- By Kenneth Woods
It’s that time of year when our thoughts turn to ghosts, goblins, and ghouls as we approach Halloween.
Now, 2020 may well be remembered as the year Halloween became redundant. After all, who needs a vampire costume when a deadly pandemic makes it too dangerous to trick or to treat?
But imagined terrors are probably as worthwhile a diversion as any from the genuine horrors of our times, so let’s forget the forest fires – real and metaphorical – for a minute, get in the spirit, and embrace the spooky.
Mahler may not have given us a spooktacular classic like Danse Macabre or Night on Bald Mountain, but his music is not without plenty of moments of malevolence, and his ten symphonies offer the listener scads of screams.
So, without further ado, light that Jack O’Lantern and prepare yourself for the:
SCARIEST MOMENTS IN THE MUSIC OF MAHLER!
Symphony No. 1
The runner up – a forest funeral. The third movement of Mahler’s First Symphony raised a lot of eyebrows when it first appeared. This eerie fugue built on a minor-key version of “Freres Jacques” (or “Bruder Martin”) is based on a painting depicting the animals of the forest carrying the body of a huntsman to a funeral. It is both funny and unnerving. Fear factor: 6
The winner- The Scream. Really – Mahler actually called this movement “From the Inferno to Paradise” at one point. After the third movement winds down to an inconclusive second of silence, the explosive opening of the Finale makes for a jump scare worthy of one of those movies, what were they called again? Ah yes, Scream. Fear factor: 9
Symphony No. 2
The Second Symphony may be Mahler’s most uplifting work, but the journey to its final apotheosis is full of moments of terror and violence. There’s a march of the dead (all of them), there’s the end of the world. How to choose a super spooky highlight?
The runner up – Scream 2. First appearing in the Third movement, then showing up again and again like a horror movie baddie that just won’t die, this is a scream for the ages. Fear factor: 9
The winner – Totenfeier Terror. I realize that eyebrows might be raised at the fact that I have not chosen the march of the dead as the scariest moment in the piece, but, frankly, I think Mahler makes it sound like they’re having a reasonably good time heading off to the end of time. But the climax of the first movement? That is scary stuff, indeed, and utterly bleak. Fear factor: 9
Symphony No. 3
Mahler puts the Pan in Panic. Apparently, Pan doesn’t play the pipes, he plays the trombone. Really loudly. And, when he does, the whole earth roars with him. Primal forces are unleashed. Nature in this music is wild, dangerous, and deadly. Fear factor: 8
Symphony No. 4
The winner – With Freund Heins Like This, Who Needs Enemies. Mahler’s symphonic evocation of childhood is, like a good Halloween party for youngsters, just creepy enough to be unnerving, but not scary enough to send the kids running for the exits. Some commentators see the middle of the first movement as a depiction of a child lost in a great forest, one of the great Romantic tropes going back to Hansel and Gretel. But it’s probably the second movement in which the devilish Freund Hein picks up a violin, tuned to an extra-piercing pitch, which is the most appropriate for Halloween listening. Fear factor: 5
Symphony No. 5
Leave it to Mahler. Who else can start a symphony with a funeral march, then have it go downhill from there?
Runner up – Driving Time’s Chariot through the Gates of Hell. The end of the third movement of Mahler 5 can sound triumphant, but Bruno Walter reported that it was inspired by this stanza from Goethe’s An Schwager Kronos:
Snatch me, drunk with the sun’s last ray,
a sea of fire boiling up before my eyes,
blind and reeling through the dark gates of Hell.
Blow your horn, brother, clatter on at a noisy trot.
Let Orcus know we are coming,
so that mine host will be there at the door to welcome us
It may not be the scariest moment in Mahler, but it might be the scariest major-key moment in Mahler. Fear factor: 7
The winner – A Real Schiessesturm (Sturmisch bewegt). In the first movement of this symphony things are bad. Very bad. How bad? Dead bad. And once the funeral march is over? Then the poop really hits the propeller. This might be Mahler’s most violent movement, if not quite his scariest. Fear factor: 8
Symphony No. 6
How scary is this piece? So scary that neither of Mahler’s closest younger colleagues, Otto Klemperer or Bruno Walter, would conduct it at all. Mahler found the whole piece incredibly unnerving, and his wife Alma said it foretold the “three blows of fate” that would eventually lead to his death.
The runner up – A Sinister Scherzo. The second movement (!) of Mahler’s Sixth Symphony has some of Mahler’s most expansive use of extreme orchestral colors, including a rare appearance of the xylophone, just to give the sound a more grotesque edge. Fear factor: 8
The winner – Hammer Horror. Talk about raising horror to new heights. Mahler’s introduction of the hammer to the percussion arsenal remains shocking to this day. Fear factor: 9.5
The even scarier winner – The End (Thank you, Jim Morrison). There are other jump scares in Mahler, but this is the ultimate. A cortege of trombones plays a final threnody until the music winds down to what seems to be a resigned conclusion, then…. Fear factor: 9.999999999
Symphony No. 7
The winner – A Terrifying Totentanz. A symphony sometimes nicknamed “Song of the Night” is bound to have some scary moments in it, and the 7th doesn’t disappoint. The first of the two Nachtmusiken (Night Musics) is like a leisurely stroll through a haunted forest, and the middle of the first movement has a wonderfully baleful midnight scene. But for Mahlerween, it’s got to be the demonic Scherzo, in which you can practically see the Beelzebub boogeying which is the horror highlight. Fear factor: 8
Symphony No. 8
The winner – A Perilous Podium. The Eighth may well be the only Mahler symphony with hardly any adversity in it, so it’s a little hard to find a moment that’s truly scary for the listener. But there’s lots here to make a conductor cower. I’ve seen it live many times, and covered it for some of the world’s greatest orchestras. We all know that any performance of this massive work, with its huge forces, is going to be great event. But I’ve never been to or been involved in, a performance where at least once or twice, the whole 600 person edifice teetered on the edge of very public catastrophe. Whether it’s time delays with the offstage brass, choirs going awry in fugues or tenors hitting the wall, there’s so much that can go wrong. Of course, Halloween teaches us all that facing your fears can be fun, and I’m not planning on hiding away when this work next shows up on the MahlerFest schedule. Fear factor: 5
Symphony No. 9
The winner – A Cardiac Climax. Leonard Bernstein wasn’t the only observer to liken the uneasy rhythm which opens Mahler’s last completed symphony to an irregular heartbeat, a condition Mahler had been diagnosed with not long before embarking on this work. As anyone who has ever had a dicky ticker can testify, there’s nothing scarier than when your heart literally skips a beat. But when this material comes back in a shattering fortissimo at the movements climax, you’ll be forgiven for popping an aspirin and checking the charge on the defibrillator. Fear factor: 9 (what else could it be in this symphony?)
Symphony No. 10
The runner up – The opening of the Finale. By this point in his career, Mahler had pretty much mastered the jump scare, but this moment, inspired by the funeral of a New York fireman, is one of the jumpiest and scariest, coming out of the quiet ending of the previous movement.
The winner – There Can Be Only One Perfect 10. Deep down, you always knew it was going to end this way. But it’s still damn scary. Especially if you play the trumpet. Fear factor: 10
Bonus Feature
Das Lied von der Erde
The winner – Moonlight Madness. Is it a symphony? Is it a song cycle? Both? Neither? Well, it’s a masterpiece – of that much we can be sure. The whole work is perhaps Mahler’s most profound exploration of the idea of death as a doorway not to be dreaded, but as a gateway to eternity. But the last verse of the first movement, which Mahler called “The Drinking Song of Earthly Sorrow” sounds a bit like our protagonist took some bad acid with his cheap wine, veering off into pure, hallucinatory horror. Fear factor: 11
See down there! In the moonlight, on the graves
squats a wild ghostly shape;
It is an ape!
Hear his howl go out
into the sweet fragrance of life.
Now! Drink the wine! Now it is time comrades.
Drain your golden goblets to the last.
Dark is life, dark is death!
