Posts Tagged ‘Symphony No. 9’

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.

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.

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.

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!