Symphony No. 3 in D Minor – Gustav Mahler
Born July 7, 1860, in Kalischt, Bohemia
Died May 18, 1911, in Vienna, Austria

This work was first performed in its entirety on June 9, 1902, in Krefeld, Germany, conducted by the composer.  The second, third, and sixth movements had been previously performed in 1897 in Berlin.  It is scored for four piccolos, four flutes, four oboes, English horn, two E-flat clarinets, three clarinets, bass clarinet, four bassoons, contrabassoon, eight horns, four trumpets, four trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, two harps, and strings.  There is also an offstage contingent of several snare drums and a post horn.  Mahler also calls for an onstage alto soloist and a group placed “in a high gallery” consisting of tuned bells, women’s choir, and boys’ choir.

Gustav Mahler’s symphonies are among the most grandiose works ever composed for orchestra.  Although the composer’s detractors claim that the works are longwinded, each of the symphonies provides a glimpse of the grandeur of fin-de-siècle Vienna.   Building upon the musical advances of Richard Wagner, Mahler’s music usually deals with profound subjects – religious crises, redemption through love, and the spiritual (almost Zen-like) elements that too often go unnoticed in daily life.  Although these visionary works stand alone as monolithic accomplishments, detailed study shows that they are interrelated – for example, the fallen hunter who is the subject of the funeral march in the First Symphony is ushered into the afterlife in the glorious Second Symphony (Resurrection).  However, this type of dissection is unnecessary to simply enjoy Mahler’s symphonies on a purely musical level – an experience that provides great variety and carries an intense emotional impact.

Collectively, Mahler’s first five symphonies are known as the Wunderhorn Symphonies because of their use of musical ideas drawn from Mahler’s own settings of Clemens Brentano and Achim von Arnim’s poetry published in 1808 under the title Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Youth’s Magic Horn).  Mahler found an existential quality to these folk-infused verses that seemed to reach into the very soul of his own musical and personal philosophy. They came to represent every aspect of life from birth to death and beyond.  Perhaps no other composer wrote so much of the human experience into such a vast panorama of works as Mahler did into his nine symphonies and the songs from which many of themes are drawn.

Mahler’s Third Symphony, composed in 1895 and 1896, came on the heels of the interrelated pair of symphonies that represent what is likely the most impressive first efforts of any composer.  This is especially remarkable considering that Mahler only composed during his summer breaks from his very active conducting duties at the Hamburg Opera.  (He had previously been an opera director in Budapest and would go on to hold positions at the Vienna Court Opera, the New York Metropolitan Opera, and the New York Philharmonic.)  Mahler carried out his creative work from daybreak until noon at a small cottage on the banks of a lake near Salzburg, Austria, that was adjacent to a large home in which his family lived after his marriage to Alma Schindler in 1901.  His creative time started a six in the morning and continued until midday.  His meals were delivered to his door in silence.  Afternoons provided long walks in nature – a quasi-religious ritual that allowed Mahler an opportunity to lose himself in meditative reverie. 

The composer wanted the Third Symphony to be a sprawling portrait of the entire world from the smallest elements of nature to the most profound mysteries of the Deity.  As Mahler once wrote, “A symphony must be like the world. It must contain everything.”  Mahler structured this in seven parts:

Pan Awakes. Summer Comes Marching In (Bacchic Procession).

What the Flowers in the Meadow Tell Me.

What the Animals in the Forest Tell Me.

What Humanity Tells Me.

What the Angels Tell Me.

What Love Tells Me.

What the Child Tells Me (The Heavenly Life)

Perhaps most importantly, Mahler envisioned this work as a deep examination of his personal experiences with Nature – flowers, animals, and humanity.  Through humanity, Mahler examines religion and love.  All of these components create a vast universe, full of ineffable truths told through music that resembled nothing that came before.  The composer eventually realized that seven movements pushed the limits of the symphony beyond what he could manage.  He then confined his scope to that of earthly experience by dropping the final movement, only to revive it as the finale of the more intimate Fourth Symphony a few years later.  By the time the work was premiered, Mahler removed the titles of the movements, saying that the music should speak for itself.  However, they are still quite helpful to make sense of such a sprawling and all-encompassing masterpiece.

The question of how to achieve the intended impact was no doubt something that Mahler considered very carefully.  Most of the symphony is strictly instrumental, but calls for a mammoth orchestra consisting of quadruple woodwinds, an expanded brass section, extensive percussion, two harps, and “very large complements of all strings.”  In addition to this, there are boys’ and women’s choruses, an alto solo, and various off-stage instruments added for effect.

Mahler’s Third Symphony begins with the massed sound of all eight horns playing a robust and resolute march theme.  As Mahler said, “Summer comes marching in.”  The “Bacchic Procession,” emphasizing the untamed Roman deity Bacchus’s command of nature, lasts just over thirty minutes. This monumental movement encompasses a full third of the symphony’s entire length.  However, this half-hour is filled with some of the most stirring music ever written.  The movement is built from three main ideas – the initial fanfare, a second section of rumblings in the low strings and trumpet fanfares that are reminiscent of Wagner’s subterranean music from The Ring of the Nibelungs, and a third theme that is lighter and more ornamented, which is introduced by oboe and solo violin.  Mahler combines these themes into every imaginable permutation.  Along the way, he provides many instruments with substantial solos, most notably the trombone.  At the end of this joyride, Mahler gives the listener a stirring combination of all the material, but he has transformed it into a glorious F major.

Mahler saw the first movement as the first of two large-scale divisions of the symphony and called for a break of a few minutes after its conclusion.  The five remaining movements encompass the second part.

The floral second movement is much smaller in scope with only two major sections that alternate throughout, but each return is delightfully varied.  This minuet is a simple ABABA form, returning to the opening section just as the flowers bloom each spring. 

Mahler’s third movement is a proper scherzo, emphasizing the wild nature of animals.  The first theme, preceded by the clarinet’s cuckoo call, appears in the piccolo.  Mahler borrowed this melody from an earlier song in which a nightingale takes over for a cuckoo after the daytime bird has died.  The second theme is introduced by the off-stage post horn (usually flugelhorn in modern performances) and has a calming effect on the animals.  The animalistic sections are filled with fierce brass figures and woodwind runs. This is music of primal abandon.  One example of this is at a climax near the end of the movement where the horns and trumpets erupt in a joyous triple-forte exhortation that Mahler, always willing to provide precise expression markings, instructed the performers to play “Grob”  (“rudely”).

Mahler asked that the next two movements be played without a pause between them.  For the fourth movement, “What Humanity Tells Me,” Mahler included the famous “Drunken Song” from Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra.  Set for alto solo, this text examines the worldly suffering of the human condition.  To transcend this suffering, Mahler used a poem from Des Knaben Wunderhorn in the fifth movement, “What the Angels Tell Me,” and set it for boys’ choir and women’s chorus with orchestra.  This text is one of eternal salvation.

The finale, “What Love Tells Me,” is one of deep meaning.  Mahler once said, “If a composer could say what he had to say in words he would not bother trying to say it in music.”   Love is perhaps the most inexpressible of all emotions and descriptions of Mahler’s depiction of it are futile at best (and cheapening at worst).  Mahler’s apprentice at the time was a young Bruno Walter.  In later years, after he had become a world-renowned conductor, described the finale perfectly:

“In the last movement, words are stilled—for what language can utter heavenly love more powerfully and forcefully than music itself? The Adagio, with its broad, solemn melodic line, is, as a whole—and despite passages of burning pain—eloquent of comfort and grace. It is a single sound of heartfelt and exalted feelings, in which the whole giant structure finds its culmination.” 

©2011 Orpheus Music Prose & Craig Doolin
www.orpheusnotes.com

 

TEXTS

 



Fourth movement from Friedrich Nietzsche's Also sprach Zarathustra: the "Drunken Song"

 

O Mensch! Gib Acht!

Was spricht die tiefe Mitternacht?

"Ich schlief, ich schlief—,

aus tiefem Traum bin ich erwacht:--

Die Welt ist tief,

und tiefer als der Tag gedacht.

Tief ist ihr Weh—,

Lust—tiefer noch als Herzeleid.

Weh spricht: Vergeh!

Doch all' Lust will Ewigkeit—,

—will tiefe, tiefe Ewigkeit!"

O Man! Take heed!

What says the deep midnight?

"I slept, I slept—,

from a deep dream have I awoken:--

the world is deep,

and deeper than the day has thought.

Deep is its pain—,

joy—deeper still than heartache.

Pain says: Pass away!

But all joy seeks eternity—,

—seeks deep, deep eternity!"

 

Fifth movement from Des Knaben Wunderhorn

 

Es sungen drei Engel einen süßen Gesang,

mit Freuden es selig in dem Himmel klang.

Sie jauchzten fröhlich auch dabei:

daß Petrus sei von Sünden frei!

Und als der Herr Jesus zu Tische saß,

mit seinen zwölf Jüngern das Abendmahl aß,

da sprach der Herr Jesus: "Was stehst du denn hier?

Wenn ich dich anseh', so weinest du mir!"

"Und sollt' ich nicht weinen, du gütiger Gott?

Ich hab' übertreten die zehn Gebot!

Ich gehe und weine ja bitterlich!

Ach komm und erbarme dich über mich!"

"Hast du denn übertreten die zehen Gebot,

so fall auf die Knie und bete zu Gott!

Liebe nur Gott in all Zeit!

So wirst du erlangen die himmlische Freud'."

Die himmlische Freud' ist eine selige Stadt,

die himmlische Freud', die kein Ende mehr hat!

Die himmlische Freude war Petro bereit't,

durch Jesum und allen zur Seligkeit.

Three angels sang a sweet song,

with blessed joy it rang in heaven.

They shouted too for joy

that Peter was free from sin!

And as Lord Jesus sat at the table

with his twelve disciples and ate the evening meal,

Lord Jesus said: "Why do you stand here?

When I look at you, you are weeping!"

"And should I not weep, kind God?

I have violated the ten commandments!

I wander and weep bitterly!

O come and take pity on me!"

"If you have violated the ten commandments,

then fall on your knees and pray to God!

Love only God for all time!

So will you gain heavenly joy."

The heavenly joy is a blessed city,

the heavenly joy that has no end!

The heavenly joy was granted to Peter

through Jesus, and to all mankind for eternal bliss.