Gustav Mahler was born on 7 July 1860 at Kališcht, near Iglau (now Kalistë, near Jilhava) in Bohemia, a province of the Austrian Empire now part of the Czech Republic. Although Mahler may have begun work on the First Symphony as early as 1885, most of it was written quickly in Leipzig during February and March of 1888. The composer himself conducted the disastrous premiere of the work, then entitled “Symphonic Poem in Two Parts,” in Budapest on 20 November 1889. Mahler made substantial revisions between 1893-96, and subsequently retouched the orchestration in 1906 and again in 1910. In its final casting, the symphony calls for the so-called Wagnerian quadruple-wind orchestra with expanded brass complement: four flutes (two of which double on piccolo), four oboes (one doubling on English horn), four clarinets (two doubling on E-flat clarinet and bass clarinet respectively), three bassoons (one doubling on contrabassoon), seven horns, five trumpets, four trombones, tuba, harp, timpani (requiring two players), bass drum, cymbals, triangle, tam tam, and the usual strings. Mahler also indicates that in the finale the first and second trumpets plus the E-flat clarinet are to be reinforced by “at least” one additional player. Duration: approximately 55 minutes.

Launching the complete cycle of Mahler symphonies is indeed an auspicious beginning for Maestro Honeck’s directorship of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. No musician after Beethoven did more to expand and invigorate the symphonic repertoire than did Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) — both as composer and as an internationally acclaimed conductor. With seeming impudence, Mahler famously predicted that “my time will come,” intimating that one day his symphonies would approach the status of Beethoven’s. And slightly more than a century after his birth, the ‘Mahler renaissance’ of the 1960s proved him right. As we approach the double anniversary years 2010-11— Mahler’s 150^th birthday and the centennial of his death— the powerful resonance between his music and our time only grows stronger.

“My music is lived” repeatedly, to those whom he trusted, Mahler revealed through various metaphorical descriptions that composition and personal experience were inseparably intertwined for him. There is no clearer instance of this than the First Symphony. Mahler was passionately but hopelessly in love as he composed the work at white-hot speed in about six weeks. His muse was Marion von Weber, wife of the famous composer’s grandson: her “musical, luminous being of highest aspiration,” Mahler later recalled, inspired him to resume his creative work, which he had all but abandoned during the hectic, frustrating years he spent in provincial theaters to establish himself as a conductor. Thus, the First reflects the passions, ecstasy, and bitter frustration of its youthful musical persona —“the hero,” as Mahler referred to him. Beginning in 1900, Mahler withheld all ‘programmatic’ commentaries on his works from the public, both to avoid possible misunderstandings and to dodge the ridicule of the critics. But today, if they are not taken too literally, Mahler’s remarks can offer “a star map with which to comprehend the night sky,” as he once put it.

Four such star maps survive for the First Symphony, which are condensed and incorporated into what follows. As noted, the 1889 Budapest premiere had been a flop (“my friends avoided me, and I went about as though diseased or an outlaw,” the composer later admitted). Accordingly, for the second and third performances in 1893-94, Mahler decided to offer his listeners more clues. The title became “‘Titan,’ a Tone Poem in Symphony Form,” in two parts. Mahler evidently had in mind a powerful, somewhat naive young hero, his life and suffering, and his struggle and defeat by fate. Part one, “From the Days of Youth,” begins with the first movement, “Spring without End.” The slow introduction, according to Mahler, represents the awakening of nature after a long winter’s sleep; the long-held A harmonics suggest the sunlight of the summer day shimmering and glimmering through the branches. In the course of the movement, Nature, as though revealing herself making music, grasps us with her radiance, and also with her uncanny mysticism. Both the hero and we are swept forward by Dionysian jubilation (the roaring energy of Dionysus, god of wine), which is as yet completely unbroken and untroubled. Overall, the movement is an expanded variant upon traditional sonata form. The main theme that follows the slow introduction comes directly from the second of Mahler’s Songs of a Wayfarer, “This Morning I Went Out Over the Field.” But as the development progresses, a powerful conflict unfolds. Just when a tragic outcome seems all but inevitable, a bold and brilliant fanfare for brass and winds suddenly and decisively changes the course of the drama from impending darkness to yet greater jubilation: this is the first instance of the Mahlerian ‘breakthrough,’ a tactic he would use frequently in the future. At the close of the movement, where the tympani have the theme, Mahler imagined that the hero— or, in one account, Beethoven!— bursts out laughing and runs away.

The original second movement was an Andante entitled “Blumine” (meaning approximately “flora”), which was rediscovered in 1967—a sentimental, rapturous love episode. In 1888 it was actually a birthday gift for Marion von Weber, inscribed “from M to M.” Following the symphony’s third performance (1894), Mahler deleted “Blumine” (and all of his descriptive movement titles for the symphony). Claiming that the discarded Andante was not sufficiently symphonic, he jocularly derided it as the hero’s “youthful asininity.” Nevertheless, “Blumine” is still occasionally performed and recorded today, both separately and in the context of the First Symphony.

In the ensuing scherzo (now the second movement), which Mahler entitled “In Full Sail,” Mahler suggested that the young man comports himself in a more powerfully masculine, robust, fit-for-life manner. He also likened the movement to a bridal procession expressing boundless joy and delight.

Part two, “Commedia humana” (“The Human Comedy”), begins “Aground,” when the hero has ‘found a hair in his soup.’ Extrinsically, one could picture the proceedings as follows: A funeral procession passes by the hero, and he is seized by the complete misery and abject sorrow of the world, with all its lacerating contrasts and ghastly irony. The external inspiration came from a children’s fairy-tale illustration, “The Hunter’s Funeral Procession,” in which animals of the forest in farcical postures accompany the coffin of the deceased hunter to the grave. The opening children’s tune, “Bruder Martin” (known to us as “Frère Jacques”), is transformed into a minor-mode funeral march introduced by a solo string bass— an unheard-of audacity at the time. According to Mahler, this music should be imagined as though played torpidly by a miserable provincial band (just the way they played at funerals). In the midst of it we hear the coarseness and banality of the world in the sounds of an intermingling Bohemian amateur ensemble. The movement’s placid ‘trio’ interlude is, once again, directly derived from Mahlers Wayfarer cycle— in this case from the final song, at the point where the poetry, which is Mahler’s own, welcomes death as release from turmoil:

On the street stands a linden tree,

There for the first time I rested in sleep!

Under the linden tree!

It scattered its blossoms over me.

Then I knew not how life goes on,

Everything was good again!

Everything! Love and sorrow!

And world and dream!

The irony becomes especially sharp after the interlude, when the funeral band returns from the burial and strikes up the customary ‘merry tune,’ which here cuts through to the marrow. This bizarre music either completely baffled or totally outraged the early hearers of Mahler’s First. Yet the more savvy of Mahler’s contemporaries, as well audiences of the later twentieth century, came to recognize it as one of Mahler’s boldest steps in the expansion of musical expressivity.

Immediately follows “Dall’ Inferno” (Out of hell), like the sudden, terrifying scream of a heart wounded to the quick: the hero, according to Mahler, is abandoned to the most fearful struggle with all the sorrow of the world. Again and again when he seems to have raised himself above destiny and to have become master of it, he is hit on the head by Fate, as also is the motive of victory with him. Only first in death does he achieve the victory, having conquered himself and his lost illusions (which are evoked by the return of themes from previous movements, as though the sun suddenly emerged after a stormy night). He rises anew and triumphs because he has succeeded in creating his own inner world, which neither life nor death can take away from him. Then follows the magnificent victory chorale!

The meaning of this “victory in death” may initially seem obscure. Mahler himself later admitted that “the true, loftier solution” to the struggle of the First comes about only in his Second Symphony, which “grows directly out of the First.” Fittingly, that will be the second program in the PSO Mahler cycle, as well as the finale of the 2008-09 season: you won’t want to miss it!



For further reading…

The literature on Mahler is extensive (and, alas, frequently expensive). A reliable, even-handed, and affordable guidebook is that by Michael Kennedy in the Master Musicians’ Series (2nd ed., Oxford, 2000, paperback). Stuart Feder’s biography Gustav Mahler: A Life in Crisis (Yale UP, 2004, hardback) is the insightful work of a psychoanalyst who was also fully trained as a musical scholar. The third volume of Constantin Floros’s large German trilogy has appeared in English as Gustav Mahler: The Symphonies, trans. Vernon Wicker (Amadeus, 1993, now in paperback); Floros emphasizes (perhaps too strongly) the programmatic aspect of Mahler’s oeuvre. Both The Mahler Companion, ed. Donald Mitchell and Andrew Nicholson (Oxford, paperback ed., 2002) and The Cambridge Companion to Mahler, ed. Jeremy Barham (Cambridge, 2006, paperback) contain essays by various specialists on a variety of topics, as well as coverage of all Mahler’s works. The short Mahler book by the conductor Bruno Walter, Mahler’s friend and associate for seventeen years, has been variously reprinted (but is currently out of print). Even more intriguing are the Recollections of Gustav Mahler by his friend and confidante Natalie Bauer-Lechner, trans. Dika Newlin, ed. Peter Franklin (Cambridge, 1980, hardback)— although out of print, this volume can be found online. For the adventurous, three out of four volumes of Henry-Louis de La Grange’s documentary biography are currently available in English (Oxford, 1995-2008; however, they range from 892 to 1,758 pages per volume [!]). De La Grange has also posted excellent condensed discussions of Mahler’s life and work on the andante website (http://www.andante.com/Profiles/Mahler/mahlerintro.cfm).



©2008 Stephen E. Hefling