kabaretti conducts mozart & mahler

“To write a symphony is, for me, to construct a world.” This dictum, expressed in many ways, was Mahler’s self-professed philosophy of music. He tried to channel all his experiences — mundane, transcendent, terrifying, sensual — into music, and then to weave them all into a giant quilt of variegated emotional colors so that almost all of his symphonies reveal a surprising number of different “kinds” of music — marches stand beside love songs; pedantic contrapuntal constructions beside peasant dances; boisterous drinking ditties beside profound spiritual probings. Similarly, the entire body of his symphonic work shows evidence of comprising one great “world”: one cosmic thought in a given symphony being balanced by another of a different stripe in the succeeding symphony. Thus, Bruno Walter, that magnificent conductor of recent memory and a dear friend of Mahler and champion of his music, was able to write about the first four symphonies in the following manner:

“In [them] an important part of the history of Mahler’s soul is unfolded. The force of spiritual events is matched by the power of musical language. The correlation of the world of sound and that of imagination, thoughts and emotions is thus common to them. While, however, in the First the subjective experience with its tempest of emotions is exerting its influence upon the music, metaphysical questions strive to find an answer and deliverance in the music in the Second and in subsequent symphonies. Three times he gives the answer and every time from a different point of view. In the Second he asks the reason for the tragedy of human existence and is sure its justification is to be found in immortality. In the Third, with a feeling of reassurance, he looks out upon nature, runs the rounds of its circles, and finishes in the happy awareness that it is ‘almighty love that forms all things and preserves all things.’ In the Fourth, he assures himself and us of a sheltered security in the sublime and serene dream of a heavenly life.”

Mahler’s Fourth Symphony, the most modest in length and orchestral requirements of his ten, had its roots as far back as 1892, when the composer was 32. These were the years, extending through the composition of the Fourth Symphony, during which Mahler was imbibing the folk traditions of Germany as they were set down in an early-19th-century anthology of poems titled Des Knaben Wunderhorn (“The Youth’s Magic Horn”). Edward Downes, program annotator of the New York Philharmonic from 1960 to 1974, noted a deep-seated personal need in Mahler’s interest in these simple peasant verses: “Like most German Romantic artists, Mahler felt a love for folk art amounting almost to worship. In part this may have been the nostalgia of the complex intellectual city-dweller for an Eden of lost innocence, of freshness, of naïveté.” This vein of innocence, of child-like simplicity is at the heart of this lovely Fourth Symphony. In 1892 Mahler set to music one of the Wunderhorn poems, Der Himmel hängt voll Geigen (“Heaven is chock full of violins”). He completed the song, which he named after its first line, Wir geniessen die himmlischen Freuden (“We revel in heavenly pleasures”), in February 1892, and made an orchestral arrangement of it the following month. When he set to work on his Third Symphony in 1895, he intended to include this song as the last of its movements. The vast musical panorama of the Third Symphony, perhaps the best example of “the world in a symphony,” was conceived to address individual movements to such matters as “What the flowers tell me,” “What the forest creatures tell me,” and so forth for “the night,” “the angels” and “love.” The finale was to have included Wir geniessen die himmlischen Freuden to elucidate “What the Child tells me.” Mahler, however, decided to drop this song from the Third Symphony, probably because it would have been an anti-climax after the stentorian ending of the preceding movement. Instead, Mahler determined to explore the world of this “child of heaven” more extensively, in a separate work. Thus was the Fourth Symphony born.

It is important to understanding the Fourth Symphony to realize that its entire mood and structure are built to lead to the finale — the first three movements serve to prepare for and illuminate the closing vision. The composer is reported to have said, “In the first three movements there reigns the serenity of a higher realm, a realm strange to us, oddly frightening, even terrifying. In the finale, the child, which in its previous existence belonged to this higher realm, tells us what it all means….” The child-like simplicity and open-faced sincerity of the last movement supply not only the general emotional framework of the Symphony, but also influence some of its musical materials. The development section of the first movement, for example, contains a chirruping theme for four unison flutes derived from the concluding song. It is not the normal course of creation for a work to proceed forward from its ending. In this instance, however, this is what happened, and the first three movements need to be viewed as the various steps through which the listener is prepared to understand the full implications of the finale. (Incidentally, Wagner followed a similar “working-backwards” procedure in the conception of his Ring operas.)

Again, it is informative to turn to Bruno Walter to gain insight into the progression of the Fourth Symphony: “In the fairy tale of the Fourth Symphony everything is floating and unburdened rather than mighty or pathetic; the mellow voice of an angel confirms what, in the Second and Third Symphonies, a prophet had foreseen and proclaimed in loud accents…. The first movement is dominated by a droll humor which is in strange contrast to the beatific mood forming the keynote of the work. The scherzo is a kind of uncanny, supernatural episode. Its demonic violin solo and its graceful trio forms an interesting contrast to the other sections of the symphony without abandoning their tone of lightness and mystery. Mahler told me that the profound quiet of the slow movement was caused by a vision of a church sepulcher showing the recumbent image of the deceased with arms crossed in eternal sleep. The poem set to music in the last movement depicts in words the general atmosphere from which the Symphony as a whole arises. The child-like delights which it portrays are symbolic of heavenly bliss and only when, at the very end, music is proclaimed the sublimest of joys is its humorous character changed to one of exalted solemnity.”

The composer, as well, left a fascinating description of the finale. “What I envisioned for the last movement was very difficult,” said Mahler. “Try, if you will, to imagine a heaven of undifferentiated blue, which is much harder to suggest than changing, contrasting hues. This is the fundamental mood. But it darkens sometimes, grows spooky, even terrifying. It is not that heaven itself really dims: on the contrary it shines on and on in its eternal blue. It is only that we sometimes react to it with sudden terror, just as on the most beautiful day, when the woods are drenched in sunlight, one is often gripped by a panic fear.” This quotation says as much about Mahler, the man, as about his composition, but it does give an important point of approach for appreciating this beautiful work. 

The Symphony opens in G major with the distinctive sound of sleigh bells that recurs at important structural points throughout the movement. A number of melodic ideas are tossed out to comprise the main theme group before the music moves, properly enough, to D major for the second theme, a sweet, Viennese melody high in the cellos. The sleigh bells mark the beginning of a lengthy development section that thoroughly explores much of the material heard thus far, with a particular emphasis on the clear pipings of the augmented woodwind choir. After one of the few large climaxes of the Symphony, the development quiets before it comes to an abrupt stop. The music takes a quick breath, and the recapitulation begins in the sunny mood of the opening. The exposition themes are again assayed to bring the movement to an invigorating close.

Mahler’s original designation for the second-movement scherzo was Freund Hein spielt auf (“Friend Hein plays”). “Hein” was the character of German legend who used his fiddle to lure reluctant travelers to the Great Beyond. This eerie movement, perhaps inspired by the not dissimilar visions of Liszt, Saint-Saëns and Berlioz, alternates a diabolical scherzo with brighter trios. Much of the mood comes from the solo violinist, who is instructed to tune a second instrument a full step higher than normal to produce a more strident tone quality. Of this movement, Mahler wrote, “The scherzo is so uncanny, almost sinister, that your hair may stand on end. Yet in the following Adagio, where all complications are dissolved, you will feel that it was not really all that sinister….” Rather like a bad dream followed by a reassuring sunrise.

The serene third movement is in the form of a variation on two themes, though it follows the formal outlines of each theme only tenuously. The first is one of those superb, otherworldly visions (another occurs in the Fifth Symphony) which owes much of its atmosphere to the transcendent Adagios of Anton Bruckner. This first set of variations, dominated by the string choir founded upon a resonant pizzicato bass line, alternates with the second set of variations, given largely to the winds. (The oboe introduces the second theme.) Enumerating the details of this rather complex structure is beyond the scope of these notes, but it can be observed that the alternations of variations-chains is usually matched by a switch from predominantly string sonority (note the pizzicato bass line) to wind timbre. After a surprisingly explosive climax, the third movement comes to a subdued close (Mahler’s use of the harp here is a particular joy) which connects it, with only pause for a child-sized breath, to the finale.

The vision of the Fourth Symphony’s closing movement (Sehr behaglich — “Very leisurely”) is couched in the simplest of musical forms — the strophic song. Each verse of the text, filled with images of an idealized Medieval peasant life, ends with a chorale-like refrain borrowed from the music of the alto solo in the Third Symphony. The stanzas are marked by recalling the sound of sleigh bells and the accompanying music from the first movement (which the eminent English musicologist Sir Donald Tovey dubbed, rather ingloriously, “farm-yard noises”). For the concluding stanza, Mahler executed a harmonic sleight-of-hand as the music moves from its G major base to the ethereal key of E major. More than just a technical device, this gesture gives a special meaning to the closing text sung by the heaven-blessed child: “There’s no music at all on earth, Which can ever compare with ours.” Its beauty, calm and simplicity are among the most pacific moments in all of music.

Max Kalbeck, the distinguished critic, wrote following the Viennese premiere in January 1902, “What touches us most in Mahler’s Symphony is the feeling which emanates from the work. The longing for simplicity — ‘Unless you become like children you will not enter God’s realm.’ Mahler’s G major Symphony is a work for children and those who would become like children.”