Mahler Symphony No. 5 Program Notes

Mahler Symphony No. 5 (1902) Gustav Mahler spent his childhood in the out-of-the way town Iglau, Bohemia (now Jihlava, in the Czech Republic), but by the time he composed his Symphony No. 5, he had risen to the pinnacle of the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s musical world. In Iglau, his parents ran a tavern, and went to their synagogue each week. Young Gustav studied at the local, secular, state gymnasium. As Michael Tilson Thomas points out in his informative Keeping Score PBS series, Gustav would have heard the marching bands of an Imperial garrison, folk songs from the tavern, church songs and the prayers of the cantor; from the town square, it was possible to hear many of these simultaneously! Playing on the piano inherited from his grandparents, his musical talent was so evident that his parents sent him to study in Prague. After high school, he went to Vienna for University, studying philosophy, piano and conducting, and beginning friendships with Hugo Wolf and other Wagner-obsessed young musicians. He soon began the long, slow, and traditional music director career followed by most conductor-pianists in Europe (even today), rising one small town to the next. From the tiny spa town of Bad Hall (near Linz), to outposts in Slovenia and Moravia, then Kassel, he moved frequently, gaining a reputation as a demanding but skilled conductor. He had composed from his early youth, and found opportunities to have his music performed, especially with the resources in bigger cities. In many of these positions he ran into political problems with more established conductors, and his lifestyle led to some of the stress and health conditions that would plague him through much of his life: while only six of his twelve siblings survived infancy, and his brother, Otto, committed suicide, his own conditions may have contributed to a preoccupation with mortality. He continued his rise as music director of opera houses in major cities including Leipzig and Budapest, then Hamburg, where he premiered first symphony in 1893 and was director for six years. From Hamburg, he focused on one final step up – Music Director of the Vienna State Opera, which he attained in 1897. Fin-de-siècle Vienna was contradiction-filled. It was the conservative capital of the centuries-old Holy Roman Empire: the Hapsburg emperors had papal blessing, and Catholicism was the state religion. (Mahler had to convert to assume his new role.) From Vienna’s stately palaces, the court ruled over Austria, the secondary kingdoms like Hungary and Bohemia, and lesser-ranked principalities. Empires maintain their conservative state, like a caste structure, based on the given origin of a person (or their nation). But this empire had fewer than two decades left before its dramatic dissolution in 1918 via World War I. Vienna was also a hotbed of modernity. Flourishing rail and telegraph systems allowed people and ideas to travel across Europe faster than ever before. Mahler’s Vienna was the Vienna of the Secession (with Gustav Klimt’s luxuriant romanticism), and of the Vienna Werkstatt’s innovative “applied arts” aesthetics– from cutlery, to furniture, and architecture. With Sigmund Freud’s efforts, explorations of the unconscious would draw late Romanticism into the Expressionist movement, evident in Mahler’s later works. Mahler became socially connected to all Vienna’s artistic and creative characters, including Secession painter Carl Moll. Although Mahler was in his late thirties and had not made time for serious relationships, he met Moll’s step-daughter Alma Schindler and was immediately smitten. (Alma, 1879-1964, is a wonderful subject in her own right – already a composer, she had been close to Klimt and composer Alexander von Zemlinsky, and was an inspiring muse to several composers and architects, before and after becoming widowed in 1911.) Mahler composed, and sent to Alma, a ten-minute Adagietto for strings and harp, which he added to the fifth symphony as he composed the larger work. It’s a bittersweet and deeply emotional piece. The Dutch conductor Willem Mengelberg (a Mahler champion) said that both Mahlers confirmed it was a musical “love letter.” Mahler wrote most of the symphony in his summer cottage, though – his day-to-day work in Vienna left little time for composition. Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 is only his second symphony without song, coming after the Resurrection (No. 2), the expansive pantheism of his third, and the fourth, with its “Heavenly Life,” a child recounting heaven’s pleasures. A highly challenging work for any orchestra, Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 repeatedly references the key motif from Beethoven’s Fifth, three short notes and one longer, beginning with its famous trumpet solo. Part i starts with the first movement has a mournful funeral march, alternating between military band colors and more intimate expressions. In uninhibitedly emotional (and virtuosic!) sections, he exploits a melodic motif around a minor ninth leap (an octave plus a half-step), a very dissonant interval. With little pause, a stormy second movement begins, building on the earlier minor ninth dissonance. Again, it returns to the funereal march melodies. Transforming the minor ninth into a major ninth, in a short-lived heroic hymn, before an uneasy, anxious musical retreat. Part II is a Scherzo, and the symphony’s central and longest movement. Featuring a prominent horn solo, it demands great precision in performance. Representing both rustic countryside, and Vienna’s haute-bourgeoise waltzes, and entitled “Scherzo,” a concept first named by Beethoven, it seems to synthesize several different Austrias. It’s also an interesting precursor to Ravel’s La Valse (1911), especially when careening towards something neither rustic nor charming – a domineering and excessive waltz. Part III begins with a complete mood change. The Adagietto’s strings-only tone color brings into relief its harmonic ambiguity (highlighted in Leonard Bernstein’s 1973 Norton lectures). Mahler tests the bounds of classical harmony, as composers as varied as Wagner, Debussy and Schoenberg had pointed to (in Tristan,Prèlude à l’apres midi d’un faune, and Verklärte Nacht, respectively). It leads without pause into the finale, a vigorous Rondo-Finale. Brimming with a vigorous fugal subjects, counterpoint, refrains of the Adagietto, and interruptions of rustic dance-type music, it nearly ends with a glorious chorale, yet instead winds itself up – the last forty-two measures contain a gradual accelerando before a suddenly disorienting Presto and abrupt ending. Gustav Mahler Born: July 7, 1860, Kaliště, Czechia Died: May 18, 1911, Vienna, Austria Part I I. Trauermarsch (Funeral march) II. Stürmisch bewegt. Mit größter Vehemenz Part II III. Scherzo. Kräftig, nicht zu schnell Part III IV. Adagietto. Sehr langsam – V. Rondo-Finale. Allegro giocoso. Frisch. Other Mahler Program Notes: Mahler Symphony No. 1 Mahler Das Lied von der Erde