The major work on the first concert in the San Francisco Mahler
Festival that begins next month will be, appropriately enough, Gustav
Mahler’s first symphony. This is an excellent way to begin, because it
demonstrates the way in which Mahler's symphonies lived in a dual world
of traditional symphonic structures and orchestral settings of songs.
The first symphony is, in many ways, a reflection on his first song
cycle, his Songs of a Wayfarer, since two of the movements have roots in two of the songs in the cycle.
I
have previously described the cycle as a mini-opera on the traditional
Romantic theme of unrequited love. The woman the poet loves is marrying
another, so he sets out on a walk to recover his spirits. Instead, he
gets increasingly miserable, ending it all in the words on the final
song. The two scenes that are adapted by the symphony are the initial
walking scene and the tragic conclusion.
The German scholar Ernst
Robert Curtius writes about Ovid being gifted in the art of scene
description through disclosure ("the grove is not there from the
beginning, it comes into existence before our eyes). This is basically
how Mahler begins his symphony. The song material he adopts is
preceded by a lengthy scene-setting introduction. It begins with a
descending fourth, the first interval of the song, against a hushed
string background. Elements of the scene emerge through bird songs,
fanfares, and distant folk melodies. This builds at a slow and steady
pace until Mahler is finally ready to present us with the song itself in
a strictly orchestral form following the model of an opening symphony
movement. Unlike the song, in which the poet's thoughts are constantly
interrupted by the memory of his beloved, the symphony is all positive
energy that practically charges into the second movement. That
movement is a scherzo based on folk dance; but, as a sign of Mahler's
preference for unifying elements, it begins with that same descending
fourth.
The spirit of the song cycle returns in the third movement
in which the dire conclusion of the song cycle is cast in the setting
of a deliberately ironic funeral march, introduced as a solo for double
bass. As in the introduction to the first movement, the funereal
nature is disclosed through a series of interruptions, which threaten to
disrupt its solemn pace. However, it proceeds, leading anyone who
knows the song cycle to thing that it has the last word.
It
doesn't. It is followed by a concluding fourth movement that begins
with what can best be described as a battle scene. It is rather in the
spirit of the fight at the end of the second act of Richard Wagner's Die Walküre
but without any singing and far more rhythmic chaos. The spirit of
distant fanfares from the introduction now charge into the foreground.
This is very much a triumph-of-spirit conclusion that "gets over" all
the sorrow of the song cycle and the funereal setting of the preceding
movement. This sense of "Mahler triumphant" will conclude many of his
following symphonies, making this particular symphony an opportunity to
prepare the ear for much of what will ensue from Mahler's compositional
efforts.
Mahler's first symphony is one of his shortest, but it
has been conceived on a grand plan. It provides the serious listener
with a representative introduction to his sense of scale, his command of
full orchestral forces, and a musical rhetoric with a strong sense of
the dramatic. If one comes to know Mahler through this symphony in the
first concert of the Festival, one will have an anchor of familiarity
to approach all of the other works being presented in the remaiSning two
concerts.
No comments:
Post a Comment