all have those concerts that we wish we had the chance to hear, but didn’t.  In the Spring of 1996, I was talked out of going to hear the Cincinnati Symphony play Mahler’s Ninth, and as I’ve worked through the piece over the last two months, I’ve been regretting missing that experience.  Nonetheless, coming to it late is better than never, and I only wish I had more time to really dig in–I’m already ten days later than I had hoped!

That said, before I begin my comments, I’m pleased to have come to the end of my Mahler cycle.  I’d been considering spending 2011 with some great scores of the 194os, but I’m feeling the need to take some time away from this project–at least until May 1, which is the deadline for the textbook I’m working on for National Social Science Press.  The book, to be entitled Music: Notation and Practice in Past and Present is inspired by a book that I picked up in the early 90s, when I was just beginning to become serious about music.  That book, Introduction to Music by Roald Pen, was a reference and my first visit to many ideas in music and about music, and I hope to be creating a contemporary analogue to it.  My posts for the time being will be excerpts from my drafts, as I plow through music theary and music history.

But–one last time to Mahler.  This last movement–his final completed statement–unfolds and develops with a stateliness and slowness that I htink is most parallelled in the finale of the Third Symphony.  Ending with an Adagio is somewhat atypically of Mahler.  There are highly predictable, very tonal moments, and there are also very strange, very contrapuntal moments.  Above that, I hear this piece as a group of deferred climactic moments, each of which allows the movement to expand in scope and makes the ultimate climax all the more satisfying.

After an extended dominant tone, the first presentation of the chorale appears in mm. 3-10.  Mahler makes fascinating use of enharmonic equivalence–he can only be understanding these pitches as being equal-tempered, then, despite the ill-advisedness of playing them as such.  The movement is filled with root motions by descending third, by deceptive progressions and, most interestingly, by progressions which cut against the grain of traditional functional tonality.  Are they backward-looking, or simply intended to sound strange?

Following the chorale presentation, where there should be a confident, full-chorded cadence, there is, in m. 11, a single Db.  At m. 13, the strings enter, again full-throated, with a fuller, clearer cadence in m. 17, where the first independent wind voice is heard.  The horn has always been Mahler’s instrument.

The music changes from Db major to C# minor in m. 28, and the first violins have a quotation fro mthe last movement of the Second Symphony in m. 31.  Measure 34 sees the reappearance of the solo viola–the signature sound of this symphony.  The remainder of this minor-key section is a slower, transitional passage that ends with a return to Db major in m. 49,  coupled with a return of the solo horn and the chorale theme, in variation. 

Gradually, more and more instruments fill in the texture, as Mahler has held the winds largely in reserve.  Measure 63, a dominant chord on D major, seems to herald a climactic moment, only to diminuendo to a return of the chroal material, again in the strings,with only the bassoons doubling the basses.  This is perhaps the most string-dominated of Mahler’s work since the Fifth Symphony.

Over the next two pages, another climactic approach is developed, this time with the first entry of the trumpets, only to be deferred in m. 73.  After a cadence in m. 77, another transitional passage leads to C# minor in m. 88.  Of note, however, is the first passage in this movement for winds without strings, mm. 81ff.

The minor-key section at m. 88 has a degree of harmonic stasis unusual to this point in the movment, with an implication of the subdominant key in m. 97.  From this point, the texture builds to the actual climax of the movement, but not before the first entry of the percussion combined with the first point at which the brass is fully-voiced.

The climactic moment of the movement is in m. 126, with a cadence that begins a further variation of the chorale material.  Measure 138 features a fantastic pianissimo tutti color, with the flutes an octave above the violins and the horns doubling the celli.  An aftershock of the climax appears in m. 142, followed by a diminuendo to a long coda.  Measures 153-5 have an interesting coloristic moment in which the line moves up while the instruments involved move “down”–violin to viola to cello. 

The last page is masterful–it seems to fade into nothingness, just as the First Symphony began from nothing.  There is as much silence on this page as there is anywhere else in Mahler’s preceding work.  With a quiet Db major chord, Mahler’s work, and my comment on it, ends.

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Mahler, Symphony No. 9, movement 3

Friday, December 17th, 2010

This “Rondo-Burleske” is yet another intriguing, tightly-wrought movement that reveals its secrets somewhat reluctantly but in fullness.  A six-measure introduction reveals most of the motivic material for the movement, beginning with a three-note figure announced by the trumpet.  This is answered by a five-note, arch-shaped cell played in octaves by the strings.  The three-note motive returns in the horns, with a three-note rising response in the low winds and woodwinds.  After a measure’s silence (m. 5), the introduction ends with a repetition of the final motive in the winds and brass.

What has really happened in the first six measures is a halting, hesitant version of the rondo theme for this movement.  The material presented appears again and again throughout the movement, beginning with the first presentation of the melodic idea for the movement in full, confident form.  The melody of the first six bars becomes a full-fledged Mahlerian rondo theme, rollicking and surging forward in two-measure segments until the end of the phrase in m. 22.  The initial three-note motive is the primary melodic material.  The next passage, mm. 23-43, is somewhat more conventional in nature, but Mahler’s scoring renders it a contrapuntal wonder, with the melody shared between first and second violins.  This segment is essentially developmental in function and leads to a return of the first phrase, now varied in rhythm and texture, in m. 44.

At m. 51ff, the melody is again divided between first and second violins, and I have to wonder at the implications for the seating of these sections–are the violins to be separated for a stereophonic effect, or placed together for a unified sound?   The overriding segmentation into two-bar ideas is maintained through this pertion of music as well.

A passage of fantastic string writing follows beginning in m. 66.  A sequential passage breaks the two-bar hypermeter, in preparation for an imitative passage between strings and horns.  The section breaks down to a notated key change (to D minor) preceded by conventional material presented in single-bar segments.  The material continues to be halting, lurching forward from statement to statement.  In m. 97, a fascinating coloration of the melody in the violins occurs as the flutes play off-beats.  This leads to a transition to the first episode of the rondo form.

The episode, beginning in m. 109, begins in F major, and subsitutes 2/4 for cut time, with the instruction “L’istesso tempo.”  The mood is significantly more relaxed than the refrain, with the lurching  feel left behind.  This material has an emphasis on root motion by thirds, initially descending, but later ascending.  It is somewhat ironic, that in a harmonic system based on thirds, Mahler’s root motion by thirds seems to undermine the tonal system.  The hypermeter here seems to suggest four-bar measures rather than the two-bar measures of the refrain, although with less regularity than before, with some three-bar measures making their appearance.  This episode ends with no transition in m. 180 when the refrain again bursts forth.

This second appearance of the refrain is rhythmically modified, in that triplets are substituted for the eighth-note figures of the opening.  The overall melodic structure is similar, as the hypermetric structure with its two-bar cells.

At m. 209, a motive I will refer to as the “chorale” makes its first appearance (it will later be presented by the brass in chorale style, but for now, it is more or less a countersubject in a fugato treatment of the refrain melody).  The first downbeat of the refrain melody is also the first beat of the chorale, as in m. 209, where it appears in the trombones, which continue the refrain while the clarinets enter with the remainder of the chorale.

After this fugato version of the refrain, the first episode reappears in m. 262.  In a Classical seven-part rondo, the first episode wouldn’t reappear until the end of the movement, as the next-to-last part of the form.  Instead of the original F major, the episode is now in A major.

Another interesting aspect of this movement is Mahler’s extensive use of enharmonicism, particularly in this repeated episode.  This allows rapid changes of harmony between remote areas, of course, but also conflicts with the nature of the orchestral instruments, which do not treat enharmonic pitches equivalently in the way that the piano does.

The next statement of the refrain begins in m. 311 and lasts 35 measures, in a typical truncation of refrain material.  Less typical, however, is the manner in which the chorale melody begins to dominate this section, even in its determination of the medium-scale formal structure, which appears in nine-bar phrases.

In m. 347, a written key change to D major sets up the culminating presentation of the chorale, in the brass, which introduces a third episode.  This is based on new motivic material, resembling a simple turn.  This “slow” episode continues to build until m. 421.  Which leads to a transitional section with a very interesting alternation of material from the refrain and the “slow” episode.  The refrain returns in m. 522 with the melody appearing in the trombones.

In m. 617, at the marking “Piu stretto,” the first of two codas begins, in the Romantic tendency to extend after-the-ending material.  The first coda, and the second, which begins in m. 641, both are restatements of the refrain melody at faster tempi.  The movement lurches to its conclusion.

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Mahler, Symphony No. 9, movement 2

Sunday, December 5th, 2010

Im tempo eines gemachlichen Landlers… “in the tempo of a comfortable landler.”  I’m not certain what Mahler means by a “comfortable” landler.  That could be a reflection of my lifelong discomfort with social dance, but I also wonder if Mahler is being somewhat sarcastic, because the music seems anything but comfortable or comforting; more accurately, there is much that is distinctly uncomfortable in this movement–phrases of the “wrong” length, harmonic turns that leave as abrutply as they surface and even scoring that is somewhat atypical of Mahler.

To wit, the opening bars are somewhat confusing.  So many of Mahler’s dance movements revolve around a moto perpetuo sort of texture that what seems to be a straightforward approach using dance rhythms strikes me as odd.  The first two measures, a simple pentachord from do to sol, are answered with a characteristic suspension-like figure in the clarinets.  These two motives will form much of the basis for the music in this “comfortable” section and its reprise.  After eight measures of what seems to be “time”–the dance rhythms in exposition, merely waiting for the melody of the first strain, the second violins enter at the marking Schwerfallig (ponderous or heavy-footed) (I need to learn how to make umlauts!).  This is a fantastic description, and one that strikes close to home, because as much as I might try, I am a heavy-footed dancer, as any of my dance partners through the years will attest.  My heavy-footedness comes, I believe, from simply trying too hard and not yet being comfortable–there’s that word again–with the movement.

At any rate, the ponderousness here comes from repeated downbows, open fifths in the celli and the persisten doubling of violas and bassoons.  More on the role of the bassoon later.  The Schwerfallig indication also marks the confirmation of a metrical motive that is important throughout this piece–it appears in the first four measures, and again here.  Namely, it is the repetition of a measure followed by a new measure and its repetition, a four-bar cell that appears in various guises.  As stated, mm. 1-4 take this form, as do mm. 9-12.  The material often varies greatly (although it is sometimes recalled from earlier), but the metric pattern remains the same, a schema that catches the listener’s ear and grounds the piece with a set of musical expectations that Mahler consistently fails to meet.

I have long wanted to learn the steps to dances that are involved in the music I am passionate about.  I don’t know where one would go to learn the sarabande or the courante, but the minuet or the landler shouldn’t be more difficult.  I feel that knowing how to dance the sarabande would bring Bach’s music, for example, into a whole new light for me, and I think I would better understand the give and take of this movement if I were proficient in the landler, as no doubt many of Mahler’s listeners were.  To me, our widespread ignorance of social dance, beyond, as with much of American life, watching it on television, is a sign of cultural impoverishment.  I may pity my sometime partners in the dance, but I feel more of a person for at least attempting salsa once upon a time.

But I digress!  After the first eighteen bars, Mahler repeats the four-bar cell that appeared at mm. 9-12, following these now with an extension that leads to a subdominant chord over a tonic pedal.  In measure 40, a similar four-bar cell sees the low strings and flutes alternating between tonic and subdominant ideas–not exactly the 2+2 idea stated previously, but a similar plan.

In general, the music here is very diatonic–as is to be expected, I think, in a folk dance, but also perhaps so that Mahler can lull us into a sense that this movement will, in fact, be “comfortable.”  The harmonies have been long-lived, and the C-pedal nearly omnipresent through this section.

All that changes in m. 90, where key and tempo change to begin a new section.  This section is much more harmonically dynamic–more chromaticism and more frequent changes in harmony rather than being dominated by pedal points like the first section.

The melodic material is derived from the original material of the movement and is persistently scalar.   The first measures, mm. 90-92, outline a descending sol-do pentachord, the inversion of the opening motive, and the expression of stepwise motion seems to dominate this section in an important way.

This could be my Schenkerian training coming back out, but the structure of Mahler’s lines in this movement tends much more toward elaborated ascending or descending scales than has necessarily been the case.  An example of this can be found in the melody given to the violins in what seems like a developmental core following m. 130.  In m. 138, the melody has C6 on the downbeat, sequenced to C#6 in m. 140, D6 in m. 142 and Eb6 in m. 144, setting the stage for a cadence in C-minor, which quickly proves to be a pivot to Eb major by measure 154. 

Another important aspect of the melodic material in this section is its continual falling by thirds–in effect, having each measure cover two scale degrees instead of only one.  Beginning in m. 188, the melody outlines a ninth chord, beginning on E6 and falling successively to C6, A5, F#5 and D#5.  Mahler’s usual ambiguities between major and minor emerge in the following measures, as the section  comes to an end and the organization of the dance seems to come apart.

A third landler tempo appears in m. 218, and while the key is different (F major) the material is derived from the original landler melody, with the four-bar cell brought back to bring a semblance of cohesion to the music after the faster dance seems to have fallen apart.  Once again, the woodwinds echo the strings with a repetition of the opening material of this section beginning in m. 230.  In m. 233ff, the flute, an instrument somewhat neglected until now, is assigned the melody, which again descends by emphasizing successive scale-degrees on the downbeat of each measure.  After a ritard, the opening of this section reappears in mm. 252 with the four-bar cell.  This is then followed by a fascinating spot that features a bass line descending by fifths, covering half the circle of fifths in three measures to set up the new key of D major in m. 261.

From this point foward, the material of the three sections is partly developed and partly recapitulated, beginning with the second section and its quick tempo.  The key is “wrong,” of course, but this matters little, as the first statement of the melody is not diatonic at all, but highly suggestive of the whole-tone scale (WT 0) in mm. 261-268.  The metrical structure is somewhat more regular, with cadences happening in more-or-less eight-bar phrases and an ornamented repetition beginning in m. 291.  The glockenspiel part here is reminiscent of that in the Jupiter movement of Holst’s The Planets, highlighting as it does certain notes rather than playing the complete melody.

Beginning in m. 313, this second-section material, having modulated to C major, begins to pull apart, with a transition back to F major and the slowest of the three tempi in m. 333.  Only 30 bars later, the first tempo reappears with a rescored restatement of the opening material.  The descending fifths lead this time to C major instead of the D major that brought back the fastest tempo.  The movement, then, takes the following tempo plan:

I    II    III   II   III   I

Can the middle four sections be understood as a development?  Or perhaps more accurately as the B-section of a ternary form?  This second possibility strikes me as more likely, given the traditional forms for middle movements in Austro-German symphonic writing.

In the measures preceding m. 423, the tempo returns to the faster second tempo, which seems to me a sort of coda.  Finally, after 100 bars, the opening tempo and material return in the home key to be deconstructed in the same way as the second section twice gave way to the slow third-section tempo.  This final coda-to-the-coda has some of the most interesting scoring in the movement, namely in m. 566-68, with a moment of mystery, the extensive use of solo viola from m. 583 forward and a stunning bassoon ensemble passage–very rare in Mahler–beginning in m. 590.  The movement ends with a restatement of the opening motive, closing on C rather than G, in the piccolo and contrabassoon, a supremely uncomfortable combination for a “comfortable” landler.

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Mahler, Symphony No. 9, first movement

Wednesday, November 17th, 2010

Of the nine Mahler symphonies, the Ninth is probably the one I come to with the least familiarity.  I’ve never seen it in concert, and I’ve never had reason before to really listen to it.  It is, I’m finding, a very different animal than what comes before, although in many ways, it is a culmination of some trends that really began with the Seventh symphony.

Like the Seventh, there is significantly less clarity of formal structure as motive becomes more and more important.  I’m reminded of Schoenberg’s assertion that motive is what composition really is about—creating a motive and then following its logical developments until a composition is worked out.  Only a few years after Mahler’s Ninth, we begin to encounter works like Schoenberg’s Pierrot, in which motive becomes the music, comprising melody, harmony and rhythm, or Erwartung, which takes a very different motivic approach, giving only exposition, never repetition over the course of a one-act opera.  Only fifteen years after Mahler’s death, Schoenberg devised dodecaphony, which was yet another effort to allow motive to determine all aspects of musical content.

There is, then, a tautness to Mahler’s Ninth that was missing from the Eighth.  The Eighth was motivically conceived, of course, but also had such a sprawling nature, such a blend of instruments, voices and text that it was probably impossible for Mahler to focus on the motivic aspects of the composition.  A text that expresses what the last scene of Faust tries to express cannot be contained in just a few motivic ideas, as Mahler correctly divined.  Both are great works, and thrilling in their way, but I remain skeptical as to whether the Eighth is really a Symphony in more than name.

If I might dwell, then, before entering into specifics, upon what actually makes a symphony.  Chuck Berry sang:

I got no kicks against modern jazz, /Unless they try to play it too darn fast, /And change the rhythm of the melody, /Until it sounds just like a symphony.

 Of course, Berry didn’t mean an actual symphony, but rather the technically driven, studied approach that jazz was coming to acquire in his era—the era of Miles Davis and other practitioners of “Cool Jazz”—in juxtaposition to the raw, often deliberately unschooled approach to rock’n’roll of his day.  But what does it mean to sound “just like a symphony?” 

When I first encountered Robert Schumann’s Overture, Scherzo and Finale, I found myself wondering why he didn’t just write a slow movement and have a “complete” symphony, since I was by that time aware that a symphony had four movements in a certain order.  But then composers such as Schumann, Sibelius and Barber also felt able to compose single-movement symphonies, and history turns out to be replete with examples of symphonies that lack a fourth movement or have “extra” movements.  In the end, what is the symphonic concept?  What makes a composition for orchestra (or for band, as the ever-insistent voice of Rodney Winther reminds me) into a symphony?   Some aspects I think are important:

  • Instrumental.  This is probably a basic requirement, and it doesn’t omit all non-symphonies, although it does omit, or threaten to omit, many pieces with the title “Symphony.”  Is Beethoven’s Ninth, with its choral finale a symphony by this definition?  There is great music in its first three movements, but these act as prelude, really, to the cantata that is the last movement.  I’m not certain that a piece with voices can truly be a symphony, but I know that they aren’t required.  In fact, they sometimes undermine the symphonic ideal, at least to my thinking.  The fact remains that as much as we are musical beings, we are also verbal beings, and the marriage of text to music is always an uneven match.  Text, if we understand the language, wears the pants, so to speak, and will almost always compete successfully for the attention of most listeners.  Even the most vapid lyrics seem to win this contest.  Thus, to me, the symphonic concept is inherently instrumental.
  • Relative equality of parts.  As a trombonist, I have rested through much more symphonic music than I have played, of course, but Brahms’ First would not be complete without the trombone chorale in the fourth movement.  In that sense, the trombones are equal in importance to the other instruments, and no part can be disposed with.  That chorale could have been played by horns or bassoons, but not without a change in color and thus in character.  The appearance of a color that has been held in reserve through the first three movements is a profound and noble moment, and as the saying goes, there are no small parts, only small actors.  However, in a concerto, one part is inherently more important than all the others, and in works titled Concerto for Orchestra, or similar names, it is again the virtuosity of the players that is on display rather than the composer’s ability to make a profound statement.  Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra is not a symphony because, although I think there are messages about life in it, it is mostly about the ability of players to perform music written idiomatically for their instruments.
  • Plumbing the depths.  As Libby Larsen said, composition is about telling someone else through music what it is like to be alive.  Just as large-scale formats in other arts—mural, novel, film—put on display the understanding of the auteur of the human condition, the symphony tells us about human experience from the point of view of the composer, and, in the best moments, from the point of view of the musicians who perform the piece.  Is this present in the earliest pieces called “symphony?”  Perhaps, but it is difficult to know at 200 years’ remove.  Certainly in Mozart’s later symphonies and Haydn’s later symphonies, we get a glimpse of this, and of course it is Beethoven who forced composers to rethink the symphonic concept.  The Soviet Nicholas Miaskovsky composed over a thousand numbered symphonies—he was less writing about his life than writing for it, though, and one must wonder whether such pieces should be considered “symphonic” in their conception.  Again, it is not a difficult thing to write four movements in a symphonic pattern, particularly in a Common Practice style, but to pour one’s heart and soul and communicate to all who can play or listen on a meaningful level is a much greater challenge.  We mustn’t discount happiness and cheerfulness, though.  While there is pain and struggle and anguish in the world, a great symphony can also be filled with light—Sibelius’ Fifth, perhaps, or Dvorak’s Eighth, or much of Mendelssohn.  If one actually is happy, and filled with joy, it is probably one’s artistic duty to compose music that recognizes the value of this, an idea almost forgotten in our world of desires and causes and political statements.
  • Internal unity.  Simply writing four pieces on a related concept or program does not a symphony make.  No one would confuse Holst’s Suites for Military Band for symphonies despite their musical worthiness.  In the Symphonie Fantastique, Berlioz wisely fuses the five movements through internal self-reference—the idée fixe.   With no knowledge of the program, these five pieces would seem to hang together, as do the movements in Mahler’s symphonies, because in the best symphonic writing, the number of movements is, in the end, less crucial than the way those movements are connected.  Schumann recognized this and did not try to claim the Overture, Scherzo and Finale as a symphony.  The movements of a symphony must follow one another without apology and without explanation.  They must be inevitable.  They must be as different speakers making the same point, “good-cop, bad-cop,” as it were.  Composers use harmony, melody, motive, scoring—all the tools at their disposal—to achieve this.  The sonic world of Brahms’ Second Symphony cannot be confused with that of the Third, and Mahler’s world in the Seventh Symphony is a distinctly different one from the Ninth.
  • Commitment to purpose and purposeful excellence.  A true symphony is a serious, heartfelt gesture intended to be the best work of a mature composer, written without constraints of mediocre performers and looking to the future.  It is likely to be experimental in some regard, although the experimentation is less likely to be in the realm of compositional or instrumental technique than in the realm of expressive capacity.  Just as a good pianist will test and probe the potential of an unfamiliar instrument, a true symphonic composer attempts to determine just how her ideas about existence can best be communicated through sound.  A symphony is not a one-off, but rather the core of an artist’s musical expression.  Yes, at the age of 34, I have still not written a symphony, for many reasons, but I feel that I must first master certain aspects of compositional technique, some of which are approached through this study.  A symphony should lie at the core of my oeuvre in retrospect, and given my social milieu, the opportunities that have and may come my way and my personal style, I may not be a symphonist, or there may be in the end only one symphony in me—perhaps a better situation, as how can one write such a summative piece twice?!

And now, 1500 words into this post, I have not even made a single specific reference to the piece at hand—if this were an assignment in one of my classes, I would fail myself!  But the assignment I’ve given myself is to figure out how to grow as a composer:   I hope to one day be a symphonist, or at least write large-scale music, which I have determined are not necessarily the same thing.  I am learning what I need to learn from Mahler, and my listening and score-study project is yielding fruit, if in unexpected ways.  My score is filled with notes on Mahler’s work, and I refer myself to it for future reference, but why shouldn’t this summative work, written by a man at the peak of his personal powers of musical technique and expression, elicit from me a summative sort of response, albeit slightly early?  If you’re dying for specifics, check out the strange interlude of regular formal rhythm—four-bar phrases—that begin in m. 148 and precede and follow an otherwise nearly complete lack of regularity in this regard.  Also, Mahler’s layering approach to this movement reminds me of some of Sibelius’ music—I don’t know whether there was cross-fertilization there.

Onward!  Keep fighting mediocrity!

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Mahler, Symphony No. 8, second part

Wednesday, November 3rd, 2010

I spoke too soon about the first movement of this piece, which I still feel is somewhat overblown and lacks the subtlety I’ve grown to love in Mahler’s music.  The truth is that the second movement, the final scene from Faust more than makes up for what I was missing.  Clocking in at about an hour in the recording I use as my reference, the sad truth is that in the month of October, I didn’t get as much listening done as I want to, but I do have some observations.

The piece opens with a wonderful unfolding of a theme introduced pizzicato in the low strings.  In a choral symphony, the first voices don’t enter until for over 160 slow bars, but that isn’t at all strange here–I felt that development was shorted in the first movement, but  here in the second movement, Mahler seems to be trying to make up for it.  This pizzicato theme of the first bars is really put through its paces, and ends up being a major idea of the piece, which, I think, after all, is the point of the symphonic tradition–doing less with more, making a lot out of a little.  Mahler, as is often stated, wanted to create worlds with his symphonies, and he certainly does.  The scene seems very effectively set without staging and without saying a single word.  A lesser composer may have required a narrator here.

An interesting orchestrational moment occurs at m. 214 (rehearsal 32) in the woodwinds–even for Mahler, this is unusual, but the addition of an oboe in m. 215, which then diminuendos as the flutes and clarinets crescendo is an orchestral feat that I might expect of a much younger composer.  Stunning means of highlighting the subtle harmonic changes, as each chord has its own tone color.

In m. 219, then after much setting the scene, the first soloist enters.   I’m uncertain as to whether this is symphony, cantata or opera.  The text, of course, is in its way larger than mere drama, or even opera, and Mahler’s music makes it even more so–it is difficult to imagine a simple dramatic performance after hearing this piece. 

At m. 261, the brass enter with a version of the opening motive, which we now hear to be related to material from the first movement.  Once again, Mahler is being self-referential, or perhaps just unifying the entire piece with a common motive, as with the major-minor motive of the Sixth Symphony.

I doubt that it is possible to unify a 90-minute orchestral piece solely with motive, and there is much music–page after page, really–that does not refer back to earlier events.  Mahler uses the same technique as many composers, i.e., a reliance on conventional material, as William Caplin puts it in his book Classical Form.  The simple truth is that not everything can be characteristic in a large piece like this, and there must be variety as well as unity.  Ironically, the appearance of motives in an otherwise conventional texture is, in the end, what holds this (and all of Mahler’s music) together.  In much the same way, if every face in a crowd were familiar, we wouldn’t know who to talk to first, but every face has a certain familiarity because we know what a human face basically looks like.  We know–whether from hearing his earlier work, or from listening to contemporary works by other composers, or just from hearing the titanic first movement–the basic ideas behind a Mahler symphony.  If Mahler wrote something that was not of himself and not stylistically “correct,” we would prick our ears, dig more deeply into the score and try to understand what that note was doing there.  If he had gone too far beyond some standard of “Mahlerness,” we would accuse him of being stylistically vague.

I want to pursue this line of thinking, because it applies directly to me as a composer, and that is the point of this series of blog posts:  what can I learn from Mahler that will inform my own composition?  At what point do I stop trying to form my compositional style and begin trying to write pieces that stay in my style?  Does a twenty-first century composer have to manage his or her style in the way that, say, Mozart did?  Where are the other composers who write music in styles similar to mine, and am I near the core of their style or somewhere on the edge?

I have written in styles that are not completely mine, I confess.  I have discovered that I have the ability to write fairly good music that relies on more-or-less traditional tonal harmony, and from time to time, I find it necessary to trot out a piece that is a style copy or simply an original tonal composition.  A part of me recognizes that these aren’t, in a full sense, “Matthew Saunders” pieces, but in another very real sense, they are.  I certainly am not the first composer to have two different approaches to the craft, but I’m almost ashamed of writing these ditties that are not me, that are compromises with the music that is more popular, more familiar, more expected.

There is an iconic moment in the film Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, in which a young aspiring composer (living with his mother) plays some of his music, which sounds exactly like Beethoven or Chopin.  It is eminently clear–and was clear in the 1960s even to filmmakers–that no composer can really write this way and be treated seriously (although he might make some money).  Style, then, is what separates me, as a composer, from the crowd, for better or for worse, just as it separated Mahler from all the would-be Romantic symphonists of his day (Max Bruch wrote wonderful symphonies that sound just like Brahms did twenty-five years earlier). 

There is so much more to discuss about the Eighth Symphony, but I think that, more than anything else, this is what I’ve learned–more about myself than about Mahler: if the music is true to my style, then it is the music that I should be writing and promoting; music that is true to any other style can be written by someone else.  Only I can write pieces by Matthew Saunders.

The Ninth will divide halfway through the months of November and December–fifteen days for each movement, more or less.

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Mahler, Symphony No. 8, movement 1

Monday, October 4th, 2010

I was afraid that I would arrive at this piece and it would be absolutely overwhelming, but that hasn’t been the case.  Not in the slightest.  The problem I’m having is that I just don’t like what I’m hearing very much.

I don’t think this is Mahler’s best effort.  Perhaps in writing a “Symphony of a Thousand,” he had to paint with broad brushstrokes:  too broad, if you ask me.  I hadn’t listened to this piece seriously in a very long time–at least fifteen years, and I knew much less about how to listen then than I do now.  Plus, I think every college-aged brass player has to get excited about Mahler–any Mahler–just because it’s orchestral music that doesn’t involve counting quite as many rests.  Let’s face it–Mahler was good to the brass section in a way that some other composers weren’t (although plenty were).  So in my testosterone-fueled, late-teenage years, this piece may have seemed like a little bit of heaven.  I have to admit, though, that there is a little bit of hell here, too.

One of the very exciting parts about studying Mahler has been getting to know his unique orchestration.  He may call for quadruple woodwinds, but it isn’t so that they can all play as loud as possible at the same time.  Rather, he mixes, blends and balances in a manner that could only be honed by a familiarity with the orchestra that I can only envy.  As a conductor, he must have been literally analyzing scores as he was on the podium during rehearsal, committing every effect to memory. 

Usually, this expertise shows through in the scores, but not here.  There are quadruple woodwinds, and a large brass section, but they almost continuously used en masse, and usually in the sort of mixed scoring that band directors often derisively call “safe scoring.”  Perhaps the simple truth is that the enormous choruses of the premiere required this, but it is disappointing in comparison to the Fifth, Sixth and Seventh symphonies.

This first movement is not without its merits, though.  Mahler may have ignored his genius for orchestration (or perhaps not, as the music does succeed in overwhelming the listener with sound, just not the analyst).  I can’t deny that, as art and as craft, this is an effective composition, just as is Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture.  Like 1812, though, it is unrellenting in a way that is somewhat off-putting.  Both these pieces are great music, but they are great in the way that the Grand Canyon is great–their beauty and their appeal lies more in magnitude and sheer forcefulness than in greatness.

Just what is symphonic about this movement?  Is it possible for a piece that is virtually sung throughout to be a symphony?  Up to this time, Mahler had incorporated voices at the end of his symphonies–almost as though he had exhausted what instruments might have to say, just as Beethoven did in his Ninth, but here they appear from the beginning–from the second measure.  The singing is nearly unrellenting for over one hundred measures–the first major instrumental interlude comes at m. 122.  The material here–still fairly broadly scored–is related to the thematic material presented so far, and it is only 18 bars before the voices enter again.

I don’t understand the almost constant doubling of the voice parts–even the soloists–throughout this movement.  This was not Mahler’s approach in the Second Symphony, at least not to the extent we see it here.   I think perhaps that knowing the circumstances of the premiere–a festival setting with an enormous chorus–may have influenced his decision, and perhaps overly so.  Is it possible that, if Mahler had lived longer, he would have revised this work, as he did so many of his others?  Perhaps 1915 or 1916 would have seen a version scored with more reasonable forces in mind. 

There does seem to be a basic sonata principle at work here.  The instrumental interlude seems to suggest the beginning of a development section, and the harmonic pace of the movement quickens after m. 122.  At m. 169, following a deceptive cadence, a second instrumental interlude begins, this one lasting until m. 217 (significantly longer).  When the voices reenter, the music is in C# minor, and both key and text (which is recycled) continue to suggest the development of a sonata-allegro.

Beginning in m. 231, Mahler dwells on an important text:  Lumen accende sensibus–Kindle a light in our senses.  The Romantic yearning for a full feeling of existence is summed up in this line, and Mahler repeats the text several times, where he has mostly set the text much more plainly up until now.  It reappears in a massive climax in m. 262.

At the pickup to m. 275, the children’s chorus enters for the first time, and at a moment where it seems as though nothing else could make this music bigger, grander, this entrance makes it clear that there can be more.  The music now moves from C-sharp minor to E minor, and then to E-flat major, the home key.  This is not the final return, though, and the key changes again, by sequence, to A major in m. 355, and then to Db major just a few bars later.

A return of the accende lumen text leads back to the true return to the home key in measure 385.  Over the next twenty-eight bars the music builds to a truly titanic climax that is the recapitulation.  It appears over a dominant pedal that leads to a long frustration of the tonic chord–we have recaputulated melodically, but not harmonically, and there is no clear tonic chord in E-flat until m. 525.  At some point, there is a transition to coda material–the plagal-function harmonies in m. 564 confirm this–and a final push to an enormous last page.

On, then, to the second movement, the final scene of Faust.  And then to the piece in this set that I know the least, the Ninth.  After that, I have decided to send myself into some of the best works of the 1940s by several different composers.  I’m not certain yet precisely which pieces these will be, but I know that 2011 will see me in Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring, Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra and Elliott Carter’s Piano Sonata.

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Mahler, Symphony No. 7, movement 5

Wednesday, September 1st, 2010

I used this movement the other day with my freshmen to explain one of the ways that musicians determine tempo–the tempo of the opening is determined by the ability of the timpanist to play clearly the first two measures.  Since the standard timpani technique doesn’t involve the double-bounce stroke, there is a fairly finite speed at which the timpani solo here can be played.

Less literally, I’ve been trying to determine if the title means “Rondo as Finale” or “Rondo, then Finale.”  There is a reasonably clear seven-part rondo structure that dissolves into a long coda.  The first version of the refrain begins in m. 7, with a theme in the brass which includes some daring trumpet writing–D6, approached by a slur of a sixth.  A tricky proposition, and this perhaps accounts for the doubling of this line by the clarinets and oboes.  This refrain appears in C major, in contrast to the E minor of the opening six bars.

The strings take over the texture in m. 27, with a dotted rhythm that will reappear later in the piece, and not just in the refrain.  Measure 31 is the final new material of this section, repeated half notes which will prove prominent later on as well.  The remainder of the refrain is devoted to restatement of material so far, and to a fanfare which leads to the tonic chord in m. 51.  There is then a direct modulation to a chromatic mediant–A-flat major, which is the key for the first episode.

The first episode begins with a rising eighth-note figure and a change in tempo.  The material here is reminiscent of Mahler’s more folk-influenced material.  Rather than a “round dance,” we have a much squarer dance that begins hesitantly in the woodwinds, and is answered with the melody in the cello (m. 56ff).  Unlike most classical rondos, this episode is not harmonically closed, and works its way back to the second refrain, visiting C major (m. 79), then to D major, in alternating sections of 3/2 and 2/2.  Beginning at m. 116 (Pesante), the music moves back toward C major by common chord modulation, to prepare the second refrain.

Beginning in m. 120, the second refrain continues until m. 152, making it a somewhat truncated version of this material.  The transition to the second episode is more or less monophonic, following a cadence on C major.  The second episode begins in m. 153 in A minor.  Oddly, it begins with melodic material from the first episode, in the violas in m. 154.  This material based on the earlier section continues until m. 186, when the strings enter with a unison figure reminiscent of some of the “Turkish” music of Mozart.  Three measures later (m. 189), the brass reenter with the chorale which signalled the retransition to the refrain.  Here, however, while much of the transitional material returns, it leads not to the refrain in C major, but to further music in a developmental mode (this is the appropriate place for a development section in a sonata-rondo).  Some lovely music for string quintet in A major follows at m. 220.  An interjection in Db major (m. 241), seems to move even further from a return to the refrain.  This is followed by another unison passage for the strings, alternating between 2/2 and 3/2.

Beginning in m. 268, a version of the refrain melody, reworked for 3/2, appears in the brass in the opening key.  From this point forward, there are several possible candidates for the refrain, but none is explicit.  Perhaps the most convincing is the chorale for the brasses beginning in m. 360.  This is followed by the unison string material from m. 241 (m. 368), only a half-step higher in the key of Bb.

The remainder of the movement is suggestive of coda material, and as usualy for Mahler, builds to the end.  Some interesting moments include a whole-tone passage leading to a cadence on Db major in m. 506.  A final appearance of the refrain chorale appears in m. 539, this time for the full brass section and accompanied by the timpani solo from the opening of the movement.  Measure 568 is a brilliant section for winds and percussion that is reminiscent of English change-ringing.  The last cadence of the piece occurs in m. 580, from which a run of sixteenth notes leads to the end of the piece.

On to the Eighth Symphony, then.  September will be for the sacred-themed first movement, and October will have the profane second movement.  See you there!

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Mahler, Symphony No. 7, movement 4

Monday, August 16th, 2010

Every entry here brings me one step closer to Mahler’s Eighth Symphony, perhaps the most daunting of these works.  Instead of neat little movements, two giant parts, more cantata, or even opera than symphony.  But that is still two weeks away.  For now, a look into a lovely little serenade.

In some works, the choice of orchestra plays as much a role in the character of the piece as does the motivic material, and Mahler’s decision to include guitar and mandolin makes this movement stand out from every other so far.  In addition, Mahler omits all the heavy brass and percussion, giving a light texture rare in Mahler.

The first section is harmonically very conservative–the first 93 measures are very dedicated to the key of F major, with fairly regular cadences and a great deal of melodic repetition.  The theme introduced by the horn beginning in mm. 8-11 is not just the basis for the material to follow, but the starting gate for the melodic structure of the movement.  Each phrase opens with this theme, and its motives pull apart to become the phrase endings. 

Measure 28 sees the beginning of another notable technique in this movement.  The melody in the first violins is shadowed by a simultaneous variation in the violas, a manner of heterophony.  Measure 38 has a return of the horn theme, now with an F major chord in the fourth measure, instead of the original F minor.  Measure 53 is the beginning of a dominant pedal point that lasts until m. 71, when the bass descends to a G, allowing a half cadence in m. 76, at which point the original horn theme reappears in the oboe, now beginning with a step up instead of down.  The pedal point continues, finally resolving to the tonic in m. 85.

This transitional material is the beginning of a developmental section–this movement cannot be understood as a sonata-allegro because of the lack of a secondary key area, but it follows the basic compositional plan of sonata-allegro.  Sparse material–quarters and halves, with interjections based on the horn theme–lasts until m. 125, when the music changes key for the first time in this movement, to A-flat.

The music moves quickly to F-minor, and in m. 150, the horn theme appears in the bass, in rhythmic augmentation.  The next bars move quickly–to a dominant chord on Eb, which resolves deceptively in m. 162, leading to G-flat major in m. 170.  and beginning in m. 176, the music shifts again to B-flat major.  At measure 187, the horn and cellos begin presenting melodic material in unison, and this unison doubling becomes a contrapuntal treatment in m. 195, another iteration of the heterophony technique noted earlier.

Beginning in m. 211, Mahler presents a developmental core that, strangely enough, doesn’t modulate.  Two seven-measure sections begin with the same four-bar material, but then end with passages that leave them in different keys, the last using a phrase extension to return to F major.  In m. 253, the music seems to arrive in A major, but modulates directly to F major in a recapitulation of the opening section.

In the recapitulation, the same phrase structure, exclusively in F major, is featured, with a very close correspondance to the beginning of the piece.  True to Mahler’s style, there are changes of scoring, and the addition of obligato lines, as at mm. 273ff.  The music moves to a long dominant chord, beginning in m. 308.  This dominant chord has a long neighboring section, beginning in m. 320, and resolves in m. 332.

The remainder of the piece is coda material, built from the horn theme and other material of the movement.  Unlike the previous “Nachtmusik” movement, the music ends on the tonic of the piece.

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