Matthew Saunders’ Blog

This is one of those pieces that makes my Schenkerian training pop back up… I’m not certain, but this movement seems to be a very nice example of a 5-line.  Any thoughts?  Whether this is true or not, sol plays a conspicuous role in the melodic and harmonic structure of the piece, either as pedal point through much of the movement, or as a very important point of repose for the melody.  I often find that, when in the midst of a melody, sol is easier to find than do, and many portions of this movement seem to hang around sol in a way that allows the music to spin around and around that note.

The string writing is absolute genius–my orchestration students will be studying this piece when next I teach the class.  The main landler theme is somewhat more functional in nature than much of Mahler’s writing–we usually see him building themes around a single chord.  The effect in mm. 13ff of the sustained notes helps to unfuld the theme in a very important way–it keeps it from being a mere parallel period in structure.

The change of key signature at m.39 to five sharps is a mere convenience.  Mahler means us to understand the same tonal center, but the opposite mode… A-flat major becomes G-sharp minor.  The minor-key sections are centered on long dominant pedals–more sol in the piece.  The real breaks in this emphasis on the dominant come at a very charismatic theme in the winds which is also the basis for what little developmental writing we find in this movement.

Then back to the landler of the opening, with Eb/D# as a pivot note between the two modes.  A slight variation on the opening section, but nearly identical in form.  The real meat of this movement seems to lie in the minor-key, compound meter sections of the five-part form.

Mahler seems to make a habit of drifting between major and minor triads built on the same note–here, and in the first movement, and as a motive throughout the Sixth Symphony (looking ahead to next summer).   We see this rarely in earlier composers–although I confess with not being as familiar with Lizst and Wagner as Mahler probably was. 

The second compound meter section, beginning at m. 133 is the least harmonically static music of the movement, briefly visiting B major and F# major, with even a sequence (related to Classical developmental-core technique?) a-building at m. 153ff.  I talked to my students in Forms and Analysis class today about the dangers of always seeing what we want to see in a piece… am I doing that here?

The final section, a wonderful pizzicato version of the opening landler.  Is Mahler charming us, or contrasting the pastoral mood here with a more menacing idea in the minor key sections?  Again, I can’t get over the string writing in this piece… it’s like a primer on how to write charming string textures, both with divisi and without. 

If the piece is a Schenkerian 5-line, it seems to me to descend only on the last two chords–meaning that the piece doesn’t have a coda in a traditional sense.  Yet the entire last page, from m. 285, seems to have an “after-the-ending” function.  Schenker, of course, found Mahler to be decadent, and probably would have dismissed his music out of his anti-Semitism as mere aping of earlier Austro-German greatness.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

Schedule for the rest of this piece–3rd and 4th movements until October 20, 5th movement until the 31st.