Gustav Mahler: The Symphonies

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PART ONE

The Early Symphonies

Fundamentals of Tetralogy

You will see: I will not live to see the victory of my cause! Everything I write is too strange and new for the listeners, who cannot find a bridge to me.

BL² 50

In a conversation with his friend the Viennese violinist Natalie Bauer-Lechner, Mahler once stated that there was a close connection between the Fourth and the first three symphonies, and that those three even found their completion in the Fourth. "The content and structure of the four are combined to create a definite unified tetralogy" (BL² 164). One can comprehend what Mahler means by this only if one works through the characteristics of the early symphonies and closely examines their programmatic assumptions.

Regarding the outward characteristics of the first four symphonies, many deviations from the usual immediately stand out: the number and order of movements, the arrangement of the sections and their conception as symphonic cantatas, the borrowing from song-compositions, and the setting of poems from Des Knaben Wunderhorn. Let us recall that the First originally had five movements, the Second has five, the Third has six, and the Fourth has only four. Another innovation is that the Second, Third, and Fourth close with slow movements, and the Second and Third represent the symphonic cantata type, which includes choirs and vocal soloists. The Fourth, however, finishes with an orchestra. Furthermore, in all four symphonies Mahler borrowed from his own song compositions, inasmuch as he drew upon the instrumental substance of pre-existent songs and worked them through symphonically or included an orchestral song. Also to be noted are the thematic connections between the Finale of the Fourth and the fifth movement of the Third—Was mir die Engel erzählen (What the Angels Tell Me)—connections that Mahler himself found to be unusual and strange (BL² 164).

The concept of tetralogy, of course, focuses more on the ideological connection between the four works. These are so close that they allow one symphony to appear as a continuation of another. Mahler believed that the Second tied directly onto the First (GMB² 150) and that the Third, which soared above that world of battle and distress found in the first two, could emerge only as their result (BL² 35). These statements are better understood if one recognizes that Mahler saw his symphonic writing as an expression of his world view, and made the personal, philosophical, and religious questions that concerned him the subjects of his early symphonies.¹ To give examples, the fundamental philosophical thought of the autobiographically conceived First is the idea of transcendence—overcoming misery and suffering. The eschatological question of death and dying is the subject of the Second Symphony. The idea of a hierarchy of being, the formation of the world, the position of humankind within it, and Mahler’s personal profession of eternal love, form the cosmological subject of the Third. The four movements of the Fourth may finally be denoted as symphonic meditations on life after death. All of this shows that those who have spoken of the metaphysical music of Mahler and who have called him a symphonizing philosopher are not all wrong!

If one seeks further evidence of the remarkable relationship between the first four symphonies, one would have to consider the sound and the idiomatic aspects of the music. The characteristic sound of Mahler is already unmistakable in the First Symphony.² Idiomatically, the four symphonies constitute—in spite of their differences—a unified world of expression due in no small part to the common vocal component. The inclusion and assimilation of vocal models, Mahler’s lied melodic style, prove to be a style-forming factor of the first rank, and Paul Bekker surely touched upon a truth when he spoke about an ideal synthesis of symphony and song in Mahler’s early works.³

In regard to sound, Mahler was fully aware of the originality of his music and attributed the difficulty audiences experienced in understanding his works largely to this factor. He considered the components, beginning with Das klagende Lied, to be so Mahlerian, so sharp and completely distinct in their own way, that there is no longer a connection [with tradition] (BL² 50). He especially felt that his first two symphonies departed so much from anything familiar, that finding any point of reference was virtually impossible.⁴

Mahler’s early symphonies are founded upon the principle of a rather well-established esthetic that he described in a conversation with Bauer-Lechner on 12 July 1897 (BL² 95). In this conversation, he basically revealed himself to be a follower of the old doctrine of mimesis—the representation of reality in works of art using details derived from ordinary life. He further believed that various artistic styles depend on the artist’s attitude toward nature:

The artist—like everyone else—draws all material and form from the surrounding world, though in a different and more extensive sense. Whether one’s relationship with nature is happy and harmonious, painful and miserable, or hostile and defiant, or whether one considers nature from a lofty standpoint with humor and irony, these attitudes provide the basis for an artistic style that is beautiful and sublime, sentimental, tragic, or humorous and ironic.

The more one gets acquainted with the style, expression, and idiom of the early symphonies, the more one recognizes that all four styles identified by Mahler—beautiful and sublime, sentimental, tragic, and humorous and ironic—are represented. For example, the humorous and ironic style, or the grotesque, for which Mahler had a particular passion, includes Todtenmarsch in Callots Manier (Death March in Callot’s Manner) in the First, the symphonic version of Fischpredigt (The Fish Sermon) in the Scherzo of the Second, Was mir die Thiere im Walde erzählen (What the Animals in the Forest Tell Me) in the third movement of the Third, and Das himmlische Leben (The Heavenly Life) in the Finale of the Fourth.

The First Symphony

What kind of a world is this that casts forth such sounds and shapes as a reflection. Something like the death march followed by the outbreak of a storm seem to me like a burning accusation of the creator.

GMB² 372

But by no means do I suggest the First; that one is very difficult to understand.

GMB² 313

Origin

In the composition of his early symphonies, Mahler borrowed relatively often from his own works and from other composers. The First Symphony presents an extreme case in this regard. One would exaggerate only a little by calling it a work based upon pre-existing material. The basis for the main movement and the middle section of the slow movement is the music of two songs from the cycle Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (Songs of a Wayfarer), which Mahler composed in 1884.¹ The Blumine movement—originally the second movement of the Symphony—is derived from the music that accompanies Der Trompeter von Säkkingen (The Trumpeter from Siikkingen), which was written within two days during June 1884.² Motifs from the song Hans und Grete of 1880 are found in the Scherzo. Mahler based Todtenmarsch in Callots Manier on the melody from the student round Bruder Martin (Brother Martin, Are You Sleeping?) and for the Finale he borrowed several motifs from Liszt’s Dante Symphony (1856) and Wagner’s Parsifal (1882). If one bears all this in mind, one has a better understanding of what Mahler meant when he told Natalie Bauer-Lechner that

composing is like playing with building blocks, where new buildings are created again and again, using the same blocks. Indeed, these blocks have been there, ready to be used, since childhood, the only time that is designed for gathering (BL² 138).

From August 1886 to May 1888, Mahler worked as second conductor at the Leipzig City Theater. His work there stood under a cloud because of his rivalry with Arthur Nikisch, who had the position of first conductor. Nonetheless, in Leipzig Mahler was able to achieve success: His arrangement and completion of Carl Maria von Weber’s opera Die drei Pintos (The Three Pintos), which premiered 20 January 1888, received high recognition.

It is certain that Mahler started to work on his First Symphony after this premiere, though there are conflicting statements regarding the chronology of the work. According to Natalie Bauer-Lechner, he composed the whole symphony in spring 1888, within six weeks, while continuously conducting and rehearsing (BL² 175); however, according to Guido Adler³ and Fritz Löhr⁴, the beginnings of this work extend back to the year 1884 in Kassel. Meanwhile several documents confirm the statements of Bauer-Lechner, and in March 1888, Mahler informed his friend Fritz Löhr of the completion of his work. It became so overpowering—as it flowed out of me like a mountain river! he wrote with great enthusiasm, adding that for six weeks I had nothing but my desk in front of me! (GMB² 70). Much later, in a letter to Annie Mincieux, Mahler indicated having composed the First in the year 1888 (GMUB 123). Incidentally, several interesting remarks by the well-known Strauss biographer Max Steinitzer corroborate the information of Bauer-Lechner.⁵ Steinitzer, who socialized frequently with Mahler during the 1887–1888 season in Leipzig, tells that Mahler entered a period of almost feverish composing after arranging Die drei Pintos and that Steinitzer was not quite convinced of the artistic success of the First Symphony, in view of Mahler’s age, until he saw sketches of it, which caused him to change his mind.

After all this we can surely assume that the First was for the most part composed during the time between 20 January and the end of March 1888. The remarks by Guido Adler and Fritz Löhr refer most likely to the date Mahler began composing Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen and the music to Der Trompeter von Säkkingen.

The First Performance and the Various Versions

It was only natural that Mahler was concerned about performing the Symphony immediately following the completion. He rejected the suggestion of Steinitzer to. have the first performance of the work within the context of an entertainment concert. Even after his departure from the Stadttheater in Leipzig on 17 May 1888, he did not abandon the hope of performing the Symphony there. In a letter sent from the town of Iglau, he asked Steinitzer for his advice in the matter (GMB² 72), but the work did not premiere until eighteen months later. Mahler, who took the position of Artistic Director of the Royal Hungarian Opera in fall 1888, conducted the Symphony in Budapest in a Philharmonic concert on Wednesday, 20 November 1889. In the program the work was designated as Symphoniai költemény két részben (A Symphonic Poem in Two Sections).⁶ The performance was a fiasco. According to a report by Fritz Löhr, the Pest circle close to Mahler was deeply moved, but

a considerable part of the audience, in its usual heartless way, had no understanding of anything formally new, particularly the dynamic vehemence of the tragic expression that was raging here; they were uncomfortably startled out of their thoughtless habit (GMB² 416).

The review by August Beer in the Pester Lloyd was more precise:

The reception of the Symphony was as divergent as the two halves of the work. Our concert audience, which was back today in full number, listened with alert interest to the first section, and Mahler, who also conducted, received warm applause after every movement. After the Death March the mood changed, and after the Finale there was slight but nevertheless audible opposition.⁷

Many years later, Mahler himself expressed the following to Natalie Bauer-Lechner in regard to the premiere:

In Pest, where I performed it for the first time, my friends bashfully avoided me afterward; nobody dared talk to me about the performance and my work, and I went around like a sick person or an outcast. You can therefore imagine what the critiques looked like under such circumstances (BL² 176).

It is no doubt due to the failure of the Budapest premiere that Mahler locked his manuscript in a drawer for three years. It was not until 1893 that he revised it in Hamburg, where he was working at the time. The (Hamburg) autograph, kept in the Osborn Collection at the Yale University Library, shows the following revision dates: for the Blumine movement, 16 August 1893; for the Scherzo, 27 January 1893; and for the Finale, 19 January 1893. Since the autograph of the Budapest premiere has still not surfaced, a comparison of the Hamburg version with the Budapest original is not possible. Nevertheless one can say that the Hamburg revision concerns the instrumentation and that it must have been drastic. As a whole, everything has become more slender and transparent, Mahler wrote to Richard Strauss on 15 May 1894, adding that the instrumentation of the introduction in the strings had completely changed.⁸ From the notes of Bauer-Lechner we learn that the strings did not originally play their long pedal point as a harmonic. Mahler stated:

In Pest, when I heard the A in all registers, it sounded to me like far too much sound for the shimmering and glimmering of the air I had in mind. Then it struck me to give all string players harmonics (the violinists the highest and the basses, who also have harmonics, the lowest): Now I had what I wanted (BL² 176).

In this revision, the First was played on Friday, 27 October 1893 in Hamburg during a concert in which some Mahler songs were also performed by Clementine Schuch-Prosska and Kammersänger Paul Bulss. This performance was a success. Ferdinand Pfohl, Mahler’s friend who had been music critic of the respected Hamburger Nachrichten since 1892, wrote an appreciative review.⁹

Encouraged by the good reception of the work in Hamburg, Mahler anticipated further performances. He turned to Richard Strauss, who was conductor at the Saxon Court in Weimar and who in that position enthusiastically supported program music and the modern new German school.¹⁰ Strauss included the work in the program of the Music Festival, and thus the First was performed in Weimar on 3 June 1894 under Mahler’s direction. The reception by the audience was divided. As Mahler wrote to his friend Arnold Berliner, My symphony was received with furious opposition by some and with wholehearted approval by others. The opinions clashed in an amusing way, in the streets and in the salons! (GMB² 112).

On the side of the furious opposition, it would be safe to count Ernst Otto Nodnagel, a critic and composer from Königsberg who later became an enthusiastic Mahler fan.¹¹ As he himself wrote, he had subjected the Symphony to an emphatically negative discussion in reviews for the Berliner Tageblatt and the Magazin für Litteratur and condemned it because it appeared under the guise of program music. Nodnagel considered the printed program, which indirectly referred to Jean Paul’s Titan and Siebenkäs, as in itself confused and unintelligible. He could not recognize any relation between the program and the music, and he rejected the Blumine movement as trivial.

Mahler must have taken Nodnagel’s objections to heart because at the next performance, which he conducted on 16 March 1896 in Berlin (GMB² 147), he did without the program, introducing the work simply as Symphony in D Major and dropping the Blumine movement—to the great satisfaction of Nodnagel, who gladly stated that the work now found lively approval, even from part of the hostile press. But even this performance did not bring the great success Mahler dreamed of. Although Bauer-Lechner, who was present, spoke of a rather warm and affirmative reception by the audience, she added that Mahler was painfully aware of the cold effect on the listener and stated most sadly over and over: No, they have not understood it! (BL² 47).

Further performances were not able to change much about this situation. Over and over Mahler wondered about the lack of understanding met by the First. On the occasion of a performance in Lwow in 1903, for example, he reported to his wife,

Following this, I played my First with the orchestra, which behaved splendidly and was obviously well prepared. Several times I had chills running down my back. Confound it, where do the people have their ears and hearts that they don’t get this! (AME 285).

Similarly he wrote in August 1906 to Josef Reitler, who was trying to push for a performance of a Mahler symphony in Paris: But by no means do I suggest the First; that one is very difficult to understand. The Sixth or Fifth would be preferable (GMB² 313). And he wrote to Bruno Walter in December 1909 from New York: Day before yesterday I presented my First! Apparently without any particular response whereas I was actually quite content with this early work (GMB² 372).

The score of the First was initially published in 1899 by Weinberger Verlag in Vienna. This first edition greatly differs from the Hamburg version in its instrumentation. Mahler decided to reinforce the orchestral apparatus in this printed edition and to re-orchestrate many sections as well.

The Program

The question regarding the programmatic aspects of Mahler’s symphonic writing already appears with the First Symphony and confronts us with a number of problems that require thorough attention. Those willing to undertake a detailed study will certainly not be disappointed by the result.

At the Budapest premiere Mahler had classified the First as A Symphonic Poem in Two Parts but did not provide a programmatic explanation. The five movements are simply called

First Section

1. Introduction and Allegro comodo

2. Andante

3. Scherzo

Second Section

4. A la pompes funèbres; attacca

5. Molto appassionato

This stands in contrast to the Hamburg concert notes, which provide the following extensive program:¹²

Titan, a Tone Poem in Symphonic Form (Manuscript)

Part 1: Aus den Tagen der Jugend, Blumen-, Frucht- und Dornstücke (From the Days of Youth, Music of Flowers, Fruit, and Thorn)

I. Frühling und kein Ende (Spring and No End) (Introduction and Allegro comodo). The introduction pictures the awakening of nature from a long winter’s sleep.

II. Blumine (Andante)

III. Mit vollen Segeln (Under Full Sail) (Scherzo)

Part 2: Commedia humana

IV. Gestrandet! (Stranded!) (Todtenmarsch in Callots Manier). The following may serve as an explanation for this movement: The author received an overt suggestion for it from Des Jägers Leichenbegängnis (The Hunter’s Funeral Procession), a parodistic picture that is well-known to all Austrian children and is taken from an old book of children’s fairy tales. The animals of the forest escort the coffin of a deceased hunter to the gravesite. Rabbits carrying a banner follow a band of Bohemian musicians accompanied by music-making cats, toads, crows, and so on; stags, does, foxes, and other four-legged and feathered animals of the forest follow the procession in amusing poses. At that point the piece in some ways expresses an ironic, humorous mood and in other ways expresses an eerie, brooding mood, followed immediately by

V. Dall’Inferno (Allegro furioso)—as the sudden outburst of despair from a deeply wounded heart.

Mahler had this program published for the Weimar performance, but with some changes: the subtitle of the first part was corrected to read Aus den Tagen der Jugend, Blumen-, Frucht- und Dornenstücke (From the Days of Youth, Music of Flowers, Fruit, and Thorns); the introductory explanation was revised to describe the awakening of nature in the forest in the earliest morning; the titles of the second and fourth movements were changed to Blumine-Capitel (Andante) and Des Jägers Leichenbegängnis, ein Todtenmarsch in Callots Manier, respectively; the fifth movement was given the more complete title Dall’ Inferno al Paradiso.

The Weimar program caused much resentment. After Nodnagel declared it to be confused and unintelligible, Mahler hastened to retract it, an action that seemed to be a denial. On 20 March 1896, four days after the performance in Berlin, he assured Max Marschalk that he had thought up the program titles and explanations after the fact:

The reason for omitting them this time is not only that I consider them to be less than comprehensive—indeed, I do not even believe them to be accurate characterizations—but I have seen how the audience is misled by them (GMB² 147).

Mahler’s withdrawal of the program was not without consequences. His earliest interpreters did not hesitate to declare that the program was not binding. As Richard Specht said,

There is an extensive program to the First that is so extravagant, blurred, and alien to the character of the music that it seemed to come not from the composer but from one of the worst types of enthusiastic commentator. ¹³

Paul Stefan assumed that the program probably was not in existence at the premiere in Budapest.¹⁴ This assumption proves to be wrong after a more thorough investigation, as evidenced by the disclosure that the title page of the Hamburg autograph already contained a short version of the infamous program:

Symphony (Titan)

in 5 movements (2 sections)

by

Gustav Mahler

Part I: Aus den Tagen der Jugend

1. Frühling und kein Ende

2. Blumine

3. Mit vollen Segeln

Part II: Commedia humana

4. Todtenmarsch in Callots Manier

5. Dall’ Inferno al Paradiso

Even more significant is the observation that the hermeneutic indications August Beer made in his review of the Budapest premiere probably refer to oral explanations given by Mahler. Beer said that a true spring atmosphere spread over the first movement, which he apostrophized as a poetically perceived forest idyll He described the second movement as a serenade in which one could easily recognize the lovers, who in the secret of the night express their tender feelings (later Mahler spoke of a love episode), and he felt the Scherzo resembled an honest-to-goodness peasant dance.

Special attention should also be given to the semantic analysis of the Finale. The most important allegorical motifs of the movement symbolize the inferno and the paradiso, as detailed investigations have shown.¹⁵ The title, Dall’Inferno al Paradiso, is not to be understood in a poetic way; instead, it quite accurately describes the underlying programmatic idea. From all this we may conclude that the program of the First was already fixed in its main characteristics when the music was created.

How does this program relate to Jean Paul and specifically to his great novel Titan? Considering how complex this question is, it comes as no surprise that opinions vary greatly. Alma Mahler (AME 140) and Bruno Walter attributed the title of the Symphony (Titan) to the passionate love Mahler had for Jean Paul. Bruno Walter reports: We often talked about the great novel, especially the figure of Roquairol, whose influence is noticeable in the funeral march of the First and who was the subject of detailed discussion.¹⁶ Josef B. Foerster also explains that in creating the work, Mahler relied on impressions he had received from Jean Paul, and out of gratitude he used the title of the book from which most of the suggestions had come.¹⁷ Foerster speculated that Mahler first announced the program in Hamburg and Weimar, where he could assume the audience would be familiar with the works of Jean Paul.

All those favoring the idea of a connection between the Symphony and Jean Paul’s novel refer to the fact that the programs published in Hamburg and Weimar contained literary references to Jean Paul. Thus the title Blumen-, Frucht- und Domenstücke alludes to Jean Paul’s Siebenkäs, and the title Blumine alludes to Jean Paul’s Herbstblumine.¹⁸ The literary historian Jost Hermand cites these reasons to defend the opinion that Mahler’s Titan indeed seems to be based on the work of Jean Paul more than it might appear. Above all, Hermand suspected that the connections to Jean Paul were to be found in Mahler’s inner openness, which is not adverse to a radical change to the grotesque, and in Mahler’s frequent emphasis on the contrasting nature of the individual motifs.¹⁹

Ferdinand Pfohl, however, reports that in Hamburg during 1893 Mahler was desperately looking for a grand and bold title for his First Symphony and that one of his musically enthusiastic friends prompted him to use the title Titan.²⁰ The writings of Natalie Bauer-Lechner reveal that Mahler protested the association of his First with Jean Paul’s Titan: "What he had in mind was simply a strong, heroic person, living and suffering, struggling with and succumbing to destiny, for which the true, higher resolution is not given until the Second" (BL² 173). In conversations with Bauer-Lechner, Mahler interpreted the first four movements of the Symphony to be, in certain ways, stations in the life of his hero. In the first movement we are carried away by a Dionysian, jubilant mood that has not yet been broken or dulled by anything. In the Scherzo, the young lad still roaming around the world is much stronger, rougher, and more fit for life. Mahler described the Blumine movement, which was later removed, as a love episode, and he commented on the Todtenmarsch: Now he (my hero) has found a hair in his soup, and his meal is spoiled. Finally, we can thank Alma Mahler for the important information that Mahler eliminated the title Titan because he was constantly asked to explain how various situations from the novel were interpreted in the music (AME 140). We can conclude from this that the allusions to Jean Paul in the program of the First have to be understood as mere analogies. The true nature of the program of the First will be explained in the following sections.

Frühling und kein Ende (Spring and No End)

In a quoted letter to Gisela Tolnay-Witt, Mahler considered nature and its effects upon us to be among the objects of musical representation in symphonic music (GMB² 107). The awakening of nature from a long winter’s sleep (as mentioned in the Hamburg program), and the description of its delightful effect on people, form the poetic idea in the First Symphony’s first movement. An analysis of the movement reveals that Mahler succeeded in transferring this idea into music in an especially original way.

Hearing the introduction of the movement for the first time, one cannot suppress the feeling of surprise about the quasi-impressionistic, atmospheric character of the music. Especially obvious is the apparent heterogeneity of the musical figures: a theme of a fourth in the woodwinds and later in the violins and a very mellow horn melody alternating with a clarinet fanfare, with a trumpet fanfare in the far distance, and with shrill clarinet cuckoo calls. The composition appears so unusual that to do it justice it has been referred to as being collagelike and discontinuous.²¹ What one has tried to explain formally is programmatically conditioned and motivated. As the constant change of tempo in the introduction discloses, the development of the music takes place on two levels: those sections in the first tempo Langsam. Schleppend (Slowly. Dragging) represent the slumber of nature, while the clarinet and trumpet fanfares, characterized as più mosso, along with the cuckoo-calls, are to be understood as awakening calls. Mahler’s comment Like a sound in nature (found only in the printed score) refers solely to sections in Tempo I. The following outline will explain the organization:

Mahler borrowed the music of the sonata movement (Immer sehr gemächlich) following the introduction largely from the second of the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen: Ging heut morgen über’s Feld (Went this morning across the field). The text of this song, its emotions and thoughts, express an affirmation of life and closeness of nature. Wie mir doch die Welt gefällt! (I like this world so much!) is the underlying sentiment. The music is correspondingly bright, in places even exuberant. Mankind is in harmony with nature and with the world in general. Quite appropriately there are extended passages in a pastoral vein; they are characterized by slow harmonic rhythm, drone basses, sustained lines, and ostinatos. This movement provides an excellent example of Mahler’s Baβlosigkeit [passages in which the bass is sustained for a long time].

If one evaluates the exposition of the movement according to textbook criteria, one has to call it irregular. It has neither a contrasting second nor (as in the expositions of Bruckner’s movements) a third theme. The song theme and the music of the song’s third and first verses are all followed by a short closing group, which Mahler develops from a Tirili motif.²² The (unusual) resorting to the song model accounts for the structural abnormalities.

Of the three parts into which the development falls, the first (mm. 163–206) presents a new version of the introduction. The mood of predawn twilight that Mahler presents here does not include the energetic clarinet and trumpet fanfares from the beginning; piano is the dynamic level throughout. A pedal point of high strings on the high A harmonic, together with a pedal point (beginning m. 180) in the basses and the tuba on low F, frame the seemingly heterogeneous sounds that are heard one after the other: bird calls (cuckoo calls and Tirili motif), sounds of nature, the theme of a fourth from the beginning and the motifs of the stopped horns. In between, we hear fragments of a new cantabile cello theme, which will play an important role in the second part of the development.

The first part of the development is remarkably static, as is the music of the second part (mm. 207–304) which at first does not seem to move at all. The horns present a fanfare in triple piano, evoking thoughts of Carl Maria von Weber, of forests, and of hunting. Not until the cantabile melody of the cellos (mm. 221ff.) is the actual development introduced, and the occasional use of this cantabile melody alters the phrases and motif of the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, which appear now in a vacillating light. Since the exposition does not go beyond the realm of D major and A major, the development now opens up the circle of flat keys. The modulation proceeds as follows: D major (m. 221), A major (m. 229), D-flat major (m. 243), A-flat major (m. 258), C major (m. 276), F major (m. 279). The measure numbers show that the harmonic planes are broad.

The third part of the development (mm. 305–357) at first establishes a dark mood (in the foreground are the keys of F minor and D-flat major) that seems to be an extraneous element within the movement but, with minor deviations, anticipates a section from the Finale (mm. 574–628). The method of anticipating a whole section of the Finale in the first movement is rather unusual in nineteenth-century symphonic writing (it is unknown to Bruckner). Here it surely does not serve formal considerations, such as the need for unity, but rather a programmatic intention, as if to explain that the gloomy world of the inferno casts its shadow onto the main movement. Mahler’s expression regarding the main movement’s Dionysiac mood of jubilation, not yet broken or darkened by anything (BL² 173) does not take this section into account.

In measures 352–357, a rather staccato but strong intensification from ppp to ff leads to the climax of the development and of the entire movement. The awakening calls by the trumpets are joined by impressive signals in the horns and high woodwinds. This passage unites the dominant chord of D major with the tonic chord. However, the way Mahler proceeds from F minor to D major in no way corresponds to the strict rules of composition and instead evokes something violent and sudden. The term breakthrough, coined by Paul Bekker, indeed suits the situation.²³ Following Bekker, Theodor W. Adorno spoke of a cleavage coming from outside the music’s own momentum.²⁴ Adorno considered such a breakthrough to be a basic form category of Mahler.

Mahler hated exact repetitions in the recapitulation, and repetition in general. He believed that every repetition was a lie and that a work of art, like life itself, always has to develop further (BL= 112. The movement ends with a short coda consisting of only 8 measures. In a conversation about this coda with Bauer-Lechner, Mahler said:

The listener surely will not understand the end of this movement correctly; it [the movement] will fall into oblivion, although I could easily have shaped it more effectively. My hero breaks out in laughter and runs away. Certainly no one will discover that theme, given at the close to the timpani (BL² 173).

To Bruno Walter he said that in his boisterous closing he had