Fourth symphony
Download 175.49 Kb.
|
The Fourth Symphony is a concluding work. It is this in three respects: with respect to the musical form, with respect to the material of poetic thought, and with respect to the world view of the creative artist. The musical form shows in every respect, in terms of acoustic, instrumental, intellectually constructive, and architectonic design, the requirement of a restriction to the essentials that is always a sign of maturity and assured mastery. All means are tested; their fullness and plurality is no longer stimulating, only their usefulness is decisive. This condensation of the form arose as a consequence of the condensation of the material. The struggle for knowledge, for the knowledge of humanity and earth, of death and life, of nature and God, is completed. Or rather, it has advanced to a level of maturity where the need to use art as a medium for the harnessing of experiential substance is diminished, and the pure joy in formation yields to deep, inwardly lying truths. The creator no longer gives birth under severe pains. He forms with a free, light hand: he plays. This absolute control of form and material, this compelling of artistic material under the firm grip of the will, is the fruit of the new world view to which Mahler has grown out of the battles of the previous works. With the gain of this world view, he leaves the spell of thoughts and moods that had influenced and directed his output to this point: the cycle of Wunderhorn songs. Among the published songs of Mahler there are, besides a set of rather insignificant youthful pieces, 21 songs to Wunderhorn texts, not counting the three specifically composed for the Second, Third, and Fourth Symphonies. Among these songs are found a number of subtly designed, humorous pieces, from [166] which a highly fantastic and yet humanly comprehensible and compassionate artist speaks. “Lob des hohen Verstandes” and above all the “Fischpredigt” are counted here. In their mixture of humor and satire, they correspond better to Mahler’s wit, colored with parody, than poems of a purely humorous character such as “Starke Einbildungskraft” or “Selbstgefühl.” One can generally say that pieces full of strongly contrasting mixtures of feeling stimulate Mahler more vividly than those held to more simple paths of expression. In these, he assays a popular style which, because the internal personal, passionate contrast is absent, easily obtains something forced or artificial, such as “Zu Straßburg” or “Rheinlegendchen.” In the other case, by contrast, particularly when demonic ideas are awakened, he succeeds with pieces of such strong and compelling force as “Der Schildwache Nacthlied,” “Tamboursg’sell,” “Nicht Wiedersehen,” “Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen,” and above all the truly ingenious and intentionally shattering “Revelge,” upon whose musical formation Goethe’s words about the poem can be applied without restriction: “Priceless for him who can follow his imagination.”43 Mahler found materials of this kind, in the best and purest combination he desired, in the Wunderhorn, at least during the time up to the conclusion of the Fourth Symphony. That which particularly compelled Mahler to the Wunderhorn texts in this time was his propensity for the metaphysical. With respect to content, this propensity caused the strict ethical tendency in Mahler’s output. In relation to material and form, it led him, who was averse to intellectual debate and was primarily anxious to act upon the imagination and the soul, to the symbolism of the mystic. He found the symbols that he sought prefigured in the Wunderhorn poetry with its mixture of naïveté and profundity.44 The simplest, yet at the same time most poignant problems of a primitive world view and view of life: thoughts about Becoming and passing away, about life in nature, about this world and the next, offered themselves to him here in a verbally naïve and graphic, and thereby forcefully powerful representation, so that the only question was finding a corresponding musical style for the woodcut-like manner of these verses. A certain incongruity between poetry and music, however, would of necessity become noticeable in the process, for the naïveté of the poems is primordial and unsophisticated, while that of the music is rooted in the yearning of a spiritually harrowed soul for this lost simplicity. Mahler’s Wunderhorn songs are therefore, despite their external simplicity, not actually stylistic unities in word and tone, but speculative ones. They merge within themselves two contrasting worlds of feeling and create out of this very fusion their special artistic appeal. Precisely because of this, Mahler could not be satisfied with composing the song texts alone. Their content gave him occasion for extensive confrontation with his own nature placed in opposition to them. They were therefore further shaped,45 after he had initially composed them individually, into the embryonic cruxes of great symphonic works. There came however for Mahler the moment where the stimulating power of this poetry expired for him, where the circle that it had opened for him had been crossed. [167] As long as it gave him material to struggle with and think about, as long as it led him to new images of life, he held firm to it. As he sang the song of the heavenly joys, however, the song of the angelic voices that enliven the senses “so that everything awakens for joy,” he was no doubt a very happy man, one who stood at the zenith of life. At the same time, however, one who either would need to stop creating or start again at the beginning. With the deep, mystical contra-E that brings the Fourth Symphony to a close, Mahler had reached the end of this world, like the wanderer of antiquity that had traversed all lands, stood on the edge of the ocean, and only saw the infinite before him. Thus, Mahler had found, in his yearning, in his urge to faith, in his deep metaphysical need, through pain and battles, through the shudders of death and the deepest experiences of nature, his way to the next world. What could be achieved upon this path, he had achieved: the gratifying certainty of inalienable power, divine love, and heavenly glory. That, however, was the last. This world had been explored, identified, and formed—it held him no longer. Only now, from this first secure summit of life, he turns his glance, which until now had only counted the afterlife as worthy, back upon this world. The world of wonders, of desiring that which is divine and distant, gradually fades and disappears. The world of the day, of being, of struggle with the powers of life, now rises up. Mankind, until now an object, now becomes the subject of the artistic creative process. In place of the quest for knowledge and of yearning for the Divine come passions and the power of fate. A new concept of the nature of symphonic art is formed. From it is born the sequence of Mahler’s three large instrumental symphonies: the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh. [168 blank] NOTES 1As mentioned by Bekker in reference to the Third Symphony on p. 252. In Gustav Mahler Briefe, revised and edited by Herta Blaukopf (Vienna and Hamburg, Paul Zsolnay Verlag, 1982), pp. 166-67 (Letter 181). 2Bekker’s citation here is the commemorative Mahler issue of Der Merker from March 1, 1912 (3/5), given in his bibliography. The conversation in question appeared anonymously in a portion entitled “Aus einem Tagebuch über Gustav Mahler” (pp. 184-88 at 185-86). The material is from Natalie Bauer-Lechner, whom Bekker never mentions by name and who died in 1921, shortly after his writing. It was published under her own name in Erinnerungen an Gustav Mahler, ed. Johann Killian (Leipzig: E. P. Tal, 1923), where the passage in question is found on p. 20. See also the citation of this material in the chapter on the Third Symphony, note 30 (p. 321). 3Mahler is certainly referring to Friedrich Nietzsche’s Fröhliche Wissenschaft here, an idea strengthened by his inclusion of a Nietzsche text setting as a movement of the Third. 4The first explanation is generally accepted: that “Das himmlische Leben” was planned as the Finale. 5Bekker’s observations here prefigure the main thesis of Donald Mitchell’s analysis of the Fourth, “‘Swallowing the Programme’: Mahler’s Fourth Symphony” in The Mahler Companion, edited by Donald Mitchell and Andrew Nicholson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 187-216. In this analysis, Mitchell imagines the “innocence” of the symphony as something that is mature and wise rather than “simple” and focuses on the journey to this mature innocence, including discussions of such things as the G major–E major dichotomy. He addresses and confronts Theodor Adorno’s description of the Fourth as a “character symphony” (Theodor W. Adorno, Mahler: A Musical Physiognomy, trans. Edmund Jephcott [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992], pp. 52-58). 6The German word, “Schlaraffenland,” has the sense of a fool’s paradise, or a land of idle people. “Land of milk and honey” is more accurate than “Utopia.” The English equivalent “Cockaigne” is itself used by Bekker later in the paragraph. The term “Schlaraffenland” is present throughout German literature, going back at least as far as Sebastian Brant’s Narrenschiff from 1494, where the term “Schluraff” referred to a common pejorative to describe an oafish or lazy person. In most cases, the term is a parody of paradise. The poem “Das Schlauraffenlant” by Hans Sachs dates from 1530. A painting by Pieter Breugel the Elder from 1567 is called “Das Schlaraffenland” in German and “The Land of Cockaigne” in English. Familiar later examples include the Grimm fairy tale “Das Märchen von Schlauraffenland” (1815) and, contemporary with Mahler’s Fourth Symphony, the novel Im Schlaraffenland by Heinrich Mann (1900). 7Bekker alludes here to words near the end of the Song-Finale: “Kein Musik ist ja nicht auf Erden, die unsrer verglichen kann werden.” (“There is no music on earth that can be compared to ours.”) 8Bekker does not cite this passage from Goethe. It can be found in his 1806 review (“Rezension”) of the complete Wunderhorn collection: Goethes Werke: Vollständige Ausgabe letzter Hand, Band (Volume) 33 (Stuttgart & Tübingen: J. G. Cotta’sche Buchhandlung, 1830), p. 190. Bekker’s syntax here seems to imply that Goethe referred to a song of “heavenly joys,” but he did not. Bekker is using the first line of the poem and Mahler’s title of the song as a descriptor of the poem. 9In Bauer-Lechner, Erinnerungen, p. 41, worded slightly differently. Bekker again presumably refers to the anonymous publication in Der Merker, p. 188. 10The Nietzsche setting in the Third Symphony. Bekker again cites the title of the penultimate chapter of Zarathustra. 11James L. Zychowicz, in his book on the symphony (Mahler’s Fourth Symphony [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000]), includes an exhaustive discussion of “Das himmlische Leben” and its life before the Fourth Symphony. His detailed outline of the preliminary sketches provides further evidence of the symphony’s genesis out of the song. See pp. 35-46 and 59-93. 12See previous references to this instrument on pp. 204 and 258. 13Mitchell’s description of the “asynchronous” effect achieved by such precise prescriptions at the opening of the first movement reinforces his thesis about the symphony’s sophisticated innocence (“Swallowing the Programme,” p. 207). 14Bekker’s detachment of the top voice of a “chorale” texture here as a “melody” creates a somewhat problematic argument here. The effect is like a soprano voice of a hymn, and the perception at this point is more a harmonic than a melodic one. 15As he did with the two sketches for the program to the Third Symphony, Bekker provides the first-ever reproduction and explication of this sketch, which he obtained from Alma. The repetition of the number 5 is retained in later references to the sketch by Constantin Floros (Gustav Mahler: The Symphonies, trans. Vernon Wicker [Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press, 1993], pp. 110-11) and Donald Mitchell (Gustav Mahler: The Wunderhorn Years [London: Faber and Faber Ltd., 1975; Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1976], p. 258, n. 28), both indicating that they are citing Bekker. Floros includes a “[sic]” while Mitchell assumes that Mahler repeated the number in the sketch and that Bekker is not in error. In the “Anmerkungen,” Bekker indicates that the sketch is “in his possession.” It is now located in the Fine Arts Collection of the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County (Ohio). Zychowicz (Mahler’s Fourth Symphony, pp. 47-49) confirms the repetition of the number 5, surmising it to be a slip of the pen by Mahler. Zychowicz, with the actual sketch in hand, also provides a more accurate reproduction of the sketch than does Bekker, revealing that the numbers in question are actually roman numerals. With Bekker’s observations providing a foundation, Zychowicz extensively discusses the sketch and its implications in the fourth chapter of his book. He also gives a detailed account of the relationships between the creative genesis of the Third and Fourth Symphonies (pp. 47-58). 16This idea is cited by Zychowicz in Mahler’s Fourth Symphony, pp. 55, 57. 17Bekker admits in the “Anmerkungen” that he does not know the provenance of this designation for the second movement. The most familiar source for it is a letter from Bruno Walter to Ludwig Schiedermair dated 6 December, 1901. See Bruno Walter, Briefe, 1894-1962, ed. Lotte Walter Lindt (Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer Verlag, 1969), p. 51. 18“Freund Hein” is a very old German personification of Death. It can be traced back at least to 1650. Its use by Matthias Claudius in Chapter 3 of Sämtliche Werke der Wandsbecker Bote (1775) is the most familiar. Claudius’s poem from this collection, “Der Tod und das Mädchen,” is the source for Schubert’s famous song and later D-minor String Quartet. Mahler certainly knew both, and in fact, created a string orchestra version of the “Death and the Maiden” string quartet. The frontispiece illustration is highly similar to the great series of Totentanz woodcuts by Hans Holbein the Younger from the 1520s. The association of Holbein’s woodcuts with “Freund Hein” was further propagated by Johann Rudolph Schellenberg (Freund Heins Erscheinungen in Holbeins Manier [Winterthur, 1785]). The Claudius frontispiece depicts Freund Hein as a skeleton with a scythe, the familiar “Grim Reaper.” In the Fourth Symphony, Mahler, as Bekker indicates, seems to imagine a character more akin to the Pied Piper. Robert Samuels includes an extensive discussion of the “dance of death” motif, including reproductions of Holbein and later artists, in his semiotic study of the Sixth Symphony (Mahler’s Sixth Symphony: A Study in Musical Semiotics [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995], pp. 119ff). 19The text from “The people have still not responded to my language, however . . .” appears In Bauer-Lechner, Erinnerungen, p. 35. The preceding text of this quotation is only found in the anonymous “Tagebuch” in Der Merker, p. 188. 20Adorno’s description of this passage as a “dream ocarina” (Mahler, p. 53) is notable. 21Cf. Bekker’s reference to the “visionary impression” of the E-major secondary theme in the Second Symphony (p. 177). 22This idealization of naïveté and simplicity again calls to mind Bekker’s comments on “naïve gladness in music making” as a superior virtue in the introductory “Symphonic Style” chapter, p. 52. 23Bekker refers to the Sonata, D. 850, at the G-major passage marked “Un poco più lento” in the last movement. 24Hermann Kretzschmar, Führer durch den Konzertsaal, I. Abteilung: Sinfonie und Suite, 6th ed. (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1921), p. 802. Bekker’s source was most likely the fourth edition (1912). 25Bekker’s use of the word “banal” is intriguing here, and would be revisited by Adorno (Mahler, p. 58) and Mitchell (“Swallowing the Programme,” p. 189). Mitchell detaches Adorno’s observations from the pejorative connotations of the word “banal” and discusses the “innocence” or “state of innocence” of the work’s “characters” (the subject of Adorno’s discussion) and the final goal of the Wunderhorn song. Bekker’s invocation of the bourgeois “Biedermeier” style of the post-Napoleonic era is also striking in this context. 26Bekker’s example curiously does not indicate the portamento slide from F#5 to G5, which indicates that the whole passage is played on the “mellower” A string, with no notes on the “brighter” E string. 27The last decrescendo mark is missing in the original, but is included here. It appears in Example 4-3, which is otherwise identical. 28The rhythm of the third beat in the second measure is simplified in the example, probably for practical reasons. The upper voice should be a sixteenth-note triplet followed by an eighth note. The middle voice should be two eighth notes. The D-flat and F on the last part of the beat do sound together, as indicated. In the score and the original example, it is unclear whether there should be a staccato dot on this last D-flat–A dyad. The same notes on the first part of beat four definitely have the staccato dot. 29The third and fourth notes of the horns in m. 215 should be G, not E as shown in the example. 30Bekker, like other commentators (e.g., Floros, The Symphonies, pp. 121-22), fails to note the obvious similarity of this trumpet call (particularly in the measures preceding the example) to the beginning and ending of the funeral march that opens the Fifth Symphony. His term “call to assembly,” however fits perfectly with the familiar designation of “der kleine Appell” for this passage as a counterpart to “der große Appell” in the Second. See Bauer-Lechner, Erinnerungen, p. 145. Zychowicz discusses the correspondence with the opening of the Fifth Symphony (Mahler’s Fourth Symphony, p. 28). 31A bar line is incorrectly inserted after the first three notes and preserved here. 32Bekker uses the Italian term tempo passato here, which I render as “previous.” This formulation emphasizes Bekker’s perception of the harmonic shift to C major as a “blissful memory” or a “dream of a dream.” 33See note 18 above. 34The German word “fahl” here is quite difficult to translate in this context. The most common meaning is “pale” or “pallid.” A typical English speaker would probably not describe the effect in question in this manner. An eerie or even shrill effect is a more common perception. I have chosen the word “lurid,” which is a valid translation for “fahl.” 35The penultimate note in m. 101, following the triplet, is misprinted as a sixteenth rather than an eighth in the original. 36Here Bekker makes an explicit reference to the “Totentanz” motif as carried from the Holbein woodcuts through Claudius in developing the idea of “Freund Hein.” 37Bekker’s indication “Viol.” here is not correct in the critical edition, where the line is played solely by cellos. The upbeat is below the range of the violin. 38Bekker indicates the oboe as the leading voice throughout the passage. In the critical edition, only the two string groups are playing this line in the first four measures. 39See note 8 above. Bekker here makes clear that Goethe was making his observation about the poem under its original title. 40“Schlaraffenland,” see note 6 above. 41“Schlaraffenland” used here by Bekker as well. I have chosen to retain the English equivalent “Cockaigne” in this context. 42Bekker’s qualifier “outwardly” is significant and speaks to Mahler’s indication that the entire movement is to be performed “without parody.” 43Goethe’s comment on “Revelge” in the 1806 Wunderhorn “Rezension,” op. cit., p. 179. 44See again Schiller’s conception of “naïve and sentimental poetry,” discussed in the “Symphonic Style” chapter, p. 84, note 5. 45In a typographical error, the text reads “So gestalten sich sich” instead of “So gestalten sie sich.” Download 175.49 Kb. Share with your friends:
|