Mediant Studies

Notes on
Symphony no. 4
by
Gustav Mahler

by
Bruce Baker
 CONTENTS

BIOGRAPHY 3

MAHLER’S ORCHESTRATION 6

IMPORTANT VOCAL WORKS 7

MAHLER’S SYMPHONIES 8

THE FIRST SYMPHONY 9

THE SECOND SYMPHONY 10

THE THIRD SYMPHONY 11

THE FOURTH SYMPHONY 12

First Movement 14

Second Movement 16

Third Movement 17

Fourth Movement 19

THE LATER SYMPHONIES 21

SUGGESTED ESSAY QUESTIONS 23

REFERENCES 24

Copyright © 2015 Mediant Studies

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 BIOGRAPHY
Born: Kalischt, Bohemia (now Kalištĕ, Czech Republic), May 7, 1860;
Died: Vienna, Austria, May 18, 1911
Bruno Walter, Mahler’s assistant then lifetime supporter, described him as ‘Thin,
fidgety, short, with a high, steep forehead, long dark hair and deeply penetrating
bespectacled eyes’. Mahler was also sadistic, a manic-depressive, an egomaniac,
one of music’s great despots, a neurotic with a mother-fixation (according to
Freud, who analysed him) and undoubtedly a genius. As with his music, people
either loved him or hated him. ‘The dedicated Mahlerians,’ wrote Harold
Schonberg, ‘regard [those who dislike his music] the way St Paul regarded the Heathen. It is hard to think of a
composer who arouses equal loyalty. The worship of Mahler amounts almost to a religion…Mahler’s [music]
stirs something imbedded in the subconscious and his admirers approach him mystically.’
His grandmother had been a ribbon-seller, going from house to house selling her wares. His father had
transcended these humble origins; the owner of a small brandy distillery, he married the daughter of a
wealthy soap manufacturer. Shortly after Mahler’s birth, he and his parents moved 70 km northwest to
Iglau, Moravia, where his father opened a successful tavern and brewery. The income the family
earned allowed Bernard to support Mahler’s musical ambitions.
Mahler was no stranger to tragedy. As a youngster he frequently witnessed the brutality and abuse meted out
on a long-suffering mother by an ambitious father. Of their twelve children, five died in infancy of diphtheria;
Mahler’s beloved younger brother Ernst died from hydrocardia aged twelve; his oldest sister died of a brain
tumour after a brief, unhappy marriage; another sister was subject to fantasies that she was dying; another
brother was a simpleton in his youth and a forger in his adult life; while yet another brother, Otto, a humble
musician, committed suicide rather than accept the mediocrity that fate had assigned him. This tragic family
background stalked him for the whole of his life.
At school Mahler was described as absent-minded and dreamy. His mind may have been on loftier things.
Indeed, when he set himself to a task, Mahler had boundless energy, inherited from his mother. From his
father came his drive and tenacity. This showed in his rapid musical advancement. Gustav claimed to have
composed from the age of four. When he was six, he discovered a piano in the attic of his grandmother’s
house. Four years later he gave his first solo piano recital. He learned popular and military songs from
soldiers in the garrison in Iglau – which no doubt explains the frequent appearances in his later works of
folksongs, fanfares and marches. At the age of fifteen he enrolled at the Vienna Conservatoire, where he
made friends with fellow-students Hans Rott and Hugo Wolf. He won prizes for his compositions and
discovered a talent for conducting. His professors noticed the diligence and single-minded application that
marked his professional career, Julius Epstein dubbing him ‘a born musician’.
Mahler became a devotee of the music of Anton Bruckner (whose Third
Symphony he helped to arrange as a piano duet), the music and ideas of
Richard Wagner (despite the latter’s anti-Semitism), Nietzsche’s philosophy,
and the poetry and philosophy of Goethe, which he knew well. According to
Floros (p.263), “Goethe’s proposition that the perception of an event and the
experience of life were fundamental prerequisites of artistic creation occupied an
important place in his thinking.” He once said of his first two symphonies,
“What I have set out in them is what I have experienced and undergone, truth
and poetry in sound.” His wife saw in his Sixth Symphony both personal and
prophetic elements. Yet, like Bach, Mahler was not best known as a composer
in his lifetime. In his case, he was better known as a conductor, his international reputation based on “his
exemplary performances of the great works of Mozart, Weber, Wagner and Gluck, on his commitment to
contemporary music, on the seriousness of his artistic approach, and his perfectionism.” (Floros p.265) He
complained, in fact, that conducting took up so much of his time that he was able to compose only during the
vacation; he named himself accordingly “The Summer Composer”.
In 1878 Mahler began writing his first major work, Das klagende Lied (‘The Song of Sorrow’), a musical
play for solo voices, choir and orchestra. Mahler himself wrote the text, based on stories and legends
3
recounted by Bechstein and the Grimm brothers. In it can already be heard many of the distinctive
features of his mature style, including a large orchestra, and “march-like passages, references to fanfares
and birdsong, as well as a sense of drama, the use of a backstage orchestra, and a sense of dying away at
the end.” (Floros p.265) Although it bears hallmarks of Wagner and Bruckner, Mahler regarded this as
the first work in which he had found his own style, referring to it as his Opus 1.
In fact, while he saw himself primarily as a symphonist, vocal music occupied much of his time, and
influenced much of his output. Phrases from his songs appeared in his symphonies, and a “song-like”
character has been observed in many symphonic passages. (Floros p.266) His song Das himmlische
Leben (“The Heavenly Life”) was a “seed from which the Fourth Symphony was to grow.” Unlike
fellow-student Hugo Wolf, he used strophic verses in the collection Des Knaben Wunderhorn (“Youth’s
Magic Horn”), from which half of his songs draw texts, and favoured folk-like (and therefore diatonic and
melodic) settings. Like Richard Strauss, he set to music poems by Friedrich Rückert. He wrote most of
the texts in his cycle Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (“Songs of a Wayfarer”) himself.
However there was little time for composing songs or symphonies. Realising he could not make a living as a
composer writing the sort of music he dreamt of, he took up conducting, first in Bad Hall, Austria, then a
permanent position in Laibach (now Ljubljana). In 1882 he moved on to Olmütz and the next year to Vienna
and Kassel. This was the traditional path of the aspiring conductor – moving from opera house to opera
house, slowly building a reputation. In 1885 he was in Prague, then moved Leipzig where he working in
harness to another brilliant young conductor, Arthur Nikisch. In one season Mahler conducted over 200
performances, apart from editing a Weber opera, falling in love with the wife of Weber’s grandson, and
finishing his First Symphony. His next step was to take over the Royal Opera House in Budapest from
1886 to 1888. Here he built up a fine company that won the praise of Brahms. When Mahler moved on to
Hamburg, Tchaikovsky himself allowed him to conduct Eugene Onegin in his stead. ‘The conductor here
is not of the usual kind, but a man of genius who would give his life to conduct the first performance,’ wrote
Tchaikovsky.
Mahler was born a Jew, yet the life and teachings of Jesus fascinated him, and he was drawn to Catholic
mysticism, which no doubt fitted well with a mysticism apparent in his personality (conductor Bruno Walter
spoke of his “intimate inner life”) and his music (he sympathised with Wagner’s views about the “religion of
art”.) The irrefutable dogma would have appealed to one who was intensely dogmatic through his working
life. The Christian hope of an afterlife may also have offered some consolation after the loss of so many
members of his family. Yet he was never fully accepted into “Christian society”. He lamented, “I am
homeless three times over: as a Bohemian among Austrians, as an Austrian among Germans, and as a Jew
worldwide.” This may have contributed to his sense of mission and refusal to compromise.
In 1897, Mahler quietly converted to Catholicism. This made open to him the position he yearned for. With
the enthusiastic backing of Brahms (who was then living in Vienna), he became artistic director firstly of the
Vienna Opera that year and of the Vienna Philharmonic in the following year, 1898 in which he began writing
his Fourth Symphony.
During the ensuing decade, Mahler raised the fortunes of the opera to a height which some say has never been
equalled since. He reigned as king, choosing the repertory and singers; staging many of the productions
himself; engaging the great stage designer Alfred Roller; and experimenting with lighting and stage effects.
This was Mahler’s Wagnerian idealism put into practice – combining all the arts of the music theatre in a
single man’s vision. He moulded the orchestra into one of the finest in the world. Yet, while the players
respected him as a musician, they hated the quest for perfection and intolerance of anything smacking of
second-best that made him an uncompromising martinet. He demanded what they regarded as excessive
rehearsal time. He would “improve” symphonies by masters like Beethoven, Schubert and Schumann. He
would reduce individual players to tears. Slonimsky (p.369) tells of an soprano who missed a rehearsal
complaining of trouble with her vocal cords. “What vocal cords?” asked Mahler. “I never knew she had
any!” An orchestra in Rome went on strike when he accused them not only of indolenza but also of studipità.
He even disciplined the audience, forbidding latecomers to enter during the first act. However every work that
he presented was Herrlich wie am ersten Tag (‘Glorious as on the first day’) – and profitable.
Inevitably, he made enemies, not just because of his despotic methods and lack of social niceties – he had no
small talk and was nervous among people – but because he was a Jew and a genius. His merciless tongue
4
expressed contempt for those who opposed him and with anger at those who failed to match his standards. His
gargantuan symphonies were “attacked as elucubrations of a self-deluded mind hermetically sealed from
musical reality.” (Slonimsky p.370) He faced numerous problems in his work, as well as a health scare.
However he “recovered from both well enough to begin one of the happiest periods of his life.” (Hecht)
This was partly due to his falling in love with the step-daughter of the avant-garde Viennese artist Carl Moll,
Alma Schindler. She was beautiful, sensitive, well-read, and a composer in her own right, having studied
under Zemlinsky, Schönberg’s teacher. They married in March 1902. It was a remarkably happy marriage
considering the limits Mahler imposed on it. Mahler (twenty years his wife’s senior) demanded complete
freedom. His wife was to be mother, wife and amanuensis; she was to give up her composing and be totally
subservient to his whims. She also bore him two children.
The first five years of his marriage saw Mahler at the height of his powers. He continued to compose as
during the previous decade in what he regarded as the purest, highest form of musical expression – the
orchestral symphony. He emphasised that purity by withdrawing the programmes of his earlier symphonies
and refusing to offer any “authorised” interpretations of his works. By 1906 he had completed the Fifth, Sixth
and Seventh symphonies. Each was vaster in scale than its predecessor; each was met with hostility,
misunderstanding and vituperation. Mahler was impervious to this, convinced that ‘my time will come’.
When one of his little daughters died from scarlet fever, Mahler went insane with grief. Forever after he felt
responsible in part for his child’s death, guilty for tempting fate: in 1903 he had composed a set of songs using
poems by Rückert entitled Kindertotenlieder – ‘Songs on the Death of Children’.
In 1907 he decided to leave Vienna. That year he was told that he had a serious heart condition. Most of the
remaining three years of his life were spent in the United States. He went to the Metropolitan Opera for two
full seasons. Indifferent performances and the presence of Arturo Toscanini led to friction and more
unhappiness. His letters to Bruno Walter show that between 1908 and 1910 he was
anxious and depressed. When he took over the conductorship of the New York
Philharmonic in 1909, the audience disliked him, the orchestra loathed him, and the
critics condemned him. The feeling was entirely mutual. The Philharmonic, in Mahler’s
words, was ‘the true American orchestra – without talent and phlegmatic’. Their board
was dominated by ten wealthy American women. ‘You cannot imagine what Mr Mahler
has suffered,’ Alma Mahler told the press. ‘In Vienna my husband was all-powerful.
Even the Emperor did not dictate to him, but in New York he had ten ladies ordering him
around like a puppet.’ In July 1910 he began the Tenth Symphony. In the margin he
wrote: “Madness takes possession of me…. It destroys me, and I forget that I exist.”
In September 1910 Mahler was in Munich to conduct the premiere of his mammoth Eighth Symphony, which
met with overwhelming success, one of the few triumphs he ever witnessed as a composer. However, as a
result of unhappy experiences in the United States, “Mahler’s annotations in the draft score of the Ninth and in
sketches for the Tenth [Symphonies] show that retrospect, nostalgia, and leave-taking provide the central
themes….” He wrote to Walter of the Ninth Symphony that “Something is said in it which I have had on the
tip of my tongue for quite a time – perhaps (taken as a whole) to be set by the side of the Fourth.” The
symphony combines several features typical of Mahler: “the fantastic nature of the conception as a whole; the
bringing together of the most diverse musical forms; a taste for sharp contrasts in the coupling of simplicity
and demonic impulse, of archaic references and overwhelming expressiveness.” (Floros p.276) In November
he returned to New York, but early the next year collapsed under the strain of 65 rigorous concerts. An
infection set in, which serum treatments in Paris did nothing to alleviate. He died of pneumonia in a nursing
home in Vienna, aged 50. It was left to Bruno Walter to conduct the premières of his Ninth Symphony and
song cycle Das Lied von der Erde (“The Song of the Earth”) after his death.
However Mahler’s influence on the world of European music was not finished. His influence can be seen
particularly in the music of Austrians Schönberg, Berg and Webern, and Russians Prokofiev and
Shostakovich. His symphonies were seen as overstated in the middle of the Twentieth Century, while
economic restraints of the depression and war years limited their performance. In 1960 Deryck Cooke
completed the Tenth Symphony from sketches. Since then, Mahler’s music has gained a new following; the
resources required may place some of it beyond the capabilities of many orchestras, but recordings have given
his music a new and appreciative audience.

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 MAHLER’S ORCHESTRATION
In Mozart’s time the orchestra was limited to, at most, pairs of flutes, oboes, clarinets and bassoons; a
couple of horns; a handful of strings; and maybe a couple of trumpets and timpani. Beethoven sometimes
added instruments at each end of the register (piccolos and contrabassoons), and separated cellos and
double-basses. In the finale of the Fifth Symphony, he ushered in trombones, while voices made their
appearance in the Ninth Symphony. Wagner enlarged the brass section (with the help of the newly-
invented tuba) to the point where in his opera house at Bayreuth he had to build the stage over the
orchestra so the voices could be heard. French composers preferred the more gentle harp and saxophone
(the latter played with the haunting quality found in Bizet’s L’Arlésienne suites rather than the brassy
sound of American jazz bands). Mahler gathered together most of the above. In the Fourth Symphony he
employed the following:
 4 flutes, the third and fourth flautists also playing piccolo
 3 oboes, the third oboist also playing cor anglais
 3 clarinets in Bb, A and C, the second also playing Eb clarinet, the third also playing bass clarinet.
 3 bassoons, the third bassoonist also playing contrabassoon.
 4 horns in F
 3 trumpets in F and Eb
 Timpani, bass drum, triangle, sleigh bells, glockenspiel, cymbals, gong
 Strings (including two violin soloists in the third movement)
 A soprano soloist in the fourth movement.
Being Viennese, rather than German (as Wagner was), Mahler preferred to enlarge the woodwind rather
than the brass section. (There are no trombones or tubas, for example.) In fact, he often gives important
material to clarinets; the preponderance of these instruments gives his music a special colour, different
from contemporary Richard Strauss, for example.) His music also has quite a different sound from that of
fellow-Austrian Bruckner, who did use large brass sections, which would sometimes be used as a “choir”,
as if Bruckner the organist had just pulled out the “brass” stop. (It may come as a surprise to listeners
today, who would seldom see Bruckner’s works on concert programmes, that Mahler described Bruckner
as “half simpleton, half God”.) It is interesting to note that the percussion are chosen for their range of
timbres, rather than for their force. The sleigh bells are the first percussive instruments to be heard; they,
the harp and the cymbals are heard long before any drums make their appearance.
While this may seem a large orchestra, it is small compared with the Second Symphony (known as the
Resurrection Symphony), composed between 1888 and 1894, which added to the above the following:
 An extra oboe  A pair of cymbals for use offstage
 2 Eb clarinets  At least one snare drum
 A contrabassoon  3 tubular bells
 An extra 6 horns (four for use offstage)  A bass drum for use offstage
 6 more trumpets (for use offstage)  Both high and low gongs
 4 trombones  An extra harp
 Contrabass tuba  Organ
 More timpani - 3 players (one offstage)  As many strings as possible
At the first performance, there were 120 instrumentalists, including between 60 and 70 string players.
Yet it was transcended by the Third Symphony, “which requires a boys’ choir (the very symbol of “lost
time”!) on top of everything else and lasts more than ninety minutes (the first movement alone clocking
over three-quarters of an hour.” (Taruskin p.23) However even this was trumped by the so-called
“Symphony of a Thousand”, the Eighth Symphony, scored for a full orchestra as well as vocal soloists
and chorus. It is in two parts: the first a setting of a Latin hymn, Veni, Creator Spiritus (“Come, Creative
Spirit”), and the second a setting of the end of the second part of Goethe’s Faust. The only movement of
the Tenth Symphony he completed “alternates between dulcet and agonized extremes” (Taruskin p.23)

6
 IMPORTANT VOCAL WORKS
Mahler said that “The first work in which I really came into my own as ‘Mahler’ was a fairy-tale
(Märchen) for choir, soloists and orchestra: Das klagende Lied (“Song of Lament”, 1880-1901). I number
that work Opus 1.” Mahler wrote the text as a teenager, based on a story of a boy who kills his brother to
win a queen’s hand, then is brought to justice by a musician, with a destructive effect on those around
him. ‘One could hardly find a clearer example of Wagnerian notions about the power of music to
transform society” comments Reilly. Mahler placed himself under intense pressure to complete the music.
He submitted it for the Beethoven Prize in Vienna. It was not awarded the prize, largely apparently
because of the opposition of Brahms – although the latter was later to express admiration for some of
Mahler’s music. Liszt rejected Mahler’s request to have it performed at a festival, objecting to the text of
Walmãrchen (which Mahler was later to remove from the cantata.) Such rejections led Mahler to seek his
livelihood in conducting rather than songwriting. Mahler finally conducted the work in 1901, after
making revisions to the orchestration, and it was published the following year. Reilly notes that ‘the
structure of the work is built up through a complex pattern of Leitmotifs and skilfully varied recurring
refrains associated with the repeated phrases of the poetic text, such as “O Leide, weh, o Leide!” (“O
sorrow, woe, sorrow!”) in both parts, and “O Freude, heia! Freude!” (“O joy, heia! Joy!”) in the second.
This distinctive voice of the dead boy, for which [in the 1906 version] Mahler calls “if possible a boy’s
voice” in parallel passages, provides another major link between the two parts.’
Lieder eines fahrendenden Gesellen (“Songs of a Wayfarer”, 1883-5) is a cycle of four songs which
Mahler wrote in his early twenties, to texts which he had written on the common Romantic theme of
frustrated love. Slonimsky (p.376) finds in the music “virtually all of Mahler’s melodic, rhythmic, and
harmonic elements later developed in his symphonies – the characteristic transitions from momentary
exhilaration to depressive sadness, the use of folklike dance rhythms, the ambivalence of major and minor
modes, revealed partly in his predilection for the lowered [third of the] subdominant [chord] in major
keys.” In the first song a man weeps over his “little blue flower” has married another, so “all songs are
now gone!” In the second song Mahler, who saw nature as an expression of the divine, celebrated country
life. There are links with the finale of the Fourth Symphony and the “youth” movement in “The Song of
the Earth”. In the third song, the poet feels a dagger cutting his heart, as he sees his beloved’s eyes in the
sky and hears her silvery laughter. In the fourth song, he awakes from sleep covered with blossoms; but
a minor third at the end of the music reminds him that he has been sent “out into the faraway world”.
Kindertotenlieder (“Songs on the Deaths of Children”, 1901-4), was written shortly after the death of
Mahler’s infant child, for which he blamed himself. The texts were five poems that Friedrich Rückert
(whose poems Schubert and Schumann had also set) had written after his own two children died of scarlet
fever. He writes of turning his face to the place where he used to see her “dear little face”; he tells
himself “they have merely gone out – soon they will be back”; he laments that “they have been taken
away, and I did not dare to say a word.” When Mahler’s daughter Maria Anna died of scarlet fever in
1907, Mahler felt that these songs had brought this on by challenging fate. Slonimsky (p/380-1) observes
that “The chromatic and diatonic steps in the melody are used with literal correspondence to pervading
anguish or imagined hope, and the instrumental accompaniment often picks up the singing line in the
words.” Burkholder (p.775) notes that “Mahler’s characteristic post-Wagnerian harmony intensifies the
emotion through stark contrasts of dissonance with consonance and chromaticism with diatonicism.”
Das Lied von der Erde (“The Song of the Earth”, 1907-9), a song cycle for tenor and contralto with
orchestra, was planned as Mahler’s ninth symphony, yet, aware of the way in which the ninth symphonies
of Beethoven and Bruckner marked the climax of their creation, he preferred not to challenge fate again.
He had suffered a three-fold disaster: strong opposition from the press; the death of his eldest daughter,
and learning of a fatal heart condition. He sought comfort in a collection of Chinese poems, translated
into German. The six sections alternate between “frenzied grasping at the dreamlike whirl of life and sad
resignation at having to part from all its joys and beauties.” (Burkholder p.776) Yet Mahler “achieved a
healing music in the last phase of the final, fading away on an eternal murmur of “Ewig” [evermore]’
(Lebrecht p.210-1). The descending pattern A-G-E (part of the Chinese pentatonic scale) unites the
movements, although it sometimes appears in inversion, augmentation, diminution or retrograde.
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 MAHLER’S SYMPHONIES
The term “maximalisation” has been used (e.g. Taruskin p.5 ff) to describe the nineteenth-century
struggle in the arts (particularly perhaps music, literature and architecture) to reach ever greater heights,
to “go where no man has gone before”. In music, it can be seen in the length of the symphony (growing
from fifteen minutes to an hour or more), the significance of the work (rising to superhuman levels –
Christian or otherwise – and creating a work for posterity, not just for a contemporary audience), the
“acceleration of stylistic innovation” (Taruskin p.5), the use of more and more themes in one movement,
the growth of the size of the orchestra., and the complicating of texture and harmony (including the level
of dissonance and postponement of resolution) Mahler’s symphonies usually have these characteristics:
 The number of divisions varies from no.8, which is in two parts, to no.3, which has six movements.
 They show potential ”for exploding traditionally unified structures” (Whittall 1999 p.27). No. 6 was
originally conceived in traditional form – an Allegro in sonata form, an Andante moderato, a Scherzo,
and a finale in extended sonata form. In other symphonies, for example no.4, there are movements in
sonata form, while nos. 5 and 7 end with a rondo. Departures from traditional practice can be seen in
the funeral marches which begin nos. 5 and 7, and the slow movements which end nos. 4 and 9.
 Many have programmes, which originated from Mahler himself – unlike, say, programmes involving
Napoleon that have been “attached” to Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony, or names that were later given
to some of Mendelssohn’s Lieder ohne Wörte (“Songs Without Words”). Yet, like many other
composers, Mahler came to wonder whether publishing programmes was a good idea, feeling that
they may be misunderstood, they may condition audiences to following the programme rather than
letting the music speak for itself, or to seeing the music in terms of the symphonic poems of Richard
Strauss. He was also aware that Vienna was dominated by supporters of Brahms, rather than Wagner.
He certainly disliked his symphonies being given nicknames (such as “Titan” or “Tragic”).
 Many symphonies have an “epic” quality. No. 1 was named “Titan”, no. 6 “Tragic” and no.9
“Symphony of a Thousand”. In no. 6, the finale lasts for half an hour. The symphony tells the story of
a hero, while the keys of E flat major (the key Beethoven used in his Eroica (“Heroic”) symphony),
and the style and key of the funeral march in the second movement of the Eroica, are evident. As in
Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique symphony, the hero has a “tragic” downfall at the end, making it the “only
symphony that does not end in triumph or positive transformation” (Hecht). Westall’s reference to
“the initially restrained pathos of Tchaikovsky or Mahler” (2003 p.63) seems apt.
 Nos 2 and 5 begin with funeral marches. Gantz identifies a “dotted ‘fate’ rhythm” which is “palpable
in the funeral-march openings of Mahler’s Second and Fifth Symphonies” and “infects” the Sixth. A
similar rhythm is found in the funeral march in the second movement of Beethoven’s Eroica
symphony. Death is indeed a recurring theme. This is not surprising, given the deaths of many of his
siblings, and his own daughter, during his lifetime. This closeness to death led Mahler to the study of
the “final” things (eschatology), which forms part of the background of nos. 2 and 4.
 Nevertheless, as Slonimsky points out (p.368), “In each of his symphonies there is a welcome breath
of fresh air from the fields, suggesting the simple melodic turns of rustic songs. In this, Mahler was a
true heir of Beethoven, who also knew how to relax the philosophical profundity of his music with a
gay rhythm or a folklike tune.”
 Many symphonies involve vocal forces, although their significance in the work varies. Nos. 3 and 4
have elements of a cantata, while no. 8 resembles an oratorio. No.2 also has elements of oratorio.
 The influence of Wagner is apparent, particularly in nos. 2 and 8, which recall Wagner’s Parsifal.
Many of these points can be seen in the summary below of this symphonic output:
No. 1 D major 1884 4 mvts first named, “Symphonic Poem in 2 parts”, later called “Titan”
No. 2 C minor 1885 5 mvts oratorio (“Parsifal”) style. “Resurrection” Theme: eschatology
No. 3 D minor 1893 6 mvts has elements of a cantata Theme: cosmology
No. 4 G major 1899 4 mvts song in last mvt (slow), cyclic form Theme: eschatology
No. 5 C# minor 1902 5 mvts begins with funeral march, ends with animated rondo
No. 6 A minor 1903 4 mvts A hero’s life and eventual downfall. “Tragic”
No. 7 B minor 1904 5 mvts begins with funeral march, ends with radiant rondo
No. 8 Eb major 1906 2 mvts oratorio for 8 soloists & 3 choirs, “Symphony of a Thousand”
No. 9 D major 1908 4 mvts 2 slow mvts frame 2 animated ones
No. 10 F# minor 1910 5 mvts unfinished at his death. Drafts of 5 mvts exist.
8
 THE FIRST SYMPHONY
The symphony was composed between 1885-1888, and lasts 55 minutes – longer than most symphonies
but not as long as the Resurrection Symphony. Like most of his symphonies, it has an autobiographical
element. As Steven Johnson points out, “The early symphonies often imply the existence of what Mahler
called a symphonic ‘hero’, a protagonist that functions like a central character. …melodies from one
movement often continue developing in later ones, just as literary characters develop from chapter to
chapter.” In the symphony Mahler uses two of a series of a series of poems he wrote and set to music as
Songs of a Wayfarer (1885). The cycle tells the story of a man who, being disappointed in love (as
Mahler had been), wanders through life, until finally finding comfort in death. Mahler published a
programme for the symphony, in which the first two movements have the hero moving from “youthful
springtime to confident adulthood; the last two progress from death to a battle against sorrow.” (Johnson)
The symphony begins with a long introduction (then the longest ever written), which Lebrecht identifies
as set in a forest near Kalište. The key of A minor is marked out by a tonic pedal at high and low
registers, with dominant Es also prominent. The flattened supertonic, like a Neapolitan sixth, in the
opening progression (I – vi – bII) is emphasised by a clarinet broken chord in B flat major. Trumpets
echo it as a fanfare. Eerie double basses prowl about. (Steven Johnson describes them as “ungainly and
alienated”.) When the melody finally enters in D major, it begins
with tonic and dominant, which the introduction has prepared us for.
The second movement is a Ländler, a lively dance in triple time
popular in and around Austria.
Like the first movement of the Fourth Symphony, the third
movement begins with an alternating tonic and dominant pedals –
picking up the tonic-dominant emphasis in the first movement. The
nursery rhyme Frère Jacques is played repeatedly – slowly and in a
minor key (as was normal in the song’s Austrian version, Brüder
Martin) – like a funeral march. The use of a nursery tune suggests that it is the funeral of a child – a
common event in Mahler’s lifetime. Bramley’s “For of such is the Kingdom of Heaven” (above) is a
moving painting of a funeral procession following the casket of a child. It has been described as featuring
“long, gentle moods of grey.” It was painted only three years after the symphony was written. It “presents
child mortality as a grief common to all people, irrespective of wealth or class.” (Auckland Art Gallery)
The funeral march music is interrupted by a Bohemian band. Analysts comment that their music reflects
the style of Jewish klezmer music, which was often fast and lively. Johnson suggests that the band is
escorting another funeral party to the graveyard. Bearing in mind that Mahler’s family were Jewish, it
would then be likely that both bands were heading to the Jewish area in the graveyard The words of
Bruder Martin are actually about a (Catholic) brother who is asleep even though the Church bells are
summoning him. There has been speculation then that the combination of this and the Hasidic music may
symbolise the struggle Mahler found as a Jew in a Catholic culture. However Mahler described his
intention as follows: “The roughness, gaiety, and banality of this world then appears in the sounds of
some interfering Bohemian musicians, heard at the same time as the terribly painful lamentation of the
hero.” As a Jew, Mahler had certainly encountered the “roughness” of the world, and after the negative
reception given to some of his works he certainly came to see the world as “banal”. It is possible that
here he is comparing the heavenly bliss that awaits the child with the “unblissful” conditions of this
world. He stated that, as a Bohemian, he was seen by Austrians as an outsider. “Interfering Bohemians”
were probably as unpopular with Germanic peoples as Jews were – and there would have been some who
would have seen them as interfering in the purity of Aryan stock, as Hitler later saw Jews. He tells the
orchestra to play like “miserable village musicians” and with “all the crudity, frivolity and banality in the
world”. Mahler was known for his arrogance and insistence on only the highest standards; it would
appear then, that in these instructions he is satirising the low standards of amateur performance. Mahler
himself commented: " The funeral march of Brüder Martin one has to imagine as being played in a dull
manner by a band of very bad musicians, as they usually follow such funeral processions.”
In the finale, in Mahler’s words, the hero engages “in a most dreadful battle with the sorrow of the
world.” The hero enjoys victory as the sagging melody from the introduction returns triumphantly.
9
 THE SECOND SYMPHONY
In this, and the next two symphonies, Mahler drew upon German poems in folksong style taken from an
anthology of that name collated by Ludwig Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano. In 1888, Mahler
began setting these texts as songs with orchestral accompaniment. He published them as Des Knaben
Wunderhorn ("The Youth's Magic Horn"), a collection which eventually ran to 2½ volumes. “In these
songs, Mahler captures the essence of the sounds of man and nature, especially those sounds from his
childhood environs: bird songs, bugle calls, marches, songs and dances.” (Zovluck) Mahler used themes
– and sometimes the setting too – of these songs in the Second, Third and Fourth Symphonies; in fact
each of these symphonies has a song from the cycle as one of its movements. As a result, they became
known as the “Wunderhorn Symphonies.
From 1888 to 1894 Mahler struggled with the symphony, developing then abandoning various ideas for
the different movements. Like many of his works, the symphony symbolised struggles within Mahler’s
mind. It was inevitable that a composer who had suffered so much bereavement in his life should be
preoccupied with matters of life and death – and what, if anything, comes after death. For the first time,
he found himself making a religious response to this question. The idea came to him in 1894 when
hearing Resurrection, a religious poem by Klopstock, “everything stood clearly and unequivocally before
my soul" – although, apart from the poem, Mahler wrote the text himself. Just as the question was hugely
significant, so the work itself, which has five movements, is of huge dimensions. Mahler wrote of it:
"I have named the first movement Totenfeier [“Funeral Rites”], and...it is the hero of my D major
symphony [No. 1] whom I bear to the grave here [but in the key of C minor – that of Beethoven’s Fifth
Symphony and Schubert’s Tragic Fourth Symphony], and whose life I catch up, from a higher standpoint,
in a pure mirror. At the same time there is the great question: 'Why did you live? Why did you suffer? Is
it all nothing but a huge, terrible joke?... He into whose life this call has once sounded must give an
answer; and this answer I give in the final movement.” The movement is in sonata form, yet the second
subject is quite short. A theme in the final movement is hinted at. Mahler asked that the 30-minute
movement be followed by a five-minute interval, but that the other movements be played without pauses.
"The second [movement] is a memory – a shaft of sunlight from out of the life of this hero....there
suddenly arose the image of a long-dead hour of happiness, which now enters your soul like a sunbeam
that nothing can obscure – you could almost forget what has just happened.” Like the second movement
of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, it is in A flat major. “In the two central sections, a sense of vague
anxiety wells within the beautiful dream-like atmosphere which is continually broken in an ironic way by
excessive glissandi of the strings, especially the celli, but also by the pert echo of the flutes answering the
pizzicato of the strings.” (Stein)
"But when you awake from this wistful dream, and have to return into the confusion of life, it can easily
happen that this ever-moving, never-resting, never-comprehensible bustle of existence becomes horrible
to you.... Life strikes you as meaningless, a frightful ghost, from which you perhaps start away with a cry
of disgust. This is the third movement.” The key is again C minor. This “witty and sardonic Scherzo”
(Zovluck) expands a Wunderhorn song in which Antony of Padua preaches to the fish. Rapid semiquaver
movement suggests the swimming of the fishes, who presumably take little notice of the sermon.
"Fourth movement: the morning voice of ingenuous faith strikes on our ears. In chorales for brass, then
strings and woodwind, the orchestra accompany the Wunderhorn song “Primeval Light”.
"Fifth movement: we are confronted once more with terrifying questions. A voice is heard crying aloud:
'The end of all living things is come - the last judgment is at hand'...The earth quakes, the graves burst
open, the dead arise and stream on in endless procession.... The last trumpet is heard – the trumpets of the
Apocalypse ring out... A chorus of saints and heavenly beings softly breaks forth: 'Thou shalt arise,
surely thou shalt arise.' Then appears the glory of God: a wondrous soft light penetrates us to the heart –
all is holy calm. And behold, it is no judgment; there are no sinners, no just.... There is no punishment
and no reward. An overwhelming love illuminates our being. We know and we are." The Dies Irae has
announced the judgement, horns have sounded lonely calls, a mysterious chorus appears. “The chorus and
the orchestra, accompanied by organ and bells, conclude this magnificent symphony in euphoria.” (Stein)

10
 THE THIRD SYMPHONY
The six-movement symphony was composed between 1894 and 1896, when Mahler was conducting the
opera in Hamburg, although much of it was written in a lakeside cabin at Steinbach near Salzburg. It was
a massive work, written for a massive orchestra. The first movement (which lasts for half an hour) begins
with an obvious reference to the first subject of the fourth movement of Brahms’s First Symphony,
although in a minor key, played by eight horns in F (rather than low first violins) forcefully and
emphatically (kräftig, entschieden), very loudly with accentuation, and not hurried (nicht eilen).
Brahms’ First symphony, 4th movement, first theme

Mahler, Third Symphony, 1st movement, first theme

The melody reappears in various guises through the movement. Although Mahler and Brahms disagreed
on some issues, Brahms had expressed admiration for Mahler’s work (indeed it was largely because of the
support of Brahms that Mahler later gained the charge of the Vienna Court Opera that had been his life’s
goal). There is also a motif consisting of three semiquavers followed by a longer note which may recall
the leading motif in the first movement of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony (right).
Beethoven and Brahms, who had spent most of their creative lives in Vienna,
were certainly revered in Vienna, where Mahler was hoping to gain the opera job.
According to Yasuhiko Mori, “The work begins on a cold and stony tone suggesting inorganic rock, the
second movement is intended to represent plants, the third movement animals, the fourth movement man,
and the fifth movement angels, culminating in the attainment of divine love in the sixth movement.”
Mahler wrote to Natalie Bauer-Lechner of the first movement: “"Pan awakes, summer marches in, it
sounds, it sings, it begins to bloom from everywhere. And between all this, something endlessly
mysterious and painful like the dead nature awaiting, in a dull immobility, future life." The melody
quoted above “is played by a march in F major presented by the horns, but immediately the atmosphere
changes into a gloomy D minor where the background is formed by creaking bassoons and longingly
lamenting trombones while trumpets, like a far echo of the wood wind instruments, accompanied by
tender flutes and the oboe, call a charming violin solo: Nature awakes!” (Stein)
The second movement, which Mahler characterised as “What the flowers on the meadow are telling me”,
begins with a “delicately sentimental” minuet played by woodwind and horn then harp and strings. Later
“scurrying runs” anticipate the Fourth Symphony’s Himmlische Leben, and there are “slightly sinister”
(Steinberg) elements , and thick string tones and portamento slides bring a note of restrained passion.
The third movement (“What the animals in the forest are telling me”) is a paraphrase of a Wunderhorn
song. “The friendliness of the second movement is continued in a cheerful, humorous and very dynamic
manner. The merry and colourful bustle of the animals, however, stops twice in a quiet listening and leads
to an extraordinary climax of the movement if not the entire symphony. Through the silence, from far
away, a lonely [offstage] posthorn is heard, a lyric interlude of the Fluegelhorn, maybe the most beautiful
breather of all symphonies of Mahler, an enchanting, poetic moment.” (Stein)
The slightly impressionistic fourth movement has a mysterious and foreboding opening, then a contralto
sings O Mensch! Gib acht! (“O man! Listen!”) from Nietzsche’s Thus spoke Zarathustra. A year later
Strauss was to write a tone poem based on this source. Mahler later rejected many of Nietzsche’s ideas
The fifth movement features boys’ voices “Ding Dong” with bell accompaniment then later “Only love
God”, and joyful, then sad women’s voices in the Wunderhorn song “Poor Children’s Begging Song”.
The finale is a lengthy and transcendent (Strawser) adagio, painting the consolation of life with God. It
was written the year before Mahler’s conversion to Catholicism (even if that was largely a career move.)
11
 THE FOURTH SYMPHONY
Slonimsky (p.371f) tells us that the symphony was originally “to be in six movements, each with a
definite program: ‘The World as an Eternal Present’; ‘The Earthly Life’; ‘Caritas’; ‘Morning Bells’;
‘The World without Trouble’; and ‘The Heavenly Life’. Some elements of this first scheme remained in
the final product, which comprised four movements.” Yet Mahler “regularly disparaged the very notion
of programmes” (Hibberd p.240) and was subsequently to abandon providing programmes for his
symphonies, lest “idiots listeners and pundits…misunderstand and misinterpret me foolishly as ever!”
Although work on the symphony began in 1898, the symphony was not performed until November 1901,
in Munich, where “the public…jeered the première” (Carr p.3). In fact, in the second movement “the
hissing became so loud that Mahler’s large youthful following in Munich…was unable to drown the
opposition by clapping.” (Mitchell p.325) Used to being given programmes so they would know how to
interpret the music, listeners found the symphony hard to understand until the song in the final movement
made its significance a little clearer One critic complained, "This symphony has to be read from back to
front like a Hebrew Bible." At a subsequent performance in Frankfurt, one commentator thought that
Mahler was playing a joke on the audience. Mitchell (p.324) finds that the symphony contradicts, “in
developments of a demanding complexity and sophistication, the anticipations of simplicity and
guilelessness that the very opening of the work seems to arouse.”
Indeed, the work is written for an orchestra which is comparatively small by Mahler’s standards. (The
brass section in particular is restrained for a “Germanic” composer.) As Mahler pointed out, “the
trombones are absent throughout the entire Fourth Symphony.” There are many passages which are p, pp
or even ppp. “This will no doubt surprise the gentlemen who always maintain that I use only the loudest
sonorities,” quipped Mahler. The comparatively restrained style is presumably related to Mahler’s
description of the symphony as “A dream excursion into the heavenly fields of Paradise.” It is also
relatively short for Mahler, lasting under an hour. Carr compares it with the Fourth Symphony of
Beethoven – more compact than its predecessor and lighter in touch. Indeed, Mitchell (p.324) describes a
“gradual reduction in complexity throughout the work as preparation for the simplicity of the Finale, the
true innocence of a child’s vision of paradise.” Yet this could hide its real depth.
De la Grange (p.1131) notes that only two critics in New York seemed to derive any pleasure from the
work. Critic Richard Aldridge confessed that “it is hard to take this symphony seriously. It is what the
painters would call ‘amusing’, when they speak of a dexterously and masterfully painted canvas.” After a
performance in Dresden, critic Hermann Starcke complained that the audience did not understand it, for it
is “nothing other than ‘the music of others’, ingeniously arranged, masterfully orchestrated, cleverly
disposed for the immediate pleasure of the superficial ear. But however it may ring and sing, …nowhere
does it set off a spark. Only cool, sober calculation, and consequently, boredom.” Another more
perceptive critic, Friedrich Gessler, complimented its composer on having “had the courage and strength
to write music from the heart, even though the cult of intelligence had long held sway.”
According to Floros (p.271) Mahler ‘made up his mind in 1899 to write a Symphonische Humoreske
about the heavenly life. …It is quite clear from the composer’s own statements that thoughts of ‘life after
death’ guided him in formulating this symphony.” Mahler described his approach as follows: “It is the
joyousness of a world superior to our own, but unfamiliar, and endowed with an awesomely disturbing
effect in so far as we are concerned. In the last movement the child which already belongs to this world as
an infant explains what all this is intended to mean.” Carr suggests that it may seem that “The work has
about it an ease and grace suggesting a composer for whom most things in life have come right at last” –
although it “cost its creator no end of trouble” (p.120-1). “He even had dizzy spells as, in a desperate race
against time and in dread of the next blast from the band below, he tried to get as much as possible down
on paper.” At one stage “He tossed the unfinished score into a bottom drawer and could not even think
about it, he told Natalie [Bauer-Lechner], without a stab of grief.” Nevertheless, he wrote to her, “This is
true art, which is always at the disposal of its possessor and overcomes all difficulties…”
Mahler’s wife Alma wrote of a conversation she had with her husband: “He explained the Fourth to me
on a stroll along the Danube; it ought to be imagined like an old painting on a golden ground ... and I
12
resented an archaizing that had no relation to our time. I could not see that he composed this way because
he was so naïve, because he was a child, not a casuist, as one might think at a first glance.”
Was the comment about Mahler being “naïve,…a child, not a casuist” intended to be a criticism?
Certainly, accounts of Mahler suggest that (perhaps rather like Beethoven) he often behaved like a
naughty three-year-old, constantly insisting on his own way, showing little regard for the feelings of
others, and resisting being restrained by practicalities. He has known so much death in his family that he
takes refuge in the past, longing for the innocence of childhood in which we can imagine that “God’s in
his heaven and all’s right with the world.”
What did Mahler mean by comparing the symphony with “an old painting on a golden ground”? And
was this “archaizing that had no relation to [their] time?
Carr (p.123) comments that the symphony “scuds along with a Mozartian transparency and facility.” This
seems a long way from the “bluntness and immodesty” with which Westall (2003 p.121) characterises
Mahler’s music, and from the view of some writers, referred to by Westall (2003 p.138) of Mahler as
coming “nearest to writing dramatic symphonic works of the kind Wagner might himself have
contemplated (in spirit, if not in style)”. So did the symphony have some sort of neo-classical purpose?
This first theme of the first movement is, in the view of Mitchell (p.344), aimed at “simplicity”, a
“calculated reference to the lost ‘innocence’ of classicism”. Mitchell often refers to neoclassical
elements in the symphony, and describes Mahler’s performances of Mozart in Vienna as playing an
important role in the twentieth century’s renaissance of Mozart. He cites, in the first movement, “the
quite deliberately classical cut of some of the…tailoring in the first movement (figuration, rhythm,
cadences, etc.), which he sees as a “classical reaction, of a very sophisticated kind, against the elaborately
programmatic symphonism of the Second and Third Symphonies.” Indeed, when in bar 41 a second
theme in the dominant key of D major appears, the listener may conclude that the movement is in sonata
form; however while the term “exposition” has been used of bars 1-101, “development” of bars 102-238,
recapitulation of bars 239-297 and coda of bars 298-349, the structure is far from orthodox, and the mood
changes frequently. So, while the style the symphony reflects is old (eighteenth-century), it has a
“golden” ground – it is based on the classical heritage, which Mahler (after his preoccupation with
Wagner) has finally come to see is of considerable value. “The musical character tends to be light and
serene, with some playful moments, but a few moments of darkness appear. It is perhaps the shortness of
the work, the lightness of the orchestration, and the wonderful tunes throughout that, starting in the 1940s,
helped to make this work the beginning of the wide acceptance of Mahler in our times.” (Ruttenberg)
Is the symphony to be seen as neoclassical, then? According to Mitchell, not quite. "The Fourth, to my
mind, represents a manifestation of Neo-Classicism peculiar to Mahler himself, an awareness of and
reflection on the role he himself and his work(s) in progress might play in the still evolving history of the
idea of the symphony. The Fourth, or one significant dimension of it, spells out the impossibility of
rolling history back or complacently attempting to continue in the line of – wake of, rather – the Great
Tradition." Any neo-classical elements in the work have to exist side-by-side with more complex
elements, such as counterpoint, which Mahler was to develop in later symphonies – despite his admission
that “I’m probably still suffering from a lack of strict counterpoint, which every student who has been
trained in it would use at this point with the greatest of ease.” He revered Bach, whom whose music he
studied as “this highest of schools”. He regarded Wagner is “truly polyphonic” only in Tristan and Die
Meistersinger, explaining that “In true polyphony, the themes run quite independently in parallel, each
from its own source to its own particular goal, as strongly contrasted to one another as possible, so that
they are heard quite separately.”
In 1900 Wagnerianism was still strong, and many Germans and Austrians did not share Mahler’s respect
for classicism. He was not a “casuist” – he did not try to persuade others to see things as he did; he
simply produced the music he needed to produce. While Mahler’s music might have been intended for a
select few (those who could hear it in the way it was intended, in his theatre at Bayreuth, Mahler wanted
his music to have universal acceptance. He was “naïve” in thinking that others would think the
symphony was good just because he thought it was good.

13
 First Movement
Mahler’s original subtitle for this movement was Die Welt als ewige Jetztzeit (“The World as Eternal
Present”). It carries the direction Bedächtig, nicht eilen (“deliberately, unhurried”). It is a collection of
various styles – which may, perhaps, represent the way children are often willing to assimilate different
influences without being critical of them. There are also repeated rhythms, which might have children
clapping or tapping their feet. At one stage a military section might suggest that (no doubt boys in
particular) are pretending to be soldiers. Floros sees in the classical modes, nursery melodies and
“reminiscences of the Viennese classics” a desire “to depict an other-worldly gaiety by means of music.”
The soft, relatively relaxed, beginning is certainly not traditional, although Mahler makes up for it with an
ending marked allegro and fortissimo in which almost the full orchestra hammers out a perfect (authentic)
cadence in G major, the first trumpet appearing after a long absence, and the oboes and clarinets asked to
hold their bells up to ensure their sound is not lost. Carr (p.123) describes the movement as a “miracle of
intricate organisation wholly belied by the ease with which it reaches the ear.”
The movement follows classical sonata form, although using the rhythms are more those we would expect
of Beethoven or Brahms, rather than Haydn or Mozart, and the “chordal vocabulary is unmistakably of
Mahler and his time.” (Brown p.617):
 Bars 1-3 Introduction (although not long and majestic as those of Haydn tend to be, and not in
the tonic key of G major – or even its relative!)
 Bars 4-101 Exposition, beginning in the tonic key (G major) and ending in the dominant (D
major) – although Mahler changes texture, tone colours and harmonic colourings so often that most
listeners would not notice that only two keys are used.
 Bars 102-238 Development, which, in classical style, wanders through various keys, although
according to Brown (p.617) it “emphasizes submediant and subdominant”.
 Bars 239-297 Recapitulation, which, apart from the required modulation to the dominant at the end
of the bridge passage – and one or two brief forays into other keys – remains largely in the tonic key.
 Bars 298-349 Coda, in which Mahler can not resist straying into other keys, until at bar 301 the
tonic is finally reached, to be affirmed with tonic and dominant pedals from bars 323 to 333, and
hammered in by scales poco stringendo and broken chords allegro.
The movement begins with a three-bar introduction in B minor. It has been suggested that Mahler thought
of the bells of a fool’s cap, although Mahler himself described them as “gay sleigh bells” which begin “a
dream excursion into the heavenly fields” (what the French call Les champs Elysées). Slonimsky (p.372)
describes it as “an extraordinary exaltation of four flutes accompanied by sleighbells, conjuring up a
pastoral scene so often represented in Mahler’s symphonies.” However, given Mahler’s preoccupation
with the deaths of children, it is possible that the bells are unconsciously reminding him of the sorts of
noises that children like; even now mothers often put small bells over a child’s cot or pram to entertain
the child. It then appears at the outset that this symphony has something to do with children – and within
the movement there is much of the rushing about that we associate with energetic youngsters. However,
since Mahler did not provide a programme, the public (and the critics) were perplexed. “After the
gigantic Second and Third, what could they make of a simple opening of sleigh bells, with flutes 1 and 2
mimicking them and flute 3 playing a "naive" little tune?” (Ruttenberg)
Mahler liked using clarinets. Two appear in a scalic motion which slides down to the tonic. The pulse is
held back a little as we wait for the strong contrary motion of the clarinets and violins to reach “home
base”, G. The key is confirmed by broken and block chords G major from other strings. Mahler slides
gently into a chromatic mediant G major for the first subject. “Graceful” (grazioso) first violins rise to
the tonic, while other strings provide a pizzicato background. the many passing notes creating scalic
patterns. These, along with the turns and grace notes, the primary triads and the cadential 6/4, may
suggest Mozart or Haydn – although the syncopation is more consistent with the music of Beethoven. It
is significant that all three composers eventually settled in Vienna, as Mahler himself did. It is also
significant that the classical style – and particularly Mozart’s version of it (he complained that Germans
hated his music) – was not liked in what is now Germany: it was more to the Viennese, than the German,
taste. It is not surprising then that the symphony did not go down well with German audiences.
At [2], bar 32, high clarinets give a bright (frisch) rendition of a contrasting triadic melody – again in
14
classical style, perhaps suggesting the dance-like themes of Haydn finales – although it would make a
good tune for a children’s song. Hidden in the broken-chord string accompaniment is a falling pattern
which is picked up by oboes and horns, and decorated in the style of the baroque corta (a quaver with two
semiquavers). These become a bridge passage, modulating firmly to the dominant key, D major, as the
C naturals in the dominant sevenths in G on a dominant pedal (D) are suddenly replaced by D major non-
legato scales and arpeggios, C naturals being replaced by C#s, leading to a strong perfect cadence in D,
typical of the ending of a transition in a symphony by Haydn or Mozart. There are even two-note slurs,
although the way they cross barlines, and the syncopation, are more suggestive of Beethoven.
At [3], bar 38, the cellos bring in the second subject. In marked contrast to the vigorous themes of the
first subject (bars 4ff) and the closing passage (bars 32f), it to be performed as a lyrical melody – Mahler
marked it Breit gesungen (“sung broadly”), and emphasised with an exclamation mark (Ton!) that the
strings playing legato (violins, violas and cellos) should pay attention to their tone. At times he specifies
the string to be used to create a more mellow tone. The portamento (bars 39 and 56), the shaded
dynamics, and the three rits suggest a romantic style. Yet it is to be played softly and expressively –
which Brown takes to suggest the style of Schubert rather than later Romantics; the use of woodwind and
horns, playing parts which are as important as – and sometimes in counterpoint with – the string parts
bears this out. The repeated-note motif will often appear later in the movement – sometimes slightly
changed, in much the same way as Schubert picks up cells from his themes to develop. “It is not until the
recapitulation [bar 263ff] that Mahler allows this melody to be ‘sung’ at full volume….” (p.617).
At [4], bar 58, the closing passage (codetta) begins. This is not new material, as it sometimes is in
classical symphonies, but more a review of what has gone before. The oboe picks up the corta,
accompanied by broken chords in the manner of bars 32ff from the bassoon. At bar 72 the sleighbells and
first subject return. Yet the dynamics and pace gradually lessen, until they almost fade away completely.
At [8], bar 102, there is a return to Tempo primo, for the beginning of the development. The sleigh-bells
begin, as before, in B minor, although the key changes to its subdominant, E minor, then (by chromatic
mediant) to C major, then its relative A minor, in which key, at [10], bar 125, double-basses take up an
alternating double pedal, later given to timpani. Flutes take up the beginning of the song in the fourth
movement (which of course was written before the first movement was composed.) Dynamics and
texture change quite markedly. At [12], bar 155, the tonality moves a “devilish” tritone to E flat minor, in
which key sleighbells make another appearance, although by [13], bar 167, we are in F minor. At [16],
bar 209, there is anew departure, in C major. From then to 3 bars after [17], bar 224, the winds and
percussion suggest a military band, although strings make themselves heard by quadruple-stopped chords
and much rushing about, and repeated dominant pedals suggest that somehow the music is not anchored
on solid ground. At bar 225 tritones emphasised by flutes (repeating quavers as if recalling the
sleighbells) and cellos then bring a sense of unease. (Diminished seventh chords are also common in the
development. The harmony and texture are also far more complex than they were in the simple opening
of the movement. Mahler did say that the journey would lead “through alternately smiling and
melancholy landscapes to Death.”) There is a suggestion of B minor, in which the sleighbells were first
heard, then the dynamic subsides to ppp. Finally we reach G major, as in the opening of the movement.
It is generally agreed that this settling on G major at [18], bar 238, marks the beginning of the
recapitulation. The passage is almost contrapuntal. (Mahler said that he had never made quite as much
use of polyphony.) It brings together ideas from the opening section – the dotted rhythm pattern, the
scalic pattern, the triplet pattern, and the crotchet + crotchet + dotted-crotchet pattern. The brass and
percussion wade in again from [19], bar 251, rising to ff then fff, where the direction is Wild. At bar 263,
the second subject appears ff, accented, ornamented, double-stopped by second violins and violas in long
bows (grosser Strich), and doubled by oboes and clarinets It is then repeated even more forcefully and in
a higher register, leading up to a climactic high A in bar 279.
It is not easy to see a clear demarcation of sections. The sleigh-bells 5 bars after [22] at bar 298 are
generally thought to mark the start of the coda. The final statement of the main theme begins hesitantly
at bar 340, but more and more of the orchestra joins in, with rising scales in a dotted rhythm, until a
succession of tonic and dominant chords in the final allegro bring a forceful ending in G major.

ASSIGNMENT: Comment on Mahler’s use of sonata form in the movement.

15
 Second movement
This movement, in simple triple time, builds on the “scherzo and trio” ternary principle common to the
third movement of late classical symphonies. Yet ”the ironic scherzo is scarcely the innocent dance of
Haydn or Mozart.” (Ruttenberg) Mahler wrote of it, “The Scherzo is so mystical, confused and uncanny
that it will make your hair stand on end. Yet you’ll soon see, in the following Adagio – where everything
sorts itself out – that it wasn’t meant so seriously after all.” He clarifies that death “is to be taken in a
friendly, legendary sense, as gathering his flock and leading it with his fiddle from this world to the next.”
To those who might see death as a frightening adversary, to be feared, he explained further: “Think of the
undifferentiated blue of the sky, which is harder to capture than any changing and contrasting shades.
This is the basic tone of the whole work. Only once does it become overcast and uncannily awesome –
but it is not the sky itself which grows dark, for it shines eternally blue. It is only that it seems suddenly
sinister to us – just as on the most beautiful day, in a forest flooded with sunshine, one is often overcome
by a shudder of Panic dread.” We might not always be able to see the brightness of heaven, just as in a
forest we might not be able to see the sun shining. The movement reminded Mahler of the scherzo in his
second symphony, which is also a troubled movement, full of sudden blasts and changes of tempo. It is,
as he pointed out, not until the “Adagio variations, which start peacefully and gain speed in a gradual
crescendo, that new world becomes increasingly clear.”
There are two “trios”. The first two Scherzos are in ternary form – as if they are themselves each a
“scherzo and trio”. The second Scherzo ends with a codetta which combines “scherzo” and “trio”. The
third Scherzo omits its trio, but does have the codetta. This is followed by a coda, affirming the initial
scherzo motives.
In the scheme below, the numbers underlined are rehearsal sections. Upper case is used for major keys
and lower case for minor keys – although the “A minor” section in the first Trio is very short, and in the
codettas (as often in the movement) there is a tension between major and minor tonality – reflecting the
major/minor polarity between the main (“scherzo”) and middle (“trio”) sections of the Scherzo – a
polarity often emphasised by Beethoven and Schubert. There is a sudden conversion to C major at the end
of the coda, almost as if it was an afterthought, a deus ex machina in which a an actor playing the part of a
god is mechanically hoisted or lowered onto the stage to rescue from doom a hero who is about to perish.

1- 68 Scherzo 1-2
1-33 Main section c A “Fiddle“ melody
34-45 Middle section C B Muted violins playing an angular melody on a tonic pedal
46-68 Main section c A “Fiddle“ melody

69-109 Trio 3-4 F–a–F C Broken clarinet melody with trills over a drone

109-200 Scherzo 5-8

109-144 Main section c A “Fiddle“ melody
145-156 Middle section C B Muted violins playing an angular melody on a tonic pedal
157-184 Main section c A “Fiddle“ melody “
185-200 Codetta C/c A+B Combination of “fiddle“& angular melodies

201-280 Trio 9-11 F – D C Broken clarinet melody with trills over broken chords

281-329 Scherzo 12-13…

281-313 Main section D/d A “Fiddle“ melody
314-329 Codetta C/c A+B Combination of “fiddle“& angular melodies

330-364 Coda …13-14 c – C A “Fiddle” melody

In the traditional classical symphony, the second movement is usually slow and relatively soft, while the

16
third movement is a minuet or scherzo and trio; however in this symphony Mahler reversed the order.
(He was later to do something similar in his Sixth Symphony, even though he originally had the
movements in their traditional order.)
Mahler wrote of the movement: “Friend Hein introduces a dance; Death bows the fiddle in a most
remarkable way and plays us up to Heaven.” Techniques such as using mutes or playing sul ponticello
create other-worldly effects. Mahler instructs that the solo violin be tuned a tone higher than other violins
in order to achieve this “heavenward” rise. It was common in the Baroque Period (when there was a
certain flexibility in the number and tuning of strings on some instruments) for instruments to be tuned
higher than would be normal today. Vivaldi uses this technique in his violin concertos. It was known as
scordatura (short for discordatura). In this movement Mahler has the solo violinist tune his instrument
higher than usual, so that the notes are written like those of a transposing instrument in D. The tighter
strings creates a slightly more brilliant (and less mellow) tone than would otherwise be the case. Later in
the movement, the melody the fiddler plays is imitated by a second soloist (playing a violin tuned
normally). In contrast there are various screams, laughs and growls from woodwind that suggest that
death may be doing his utmost to distract our eyes from the heavenly destination – although the
interruptions in the movement may stem more from the interruptions Mahler suffered while writing it.
Carr (p.120-1) tells us that Mahler “had dizzy spells as, in a desperate race against time and in dread of
the next blast from the band below, he tried to get as much as possible down on paper.”
The movement is marked In gemächlicher Bewegung, ohne Hast (“in an easy motion, without haste”).
At the outset, “A mournful horn signal is echoed by an angst-laden figure in the oboe.” (Slonimsky
p.372) The tonality of the introduction (and in fact of much of the movement) is uncertain, although the
key eventually emerges in bar 8 from first horn, violas and cellos. This key, that of Beethoven’s
Pathétique Sonata and so-called Fate Symphony (no.5), of Chopin’s foreboding Prelude op.28 no. 20,
and of the brief outbursts (resembling those which pervade the first movement of Beethoven’s Fifth
Symphony) which open Mahler’s Second Symphony, might seem odd for a scherzo; however, as in the
first movement, the mood changes throughout the movement.
The sound is sometimes quite edgy – not surprising in a movement described by Floros (p.272) as a
“Dance of Death”. There are many instances of the tritone, the so-called “Devil’s Interval”, and many
augmented triads. While examples of the tritone and augmented triad can be found in earlier music, it is
usually as a result of the movement of parts, rather than a deliberate attempt to create harmonic colour.
Late romantic composers used augmented triads more deliberately – to sound magical (as in Dukas’s The
Sorcerer’s Apprentice), other-worldly (as in Wagner’s operas about superhuman beings), or indefinite (as
in Debussy’s impressionistic music), and many twentieth-century composers used the tritone to create a
sense of anxiety, foreboding, lament or chaos. (For example, Benjamin Britten uses it in his War
Requiem.) There is a major-minor tension throughout the movement which also creates a feeling of
insecurity or unease.
At [11], bar 254, the mood changes. First violins play a melody in steady dotted-crotchets, using
portamento to “smooth out” the leaps in the manner of some romantic music – such as, for example, some
Viennese waltzes – and in fact the music has slowing down so that it sounds like 3/4 rather than 3/8. In a
manner that some (including his wife Alma) may see as naïve and childlike, Mahler saw heaven as a
place of pleasure and joy; what could express this better than a melody from the dance halls of Vienna?
ASSIGNMENT: What innovations did Mahler make in the second movement of his Fourth Symphony?

Third movement
Mahler placed this generally peaceful movement after an often disturbing scherzo – the reverse of what
he did in the Second Symphony. He intended this movement to display “festive, blissful repose, earnestly
gentle cheerfulness”, although reminiscences of life’s sorrows intrude from time to time: “A divinely
serene, yet profoundly sad melody runs through it”, he said – as a result of which “you can only laugh and
weep listening to it”. Yet “the new world [heaven] becomes increasingly clear, spreading before the
traveller’s eyes, and progressing through a series of metamorphoses, until the last abode is reached, where
all wishes are fulfilled, and where spirits dance and play and sing in everlasting bliss.”
17
The movement is marked Ruhevoll (“peacefully”), poco adagio. According to Carr (p.12), “Mahler
always referred to his mother with love and claimed that in his Fourth Symphony’s bitter-sweet Adagio,
perhaps his loveliest, he pictured her smiling through tears.” Brown comments, “For she, too, had
suffered endlessly, but had always resolved everything in love and forgiveness.
The five sections have thematic links, as if they are variations on a theme; yet the variations vary widely,
in the way that those on themes by Handel and Haydn that Brahms had written 38 and 26 years earlier
respectively – which no doubt Mahler, who owed much to the support of Brahms in gaining his new post
at the Vienna opera, felt was appropriate. Mahler said that in fact they were the first “real” variations that
he had written – “that is, the first to be completely transformed as he thinks variations should be. He calls
it his most beautiful Andante – in fact the best thing he has done so far.” (Brown p.614) They are, then,
closer to Strauss’s Metamorphosen than to a classical “Theme and Variations” movement. Tempos
change constantly (generally becoming faster as the movement progresses). The first of two alternating
themes undergoes constant thematic transformation. Brown sees (p.627) references to other works Mahler
had conducted, including a hint of the closing chorale of his Resurrection Symphony.
The movement begins with a feeling of total serenity – the restrained dynamics, the long notes on lower
strings, the mellow character of cellos in their upper register, then the violins high on their D, then A
strings, smoothing over any leaps with portamento, until they reach a high D, where they float over other
strings as if they are in heaven looking down on the cellos and basses far below. The key (which is often
unclear in Mahler’s music) is marked clearly at the outset as G major, while pizzicato double basses and
legato cellos and viola emphasise the tonality. The tone colour changes as wind instruments begin to
appear – firstly, at [1], bar 25, an oboe tenderly (zart) enters with a tune in counterpoint with the high
violin melody, then in bar 31 bassoons and horns (with violas), still in two-part counterpoint. Just before
[2], at bar 61, basses and harp move up to the dominant of E minor, in which key a grieving (klagend)
oboe recalls the sadness of life on earth. At bar 67 first violins sing (singend – again portamento) us back
to G major for a few moments, although there is a sinking chromatic movement (a classic sign of
lamentation) and the oboe draws us back into the relative minor. At 75 horns become more assertive,
perhaps remembering a particularly unhappy event, and the oboe immediately takes up his lament again.
There are some attractive chromatic harmonies reminiscent of Wagner, then at [3], bar 81, a horn
“warmly” takes up the song – while the orchestra “heats up” appassionato (Leidenschaftlich) over a C
pedal to a climax at bar 89, and a series of falling chromatic scales leads us further downwards, around a
D pedal,. At [4], bar 107, we seem to be back in graceful (Anmutig) Vienna. But the mood continues to
change, and the scoring becomes thicker. There are hints of Mahler’s friend Bruckner, such as in the
scoring for instrumental “blocks” (as if pulling out stops on the organ). However peace is restored – for a
while…. The opening melody is transformed into ¾ for a slow Viennese waltz at [9], bar 222, then a fast
waltz in 3/8 (bar 238). (Mahler’s heaven is a place of dancing, as well as eating and drinking. In bars
246ff there is an allusion to the rhythm of the main theme of the scherzo.) At [10], bar 264, with a sudden
allegro, it is converted to 2/4 in E major, the second violins and cellos ornamenting it heavily. At bar 278
it, again suddenly (subito) jumps to Allegro molto with offbeat accents like a polka.
Mahler described the movement as “spherical”, which Slonimsky (p.373) interprets as “a continuous
surface of sounds, without a beginning or an end”, an idea which Slonimsky regards as “prophetic”, in the
sense that it was to be advanced by ultramodern composers of the last third of the twentieth century.
Brown (p.627) refers to the use of Klangfarbenmelodie, a term used by Schönberg to describe a melody
of tone colours rather than pitches, timbres which shift slowly as one instrument or group of instruments
gives way to another. This can be seen in bars 71ff and 318ff. The technique is more apparent in the
Fifth and Sixth symphonies – such as the end of the second movement of the Fifth Symphony.
Mahler described the mood as “like the uniform blue of the sky…. Sometimes it becomes overcast and
uncanny, horrific: but it is not heaven itself which darkens, for it goes on shining with its everlasting
blue. It is only that to us it seems suddenly sinister.” Near the end there is “a fortissimo blaze from the
whole orchestra which routs any last qualms.” (Carr p.123) “The final dying-away is like the music of
the spheres [sphärisch] – the atmosphere almost that of the Catholic Church,” notes Mahler. “In this
context, the non-cadential end underlines the concept of the eternal.” (Brown p.627)

ASSIGNMENT: Describe the moods of the movement and how Mahler achieves them.
18
 Fourth movement
Unlike Liszt, whom Wagner discouraged from writing a Paradisio finale to his Dante Symphony, on the
grounds that paradise could not be expressed musically, Mahler “not only composes a gateway to
paradise, but goes on to realise it in the Finale.” (Brown p.627) The fourth movement is an arrangement
of a poem which Mahler had rephrased and given a musical setting in Hamburg in 1892. The text is a
five-stanza poem called Der Himmel hãngt voll Geigen (“Heaven is festooned with violins”) taken from
Des Knaben Wunderhorn. Indeed, it concludes by praising musica coelestis (“heavenly music”), asserting
that “No earthly music can be compared with ours.” Mahler renamed it Das himmlische Leben (“The
Heavenly Life”). It is “a collection of images that a child might associate with heaven, from biblical
characters through later Christian saints. Like the kind of afterlife Mahler suggested in his Second
Symphony, the heaven described in Das himmlische Leben is free from judgement and full of peace.
…the concerns of earthly life have no place, since all the things that might be lacking on earth are
plentiful and available without cost.” (Zychowitz p.37)
The song “was to become the Finale in the early plans for Symphony no.3. Mahler decided it would not
be appropriate in this context, because its ideas about the ultimate life situation emphasized a carefree
existence centered on food, drink, dance and music – hardly the stuff of the Third Symphony’s
metaphysical goals.” (Brown p.613). Goethe damned it with faint praise: “Christian cloud-cuckoo land,
but not lacking in wit.”
While the song itself is heard only in the fourth movement, thematic ideas from the song appear in the
other movements. For example, the first phrase played by the clarinet in the fourth movement can be
compared with the first two phrases played by the flutes at [10], bar 125, in the first movement. The
rhythm, phrasing, shape and ornamentation are different, but there is a similarity. This, and are other
instances too, show that Mahler planned the symphony as an integrated whole, using cyclic form to give
it unity.
However this was the first movement of the symphony to be written. Mahler described the movement
thus: “We enjoy the heavenly pleasures, thus we avoid the earthly things. No worldly strife is heard in
Heaven! All lives in most gentle restfulness! We live an angelic life! Yet we are quite cheerful, quite
cheerful as well!” There are perhaps hints of the Frei aber fröh motto which Brahms set to music in the F
– Ab – F opening of his third symphony and the two main keys of his F Major Quintet, both works
written 16 years earlier. (Kalbeck claimed that it was Brahms’ motto, and while doubts have been
expressed about this, and some of the claims made for the use of this motto in Brahms’s works, Brown
shows that its appearance in the Third Symphony is hard to contest.)
It is marked Serh behaglich (“Very leisurely”). As in the previous movement, the key (again G major) is
stated clearly at the outset. At bar 1, “Although the solo clarinet is in its rather bland middle register
(tessitura would be classed as middle), the four accompanying parts are deployed in such a way as to
create a magically wistful tone quality. The violas and cellos, con sordini, fully outline the harmony,
which is doubled at the unison by the harp, but much of the effectiveness of this passage comes from the
clever interplay between the violas and cellos”. Muted cello glissandi played ppp certainly provide an
interesting tone colour. “The final shading is added by the horn D. Texture is closely linked to timbre in
this passage, for the effectiveness of the horn comes in large part from the fact that it fills in the vertical
space (and hence closes the texture) between the clarinet and the other accompanying instruments.”
(White p.238)
At [1], bar 12, the singers enters with the first stanza, picking the triadic melody with which a clarinet
began the movement, although extending into a vocal melisma on the first syllable of himmlischen
(“heavenly”), so making it clear what the movement it about. Mahler further highlights the importance of
the song by warning in the score that the soprano should sing “with childlike and serene expression,
absolutely without parody” – underlining its association with children – and that “It is of the greatest
importance that the singer should be accompanied with utmost discretion.” Mahler described the
movement as a blend of ‘roguishness’ and ‘deepest mysticism’, claiming that it stood “everything on its
head”. This is presumably because between the sung meditations, the orchestra create sounds that are
19
often anything but meditative. According to German musician and philosopher Theodor Adorno, it is not
a gaining of innocence which is being celebrated but the irretrievable loss of innocence that is being
mourned. In heaven, souls can see the strife and wrongdoing that characterises much of earthly life in
stark contrast with the peace and purity they now enjoy. (Mahler was also struggling to concentrate on
writing the symphony because of the noise being played by a band below him.) As a result, the peace of
the singer’s poetry is often contrasted with memories of worldly cares, strife and disappointments.
However these come to mind only very gradually. Running (fließend) passages which appeared first in
the introduction in triplet quavers or semiquavers, often in a scalic pattern, reappear between or even
during passages from the soloist. The first of them is played in bars 17ff by first violins in triplet quavers,
picking up the pattern played by flute(s) in bar 6, but pp. The second, from bar 20, is a little more lively,
beginning with a flute and oboe echoing in rhythmic transformation a motif which has already appeared
several times (hinted at by first violins at the end of bar 19), then continuing in semiquavers, in a marked
swell. They are doubled by second violins, although pp, and muted. However the flute and violin
continue to intersperse semiquaver runs in various patterns, interrupted by the dotted rhythms that
pervaded the first 16 bars of the movement, until at [2], bar 25, a high flute extends the passage, etwas
herfortretend (“standing out a little”), which it would be anyway because of its high register. By [3], bar
40, Mahler picks up a Beethovenian technique of having the motif enter mf, fade away, then reappear at
mf, until later it enters at ff, tailing off to p then entering ff again. The diminuendi may be a suggestion of
worldly dreams that came to nothing, or of lives that ended prematurely. When the passage dies away
(morendo) in bars 34-35 we may think that earthly cares have faded from the heavenly mind. The singer
(doubled very effectively by ppp flutes, muted and ppp open horns, and harp) gently (zurückhaltend)
reminds that “Saint Peter in heaven looks on”. The harmony (the implied key is E minor) moves to an
unexpected interrupted (deceptive) cadence, suggesting that St Peter’s gaze is expectant (of good things,
we hope) – and indeed, muted pp strings give us an unexpected open fifth on A. The stepwise motion,
simple rhythm, and the open fifth suggest a cadence in a mediaeval hymn.
However the heavenly bliss is interrupted by memories of earth. At [3], bar 40, the sleighbell passage
from the opening of the symphony returns. However it no longer mimics the gentle sounds of bells above
a baby’s cot, but a faster (bewegter) tempo and heavier scoring suggests a feeling of anguish or strife,
perhaps caused by thinking of the deaths of children (a recurring theme in the works of Mahler, who had
suffered such deaths on many occasions). Piccolos and flutes in semiquaver passages in falling
dynamics, sinking glissando from other winds and cellos, and open fifths from trombones and inner
strings, heighten the tension. Finally at bar 54 “all hell breaks loose” (as brass and percussion remind us
of “hellish” aspects of life on earth – and there can be nothing more hellish than watching one’s child
die.) Pitch and dynamics gradually fall as we approach the start of the second stanza at [5], bar 57,
where the singer becomes more specific about part of the cause of the “angst”: (St) John lets out the lamb
which Herod (a reference to King Herod in the Bible who was known for his allowing Jesus – often
referred to as the Lamb of God – to be condemned to death) lies in wait to butcher. We are being
reminded that in Christian belief the Lamb of God gave his life for humanity. It was part of God’s
provision. God himself suffered the death of a son. But there was a purpose for it: the opportunity for
the faithful to enjoy heavenly bliss. This is presumably the original creator of the folksong talking, rather
than Mahler, who was yet to convert to Catholicism when he set the verses. All is described in the
language of a child (“the dear little lamb”): as Mahler stated, we are being given a child’s view of
heaven. Mahler was neither a practising Jew nor a devout Catholic; yet he seems to have seen heaven in
this way – hence Alma’s reference to his naïveté. It appears that, for Mahler, heaven offered “a carefree
existence centered on food, drink, dance and music.” (Brown) So heaven offers a perfect life in which
all food is provided – St Luke slaughters the ox; wine is free; the angels bake the bread. The heavenly
provision even includes a vegetable patch where asparagus and string beans grow, and an orchard where
there are apples and pears.
In bar 80, the beginning of the third stanza, we return to the tempo and various musical ideas of the
opening section. Mahler isolates the triadic triplet idea played originally by the clarinet, but now carried
by violins in imitation, and echoed by triadic triplets from harp and cellos; the minim Ds with grace notes
which followed it but are now played simultaneously by an oboe); the dotted rhythm which appeared in
20
both the orchestral introduction and the first vocal melisma; and the start of the song, which is now
presented with an almost classical simplicity.
The fourth stanza which begins just before [9] at bar 98 changes the topic to fishing on a fast day.
However the singer proceeds without a break, although the orchestration changes, ending in an extended
version of the medieval hymn section. At [11], bar 115, there is a sudden change to the sleighbell section,
the mood of which is now quite overwrought. However approaching [12], bar122, peace is gradually
restored, as the orchestra sink from stressful B minor down to a peaceful E major, marked out by
alternating tonic and dominant pedals, in the opening tempo. Most of the motives of the opening of the
fourth movement reappear, although sehr zart und geheiminsvoll aus zum Schluß (“very tender and
mysterious to the end”)
The “superb E major coda is couched as a vision of paradise: Mahler here allowed the musica coelestis of
the finale to ring out in full splendor.” (Floros p.272) At [13], bar 142, the singer, beginning the fifth
stanza, announces that Kein' Musik ist ja nicht auf Erden, Die unsrer verglichen kann warden – “No
music on earth can compare with ours”, the vocal melisma suggesting perhaps that the music continues
without end. There is a reference to a legend that began
with some virgins making a pilgrimage to Rome in the
fourth century, but on their return being killed by Huns
near Cologne. The story later grew to a myth (painted by
Lorrain in 1641 – right) in which St Ursula, a Briton
engaged to a pagan king, was allowed to take about 11,000
virgins, in order to escape a similar fate – but was killed
by Huns nevertheless – so rose to heaven, where she and
her virgins dance to this other-worldly music. Mahler was
once asked whether he knew much about the saint and the
legend about her. He replied, “No, otherwise I should
never have been able, or been in the mood, to paint such a
clear and splendid pictures of her in my imagination.”
“At the very end even the soprano soloist falls silent, leaving pianissimo strings and harp slowly to fade
into a “peace which passeth all understanding.” (Carr p.124) Some saw this, as Goethe did, as a pipe
dream. Certainly, after this movement singers were banned from Mahler’s symphonies until the choral
Eighth Symphony.
ASSIGNMENT: Is the view that the fourth movement explains previous movements justified?

THE LATER SYMPHONIES

“The 5th, 6th and 7th [symphonies] are entirely instrumental and seemingly abstract, without programs –
or at least without any commentary that Mahler made public. He would tell a friend something tantalizing
about this or that detail, perhaps, but it's not enough to pin some story or “idea” underlying each
movement much less the entire work. He wrote these in his early-to-mid-40s – so perhaps one could
argue that the exuberance of youth has given way to Middle Age. (Strawser)
The Fifth Symphony (1901-2) begins with the same motif (although faster, and inverted) as did
Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, and like it has been linked to a struggle with Fate. Entitled Trauermarsch
(Funeral March) it features the dotted rhythms of funeral marches in other symphonies by Mahler and that
in the second movement of Beethoven’s Eroica. The second movement intersperses stormy (sturmisch)
passages with moving (bewegt) sections, usually featuring lower strings. The “wild, sprawling Scherzo”
(Ross) begins with a horn call reminiscent of Richard Strauss, with rising motives similar to the opening
of Don Juan, which had been completed in 1988. However the texture, mood and style often change,
including from lyrical melodies, stirring trumpet-blasts, canonical entries, forceful dialogues, deep string
laments, and a pizzicato waltz. The symphony then moves through “a dreamily lyrical Adagietto to a
radiant, chorale-driven finale.” (Ross p.21)
21
Mahler referred to the Sixth as his “Tragic” Symphony. However the beginning sounds more like a
warlike march than a funeral march. The première was given in the Ruhr Valley, where Krupp’s
armaments (including the cannons that laid waste the French armies in 1870-1) were made. A Viennese
critic quipped “Krupp makes only cannons, Mahler only symphonies.” Ross compares the opening with
the sound of an advancing army – “staccato As in the cellos and basses, military-style taps of a drum, a
vigorous A minor theme strutting in front of a wall of eight horns. A little later, the timpani set forth a
marching rhythm” which Ross (p.21) observes can still be heard in military parades in and around
Austria. The second subject of the movement (which is in sonata form) provides a considerable contras:
deeply romantic, it has been seen as a long-song to his wife Alma, whom he had married since his
previous symphony was written, although a ghostly interlude and the reappearance of the “Alma” theme
in the style of the opening suggests that the “marriage of minds” may in fact have “impediments”. The
military style begins again in the third movement, although the “march” is in triple time; woodwind
laughter, buzzes and screeches – and the classical minuet that appears from time to time – suggest a
sarcastic approach: Mahler is not writing in praise of German military success. In the fourth movement
Mahler moves up a tritone from the opening key to E flat major for a gentle andante, although insistent
brass, strident high woodwind and hammered percussion are called on for contrast. The last movement
begins with a question, and foreboding sounds from low winds and strings hints that the answer may not
be pleasant. “No composer ever devised a form quite like this one – wave after wave of development,
skirling fanfares suggesting imminent joy, then the chilling return of the marching beat.” (Ross p.22)
There are hammerblows on a very large drum and mallet Mahler had made for the movement (although
the effect was apparently more muffled than had been envisaged). The movement seems to die away, but
a sudden fortissimo chord destroys any hope that peace might have been achieved. Conducting the first
performance moved Mahler deeply. Strauss’s only comment was that the final movement was “over-
instrumented”. Reduced to tears by the comment, Mahler lightened the orchestration considerably.
The writing of Nachtmusik changed considerably after Mozart’s famous composition of that name (Eine
Kleine Nachtmusik. Indeed, the “music of the night” has tended to be associated with romantics. German
romantic composers did not miss the connection – or the link with the serenade, sung outside a lady’s
window by a singer accompanying himself with guitar or mandolin – which explains the use of both
instruments in one of two Nachtmusik movements in Mahler’s Seventh Symphony. The symphony
begins with a “darkly eloquent” (Brums) Funeral March in sonata form. It is mainly in E minor, although
there is a slow introduction in B minor. An “aria-like tenor horn solo” (Brums) is heard. The first
Nachtmusik in C major/minor, is often said to be a night walk; in fact Mahler compared it with the dark
walking figures in Rembrandt’s The Nightwatch. Then comes a scherzo which has comparatively serious
and sinister elements. “The second nocturne in particular is fabulous, its flecks of guitar and mandolin
evoking a stroll through a Mediterranean town at dusk. It opens with an ambiguous phrase which could be
the beginning or the end of something, a nice piece of Haydn-like wit..” (Hewitt) It is followed by a
Rondo-Finale, with a final climax that is deafening. Brums finds hints of Wagner in much of the work.
Wagnerian elements are stronger in the Eighth Symphony, known as the “Symphony of a Thousand”
because of the gargantuan forces required to perform it. It contains a setting of the hymn Veni creator
spiritus in the first half and the final scene of Faust in the second half. Mahler was 46 when he wrote it,
and signs of stress were showing.
When Mahler wrote the Ninth Symphony, he was in his late forties, his daughter had died, and he knew
he had a heart condition. The symphony “– essentially a farewell to life – was again purely instrumental,
but it is impossible to listen to this work and not feel this too is a struggle-with-fate symphony, but
without Beethoven's victorious ending (unlike Tchaikovsky's last symphony, the Pathétique, which ends
with a requiem, Mahler's farewell is one of acceptance and transfiguration).” Strawser)
Mahler filled the margins of sketches of the Tenth Symphony with personal comments, some arising
from his awareness of Alma's infidelity. “People often mock Mahler's later symphonies for being too
personal, autobiographical and egotistical, a man leaning out the window shouting ‘Look at me! I'm
dying!’ “ (Strawser) In fact, The work was not finished when Mahler died at the age of 50.

ASSIGNMENT: How characteristic is the Fourth Symphony of Mahler’s symphonic style?

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 SUGGESTED ESSAY QUESTIONS
1. Burkholder writes of the first movement’s “interweaving of classical references, Romantic fantasy,
and modern style.” Cite elements from the movement which might prompt such a statement.
2. Do you agree with Jeremy Barham that, in the second movement, “Its scordatura solo violin doubles
as devil’s fiddle and rustic street instrument, and against the sour chromaticism of the main sections
the resolute diatonicism of the intervening trios or episodes render them forms of Ländler in all but
name”?
3. Give an account of the second movement of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony. Your answer should
consider structure, texture, scoring and tonality, together with an assessment of the movement’s
success as a whole.
4. Give an account of the variations in the third movement of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony. Your answer
should consider the structure, tonality and scoring of each variation, together with an assessment of
the movement’s success as a musical whole.
5. Music critic Neville Cardus writes that Des Knaben Wunderhorn nourished the composer's
"pantheistic feelings about life and the world ... in which an all-embracing love [makes] all creatures
kin." How is this borne out in the fourth movement of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony?
6. Does the fourth movement of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony have more of the characteristics of a
movement from a cantata or a symphony?
7. To what extent could the finale of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony be seen as a portrayal of innocence?
8. Assess the use Mahler made of Des Knaben Wunderhorn in his early symphonies, with special
reference to the Fourth Symphony.
9. To what extent is it fair to describe Mahler’s symphonies as a symphonic version of Wagner’s
operas? Answer with special reference to the Fourth Symphony.
10. Mahler indicated that the Fourth Symphony represented the most use of polyphony he had made so
far. He believed that “In true polyphony, the themes run quite independently in parallel, each from
its own source to its own particular goal, as strongly contrasted to one another as possible, so that
they are heard quite separately.” To what extent is this true of the Fourth Symphony?
11. How does Mahler’s use of percussion in the Fourth Symphony differ from the way percussion were
used early in the nineteenth century?
12. How characteristic is the Fourth Symphony of Mahler’s symphonic style?
13. Early audiences found the Fourth Symphony an unapproachable work. Which elements in the work
might have given this impression?
14. How important are the woodwind in the Fourth Symphony?
15. Would you regard Mahler’s Fourth Symphony as a neoclassical work?
16. What was understood by the term “symphony” in the late nineteenth century? Making reference to at
least two movements, mention some of the ways in which Mahler’s Fourth Symphony conforms to,
or differs from this understanding.
17. Could the Fourth Symphony be regarded as a tone poem?
18. Comment on five passages in Mahler’s Fourth Symphony which show the composer’s ability in
creating effective instrumental tone colour.
19. How does Mahler’s Fourth Symphony achieve both unity and variety?
20. What position does the Fourth Symphony occupy in Mahler’s total output for voice and orchestra?
21. Unlike previous symphonies, Mahler’s Fourth Symphony was not accompanied by a programme.
How likely is it that there was, nevertheless, something like a programme in Mahler’s mind when he
wrote it? Refer closely to the symphony, and any other works you find relevant, in your answer.
22. Evaluate the importance of structure in Mahler’s Fourth Symphony.
23. Suggest reasons why Mahler’s Fourth Symphony has remained one of his most popular works.
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