The Second Symphony was to be the highlight of MahlerFest XXXIII. Our performance would have featured the Boulder Concert Chorale, and soloists April Fredrick – soprano, and Stacey Rishoi – mezzo soprano. Rishoi’s thrilling 2018 MahlerFest performance of Das Lied von der Erde is available as part of the 2020 Virtual Colorado MahlerFest.
We plan to perform Mahler’s Second Symphony in May 2022!
You can watch Jason Starr’s filmed performance of Mahler 2, conducted by Neeme Järvi, from 3:30 PM MDT on the 17th of May, 2020, but the film is only available for 24 hours. CLICK HERE TO VIEW
Kenneth Woods – Conductor
Here is an overview of the piece by Kenneth Woods – think of it as ‘interactive program notes.’ You can click on any of the links in the text to hear the musical examples Ken is referencing
Mahler’s Second Symphony is in five movements and was completed in 1894, but the first of those was composed and published several years earlier in 1888 (at the same time as the First Symphony) as a tone poem called “Totenfeier” or “Funeral Rites.” It wasn’t until 1893, after he had finished the First Symphony, that he “realized” that “Totenfeier” wasn’t a tone poem, but the first movement of a symphony.
Looked at as a whole the entire symphony represents a journey from tragedy, despair and desolation to rebirth, transfiguration and hope- a journey familiar to Romantic listeners from the works of Beethoven. The 9th Symphony of Beethoven served as a very obvious model for this work, not just in its use of the human voice, but in its emotional arc.
I. Allegro maestoso
Mahler’s Journey Begins
The symphony opens with one of the most dramatic gestures in the repertoire: a sort of primal scream in the violins followed by three strong, declamatory statements by the cellos and basses. This highly unstable opening (Mahler actually tells the cellos and basses to play the two elements of their phrase in different tempos) quickly evolves into the first statement of the funeral march theme. Within just a few seconds he has created an atmosphere of high tragedy. You can hear the opening here.
After a massive climax we hear music of mourning in the woodwinds, but soon after, we are transported to a new, more hopeful sound world with a theme that will reappear throughout the symphony. Have a listen. The exposition of the movement ends with a haunting, lyrical theme in the english horn and oboes, which dissolves into a new, rather sinister marching figure in the cellos and basses. Over this rhythmic figure, he layers yet another mournful melody in the woodwinds. Thus he begins the development section.
From this point, the music builds and develops towards what should be a tremendous climax, but turns out to be more of a crisis. Having built to a very intense fff, the music gradually becomes softer and faster, at first one feels that the mood is getting more stable, when, in fact, it is becoming ever more desperate. Finally the music disintegrates to near silence in the fastest tempo of the movement, and, as if in desperation, the entire string section finally interrupts with the cello and bass theme from the beginning. Things are so desperate that instead of alternating between fast and slow tempi, here he tells the players to play everything “schnell” or fast, and in accelerando, or speeding up each gesture.
After such a cataclysm, what next? In a stroke of genius, Mahler has the cellos start almost the same marching figure with which he began the development, only this time a half-step lower in e-flat minor instead of e minor, and this time he tells them to double-dot the rhythm, that is to exaggerate even more the difference between the fast and slow notes. The effect is devastating- if the development began in darkness, we’re now in the abyss. From this ultimate low-point, we build ever more inexorably towards the true climax of the movement. As in the previous build up, Mahler gradually layers one idea on another, creating more and more complex textures, but at the actual climax we have only one, purely rhythmic, idea, played fff in unison by the whole orchestra, which then seems to shatter into pieces as the strings, tuba and bassoons move away from the rhythmic unison in a descending scale. There is a moment of complete suspense as we wonder what could possibly come next, and just as the sound clears, our ears are drawn to the violas, who are playing the same tremolo g natural with which the violins began the piece. Just as we notice this, the cellos, basses now joined by the violins explode yet again with their opening gesture.
So much struggle, so much loss and all for nothing- we’re exactly where we started. So, this first movement is about negation, about defeat. The recapitulation is greatly contracted, and never really sews up the loose ends as it should. Whereas a Beethoven symphony would usually use the recap to clarify and resolve the tensions of the movement, Mahler’s only really allows time for us to absorb the full horror of what has happened. The funeral cortege seems to disappear in the distance, before the movement ends in one last gesture of anguish, another descending scale, like that at the recap.
II. Andante moderato
Relief, Repose and Reflection
After the highly-charged, dramatic and ultimately tragic arc of the first movement, it is natural that one would need some time to recover. After all, Mahler waited five years after completing Totenfeier before continuing on to the second movement. As it turns out, Mahler anticipated the audience’s exhaustion and specified that the conductor should wait at least five minutes before continuing on to the second movement. The second movement of the symphony could not be more different from the first. If Beethoven, specifically the Beethoven of the first movement of the 9th Symphony and the slow movement of the 3rd Symphony, was the model for Totenfeier, it is surely Schubert who is the inspiration here.
The second movement begins simply, as an elegant, folksy dance known as a Ländler, a dance form Mahler would return to often in his symphonies. How can we accept such a bucolic episode as credible after the high tragedy of the first movement?
As it turns out, Mahler’s vision of the symphony was that after the funeral march, everything that follows is, in the words of Donald Mitchell, seen and heard “through the prism of death.” This second movement is no lazy idle, but a bittersweet look back on a happy moment of a life now lost. This becomes increasingly clear in the episode that follows, in which the music becomes both more elusive and more sarcastic. Beethoven was fond of a form that might be called “double theme and variation” form, that is he presents two quite different themes, and then writes a series of variations alternating one theme followed by the other, each variation in essence heightening the character of its respective theme. The slow movement of his 9th Symphony is clearly his most famous example, and my favorite example is the slow movement from the String Quartet in A Minor, op 132, the “Heiliger Dankgesang” or Hymn of Thanksgiving. This is clearly Mahler’s model, as the movement is built around repetitions of these two themes, each appearance of the first theme becoming sweeter, more charming and more elegant, each repetition of the second theme more menacing.
Listen how in the next variation of the first theme, Mahler adds this extraordinary, heart-melting counter-melody. Now hear how instead of sneaking in gently, this variation of the second theme explodes with menace. Finally, just as the second theme has become ever more threatening, in the final statement of the first theme Mahler begins pizzicato and ppp, to create an atmosphere of utmost elegance and delicacy. The movement ends as serenely and delicately as it possibly could. So, a moment of peace, preserved and idealized through the window of the beyond, what could be next…
III. In ruhig fließender Bewegung (With quietly flowing movement)
Wit and weirdness
There is a strong relationship in Mahler’s 2nd between the first and last movement: in essence the finale resolves the questions posed in the first movement, both musically and spiritually. Likewise the 2nd and 3rd movements of the symphony form a pair. Both are dances, in three, and both are essentially intermezzi or diversions from the larger drama of the symphony. In fact, Mahler originally composed the symphony with the two movements in reverse order. As the last movement answers the negation of the first movement with hope and transformation, the 3rd movement presents something of a mirror image to the 2nd. Where the 2nd began and ended serenely, but traveled in between to progressively darker territories, the 3rd begins and ends in a more macabre sound-world, one that is interrupted by humor and mystery throughout. One might interpret them as contrasting views of life as remembered at the end of it – one generally sentimental and bucolic, one ironic and bitter.
This movement is actually based on a song that Mahler wrote only months earlier, “St Anthony’s Sermon to the Fish.” After the serene and quiet ending of the second movement, Mahler begins with a somewhat rude awakening in the timpani. These two notes form a perfect fourth, g-c, an interval which permeates the whole symphony. It is in fact the same two notes which begin the cello funeral march theme at the beginning of the symphony.
The first section ends rather abruptly as the timpani interrupt again rather rudely, again on the perfect fourth of g-c, and this leads us into a new section where the cellos and basses seem to be noodling away on a melody that actually just outlines a c major chord, the perfect fourth from g-c and the major third from c-e. This music doesn’t seem to go much of anywhere, after a few cycles Mahler, almost half-heartedly, moves to F major, still repeating the same theme.
Finally, as if he’s lost patience altogether, the brass interrupt loudly and abruptly, shifting the key all at once to D major. How do they do it? With a perfect fourth, of course, this time from a-d.Other episodes follow, including a very beautiful melody in the trumpet. Of all these scenes, surely the most dramatic is when the brass fanfare theme is interrupted by what must be the shocking harmony in the piece, b-flat minor over a c natural, a crisis that is only diffused when the timpani again interrupts with its opening perfect fourth. What can this music mean? As it turns out, we’ll learn the answer in the last movement.
In fact this movement is full of these questions. I’ve largely avoided talking about things like keys and intervals before this movement since I know they can be a stumbling block for people who are uncomfortable with musical terminology. Just remember, these are only tools for naming and describing musical ideas. At this point in the piece, some of these musical ideas have become some common and important that it’s helpful to have names for them. The perfect fourth, for instance, has been everywhere throughout the piece. By now, we’re starting to notice it- what does it mean? Why is he bringing it back over and over? We’ve seen a lot of certain keys, especially C minor, the home key of the symphony, and C major, its parallel major, but other keys we’d expect to see, like its relative major, E-flat, have hardly appeared. Why? You’d be right to feel a little disoriented and confused by the end of this movement.
In fact, disorientation was exactly what Mahler was after here. He explained the episodic and surreal nature of this movement to his friend Natalie Bauer-Lechner thus- “You must imagine that to one who has lost his identity and true happiness, the world looks like this- distorted and crazy, as if reflected in a concave mirror. The Scherzo ends with the appalling shriek of this tortured soul.”
IV. “Urlicht”
Heavenly Light
The third movement of this symphony ended with nothing less than “the appalling shriek of this tortured soul.” How magical, then, is the moment that follows? Mahler instructs us that the third, fourth and fifth movements should be played without any break, and so from the grotesque low c in the horns and contra-bassoon that ends the third movement we are instantly transported to a new world. A single female voice sings the simplest of gestures, the first three notes of a D-flat major scale*, saying- “Oh little red rose!” Forty-five minutes into this great work we are now hearing the human voice for the first time, and what an astonishing first appearance it is. So different from the way Beethoven introduced the voice into his Ninth. After the opening chorale arrives in the most serene D-flat major cadence, the music shifts abruptly to the parallel minor (remember all those shifts from C minor to its parallel major? Is there some meaning to the fact that he now reverses the process a semi-tone higher?). The text here is breathtaking in its directness “Humanity lies in greatest need! Humanity lies in greatest pain!” Note that it is not merely our hero, or merely sinners or any other subgroup who suffer- suffering is universal. The suffering our protagonist endured in the first movement is universal. The second and final stanza of the poem reads:
“I came upon a broad pathway
“An angel came upon me and wanted to send me away. But no, I would not be sent away!
“I am from God and will return to God. The loving good will give me a little light,
“will light me to the eternal, blissful life!”
This poem comes from a collection of German folk poetry called “Des Knaben Wunderhorn” or “The Boy’s Magic Horn.” Author Michael Steinberg makes the point that Mahler creates a mood of “hymn-like simplicity” achieved by “a metrical flexibility so vigilant of prosody and so complex that the opening section of thirty-five bars has twenty-one changes of meter.” It may seem unlikely that a composer would turn to folk poems for statements of philosophy and belief, but this poem is particularly Mahlerian. This contrast of the universal (”Humanity lies in greatest need!”) and the personal (”I am from God and will return to God!”) is one of Mahler’s central philosophical ideas. There is never a “they” in Mahler’s music in the sense of an enemy, and one never belongs to a club any smaller than humanity.**
* Much like the perfect fourth we talked about, this three note scale motive has actually permeated the symphony. The second theme of the first movement actually starts with the perfect fourth, followed by the three note motive, and the brass theme in the scherzo has exactly the same melodic content!
V. Im Tempo des Scherzos (In the tempo of the scherzo)
Auferstehen
As the fourth movement resolves into a vision of heavenly rest one could easily believe that our journey is at its end, but of course this short movement (only four minutes) could hardly balance out and resolve all the issues and challenges the symphony had posed up to this point. No, we must see the fourth movement for what it is, the promise and the vision of salvation, but not the manifestation of it.
The fourth movement ends serenely and sublimely in D-flat major (remember that key!), and fades into silence. Once again, though, Mahler tells the conductor to go immediately ahead to the finale, and the silence is shattered in the utmost violence. Of course, we’ve heard this music before, the agonized dissonance of B-flat minor over c natural, in the crisis point of the third movement. This opening gesture quickly elides into a more lyrical section in C major– yes we’re back in a major key again, but we’ve somehow lost that heavenly vision embodied in D-flat, we’ve fallen back to earth. Though c is the tonic note of the symphony, this turns out not to be a return to stability but the beginning of a new voyage, and this C major turns out to have been a preparation for the F minor section that follows (note that the key is a perfect fourth away, that same interval turns out to be important in the structure of the piece as it is in the melodic make up of it).
The fourth movement introduced one new sound, that of the human voice. It seems likely that after the introduction, as we arrive in this new key, that the voice would return. Instead, Mahler gives us something even more novel, an effect that Beethoven never used in the 9th. We hear, far in the distance, the sound of several horns playing in unison. It’s a foreboding, desolate call. This first appearance of the offstage band lasts only four bars, then the orchestra takes over with music that seems to be searching for direction; there is a quality of anticipation and uncertainty in this passage. Gradually, one by one, we are introduced to a number of themes: a chorale theme first heard in the woodwinds, a more hopeful melody in the horns, and a very anguished one in the english horn. As it turns out, Mahler is doing exactly the opposite of what Beethoven did at the beginning of the finale of his 9th Symphony. Beethoven used the opening of his ninth to sum up all that had happened before in the piece, Mahler uses the opening of his second to show us all that is to come. Throughout, there is a sense of suspense: which of these themes will ultimately launch us on the journey to come? Once each theme has been introduced, we are confident that the central journey is ready to begin. The trombones restate the chorale theme (now it could really be Bach we’re hearing), but then again, the hopeful horn theme returns, even more grandly, and finally in C major, there is a great breakthrough. Where before the horn theme had dissolved from hope to despair, the trombones return with the chorale theme, but now in C major and with the melody transformed. Instead of falling back to the main not after one step, the melody rises onward. It is the second theme of the first movement, the great brass theme of the third and the opening of fourth movement. It is the first transformative moment in the symphony- we now know that we will never return to the world of Totenfeier.
Mahler himself, in a letter to his friend (the soprano Natalie Bauer-Lechner again) provided what is surely the definitive description of the next section. The great C major arrival finally subsides into the despairing horn theme from before, the trombones once again fall back after only one note up the scale, as C major turns out only to have been a dominant of F minor yet again. Mahler tells us- “It is the day of the Last Judgment… The earth trembles. Just listen to the drum-roll, and your hair will stand on end! The Last Trump sounds; the graves spring open, and all creation comes writhing out of the bowels of the earth, with wailing and gnashing of teeth. Now they all come marching along in a mighty procession: beggars and rich men, common folk and kings, the Church Militant, the Popes. All give vent to the same terror, the same lamentations and paroxysms; for none is just in the sight of God. Breaking again and again- as if from another world- the Last Trump sounds from the Beyond. “At last, after everyone has shouted and screamed in indescribable confusion, nothing is heard but the long drawn-out call of the Bird of Death above the last grave- finally that, too, fades away. There now follows what nothing of what has been expected: no Last Judgment, no souls saved and none damned; no just man, no evil-doer, no judge! Everything has ceased to be. And softly, simply there begins: “Aufersteh’n, ja aufersteh’n…” (“Rise again, yes, you will rise again”) “the words themselves are sufficient commentary.”
The great scene of the end of the world plays out as a march, mostly in F minor. Four flats in the key signature, far from the purity of the C major peroration that preceded it. The final scream Mahler describes is a masterstroke- we’ve been expecting him to return to C major throughout the Last Judgment, but instead we land with the bass instruments all playing the note c-sharp fff, while the upper instruments all unleash the “scream of indescribable confusion” in B minor. It’s the same shattering, dissonant harmony from the beginning of the movement, the one we first heard in the scherzo, now transposed up a semi-tone. Its meaning is now clear, its very ambiguity now shows its purpose- it is a depiction of the confusion and chaos at the end of the world.
In an instant, just as in the beginning the bass note becomes the tonic, except that instead of c becoming C major, c-sharp now becomes D-flat major, the key of the fourth movement, the key of our earlier vision of heaven. We’ve suddenly moved from the four flats of F minor to the five of D-flat major. As in the exposition, this arrival proves ephemeral. Just as before, the offstage horns return, changing our point of arrival into a further point of departure. Their purpose is now shown to us- they are the Last Trump. As the bird of death fades into silence, our promise of heaven is destroyed.
The choral entry that follows could not be more magical. The D-flat/C-sharp tonality finally reveals its purpose- it is not our destination, it is the dominant of G-flat major, six flats, the furthest possible key from C, a tri-tone away. The choir enters with us having traveled as far from where we began as we possibly could.
“Rise again, you will rise again,”
Mahler has already told us that it is “beggars and rich men, common folk and kings, the Church Militant, the Popes” these words are spoken to, our lost protagonist of Totenfeier has become one with the millions.
From here on, the magical moments come at an astonishing rate. Out of the opening chorale floats the sound of a new soloist, not the contralto of Urlicht, but a soprano who joins the choir for the words
“Eternal life will be granted to you
by him who calls you to him.”
There is another instrumental interlude, based on the same trombone peroration we heard in C major so long ago, but now in G flat, and pp instead of ff. Where before the horns ended the celebratory mood with a cry of anguish, Mahler uses the same music, now staying in major, to launch us into the even more hopeful next stanza.
“You are sown to bloom again.”
The contralto finally returns, singing the anguished music first heard in the woodwinds so long ago. We’re now being reunited with each of those themes from the beginning, as we meet each one, its meaning becomes clear. This section is in B flat minor, five flats, so closer to home yet darker. She sings
The choir, now only the men, now return, still in five flats, singing the chorale theme.
“All that is created must die
All that has died must rise again.
Fear no more.
Prepare yourself! Prepare yourself to live!”
Now the two soloists sing together, in passionate, overlapping exclamations, now in the four flats of A-flat major, the key of the second movement. Again, just one flat closer to home. The basses join in gently with a sort of variation of theme the women just sang. The key signature has changed once more, but we’re not aware of it yet as the harmony is moving quite rapidly. They sing:
“On wings that I have won by the ardent labors of love, I shall soar aloft.”
The music here does soar, moving sequentially higher and higher until we arrive at the next great climax-
“Sterben werd ich, um zu leben!” or “I shall die so that I may live again!”
Now it is clear where that last key change has taken us- somewhere we have not gone yet in the 70 minutes of music we’ve heard- E-flat major. One flat fewer than where we were, we’ve made our way back from the beyond to the key signature with which we started the symphony, three flats. Now however, instead of C minor, the key of the funeral march (also the key of Beethoven’s funeral march in the Eroica and Mozart’s Masonic Funeral Music), we’re in its relative major, E-flat. This is the first key we should have gone to (Beethoven’s funeral march moves to E-Flat major after just 16 bars!) in the symphony, instead Mahler has held it back through the entire work. In fact, he’s used almost every key there is except for this one and the effect is shattering. We’ve returned to where we came from- remember when the alto said: “Believe nothing is lost to you!” and yet we’ve also arrived somewhere we’ve never been, never though of in the whole symphony. Finally the choir sings, squarely in E flat major:
In this final stanza, Mahler at last answers all the questions, musical and spiritual, posed by the symphon, and in particular by the cataclysm of the first movement. The suffering, despair and devastation of Totenfeier, which seemed so nihilistic before has now been revealed as the instrument of salvation. Having established our universality in the Last Judgment, Mahler now shows us that it is not membership in any subset of humanity, but the fact of being human that carries us to God.
c. 2006 Kenneth Woods
Reblogged from kennethwoods.net
