Hanjin Sa

Mahler Symphonies
11/22/13

Reflection on the outer and inner movements of the Ninth Symphony

Mahler’s Ninth symphony is the peak of the farewell trilogy and is the last complete symphony. I
find it to be very interesting how each movements are different and have different meanings.
Especially, the balance between the outer movements and the inner movements. The inner
movements are placed in between two huge outer movements. As Alban Berg praised that the
first movement of the Ninth symphony is the most wonderful music Mahler wrote, it is one of
the most perfect symphonic movements by Mahler in terms of the form, the contents and the
emotion. As the main themes of the Ninth symphony are farewell and death, Mahler presents
each movements with death of (farewell to) different things. I found a fascinating annotation for
the Ninth symphony by Leonard Bernstein. He lists things as following.

-The first movement: Death of (Farewell to) Tenderness and Tonality (Passion, Human love)
-The second movement: Death of Simplicity (Simple pleasure, country life (Landler)
-The third movement: Death of Urban Society (more Sophisticated pleasure)
-The fourth movement: Letting go (Death of resistance, clinging to life; Death of life, Death
itself)

Although the inner movements present contrasting subjects (the second movement with Peasant,
unsophisticated pleasure and the third movement with noisy, urban pleasure which Bernstein
calls as “Nasty, Hilarious, Spastic, Sophisticated, Sour, Pious”) and there is no doubt that they
are two individual entities, I believe that the two movements go together as one set. Then, we can
see there are three big parts in the symphony. In a big picture, it is necessary to have something
with different, contrasting qualities in between the two overwhelmingly large outer movements
both in terms of the structure and the emotion. Therefore, compounding the two contrasting inner
movements gives the sense of perfect balance in proportion, emotion and structure.