Mahler: Embracing the World

Cowbells in a symphony! Brahms would have turned in his grave to hear Gustav Mahler’s 6^th symphony: no sound was inappropriate, no moment too personal for a Mahler symphony.

Despite being one of the leading orchestral conductors of his day (driven, even dicatatorial), Mahler’s time as a composer really came 50 years after his death, yet he was conscious of his own place as a symphonist and very aware of the spiritual message of his works....in an almost fairy-tale meeting with Sibelius (the other great symphonist of the early 20^th century but completely unlike,  in his laconic terseness), Mahler said,  “The symphony is  like the world, it must embrace everything.” No wonder then that in a work as serious as the 6^th symphony, he can depict the joys of a family vacation in the countryside, with actual cow bells jangling in the background. 

 Mahler was never afraid of exposing his innermost thoughts to his putative audience: if the 5^th symphony’s Adagietto is a passionate love-scene for his wife Alma, his 9^th symphony is an anguished cry for her love and understanding (Alma had numerous affairs and became alienated from him, though they did not actually separate). While another Viennese genius of Jewish origin was telling the world the meanings of its dreams and nightmares, Mahler was actually describing and analysing his own through his works (he did in fact attend psycholoanalysis sessions with Sigmund Freud).

Mahler’s angst was not of course, all about love and longing....his 5^th symphony and many other works have a Funeral March theme, which has been explained as being borne out of his deep, lasting grief at the death of an younger brother in childhood. Most tragic of all are his “Kindertotenlieder” (Songs on the Deaths of Children) and the finale of his 6^th (Tragic) symphony...the searing tragedy of his own elder daughter’s death is, in a bizarre fashion, foreshadowed and commemorated in these works (which were actually written in earlier, happier times!)

Even his heart ailment and the resulting cardiac neurosis find a place in his symphonies, the hushed, subdued , faltering beat of the opening movement of the 9^th symphony literally make us feel his pulse.

Does that make him a morbid or depressing composer to listen to? His obsession with death and resurrection was about defying and transcending, rather than bowing to the inevitable. What can be more exhilarating than the ending of his 2nd ("Resurrection") symphony?

Of course, Mahler’s compositional methods were not merely about expressing angst: his symphonies may be huge and intimidating at first acquaintance (most are 2 hours long!), but they are exquisitely constructed, his sense of orchestral colour, his intimate knowledge of just what sort of orchestral effect really “works” are all reasons for his popularity. 

He was also a  marvellous composer for the voice, and many of his works are really Lieder (German Romantic songs) accompanied by a vast symphony orchestra: “ The Songs of a Wayfarer”, “The Song of the Earth” and parts of the 2^nd, 3^rd, 4^th and 8^th symphonies (all of which have prominent roles for vocalists). Even his purely orchestral symphonies, like his 1^st (Titan) carry the themes of his songs (in this case, from “The Songs of a Wayfarer”).

One of the characteristic aspects of Mahler’s music, (and of great influence on the works of his great successors, Schoenberg, Berg and Shostakovich),  is his use of musical quotation: phrases and themes of many of his works are connected, like a diary of his emotional life...to the listener familiar with his works, these episodes are magically revealing.Of course, not all the quotations are from his own music...for me, his work as a conductor of both symphony and opera (he also prepared conducting editions of many works, like the symphonies of Beethoven and Schuman) is reflected by the fleeting aural “snapshots” and transformations of phrases and moods from composers as diverse as Verdi,Wagner and Tchaikovsky!

In the end, Mahler was able to embrace the world through his symphonies, as well as to express the everyday and exceptional joys and sorrows of living in that world; in his soundworld, these are heightened by his ability to juxtapose the happy and the sad, the sublime and the grotesque. Even if his life sometimes reads like  a tragedy (his works, after all, were hardly performed in his lifetime, while his beloved Alma was lost to him for much of their marriage), he did lead a full, productive life and that is why his symphonies, far from being anaemic miserable dirges, are so rich and fresh to our ears even today.