II8 SCRUTI"'Y

in his diary, 'Lovely little pieces, exquisitely scored - a lesson to all

the Strausses and Elgars in the world' (and a lesson Britten himself
>Vas quick to learn, one might add); and indeed the instrumenta-
tion of the cycle is of a clarity and refinement that anticipate the
chamber-musical textures of Ki11dertotelllieder and Das Lied. The
largest orchestra Mahler deploys in the Geselle11 cycle is heard only
in the tumultuous third song; the first song uses virtually a cham-
ber orchestra, while the last excludes the brass entirely, but for the
most sparing use of three of the four horns in sixteen bars only,
tour of those for horn solo!
There is no doubt that from the outset Mahler envisaged the
Gesell ell cycle as an ore hestral song-cycle - so much is clear trom
the title-page of the earliest manuscript of the work known to us,
for voice and piano. It seems probable, however, that Mahler did
not get down to orchestrating the work until there >vas a possibility
of a premiere tor the cycle in its orchestral guise of some impor-
tance. Perhaps the cycle may have had a performance in its voice-
and-piano version before I 896, but if there were one, \Ve have no
record of it; which leaves I 896 as the year in which the cycle made
its first appearance in orchestral guise, when Mahler himself con-
ducted the work in Berlin on I6 March I 896: the other \vork on
the programme \Vas his own First Symphony, a fascinating juxta-
position of r>vo \Vorks so intimately related. It \vas for this occasion,
I believe, that Mahler at last brought to fruition the orchestration
of the Gesclletz cycle which had ahvays been his creative intention,
helped, no doubt, by the experience he had no\v had of working
on the orchestration of the symphony which itself had undergone
many vicissitudes.
I
I
i
Symphony No. I:
'The most spontaneous and
daringly composed of my works'

In April I 896, when Mahler conducted performances of his First
Symphony and the Geselle11 song-cycle in the same programme in
Berlin, he remarked to his confidante Natalie Bauer-Lechner:'People
have not yet accepted my language. They have no notion of what I
am saying or what I mean, and so it all seems senseless and unintel-
ligible to them. Even the musicians who play my works hardly
know \vhat I am driving at.'
What possible relationship could there be bet>veen the symphony
and the song-cycle? The bewilderment of Mahler's listeners, of his
players, can be understood. Not surprisingly they missed the whole
point of the exercise, which, I believe, was Mahler's intention to
elucidate - illuminate - his symphony by mea11s of the song-cycle. In
short, the song-cycle was to function as the explanatory note that
was missing rom the programme.
When Mahler launched his first big work for orchestra alone in
Budapest in I 889, it was not described as a symphony at all, but as
a 'Symphonic Poem', in nvo parts and five (not four) movements.
Apart trom the 'A Ia po111pes .fzmebres' inscription for the slow move-
ment, Vl!hich in any case only confused the audiences at the premiere
by contradicting its expectations of a dignified funeral march, there
\Vas no programme. Discouraged no doubt by the hostile reaction of
his listeners, Mahler then contrived a 'scenario' by \vay of elucidation.
For a later performance in I 893 at Hamburg, for example, he
described the first movement as 'Frz'ihli11p, rmd kei11 Ende' ('Spring
Liner note tOr the 1 recording of Mahler's first Symphony by Riccardo Chailly and
the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. Decca
I20 SCRUTI:-.IY
Moritz von Schwind, TI1c H u n t e r ~ - Funewl PrlJCession (1850)
without end'), while the slow introduction \Vas a representation of
Nature a\vakening from its winter sleep. A clue to the slow move-
ment was provided by referring to a parodistic picture, The Hunter's
Ftmeral Procession, in which 'the beasts of the forest bring the hunts-
man's coffin to the grave. Hares carry a small banner, \Vith a band
of Bohemian musicians in front, accompanied by music-making
cats, toads, crows', etc., which 'escort the procession in comic pos-
tures.' As for the finale, Mahler tried his hand at clarification by
informing his audience: 'There follows Dall'/,ifemo (Allegro jitrioso)
the sudden outburst of despair from a deeply vvounded heart.'
It vvas that same \Votmded heart, of course, that had been on
view in the Lieder eines falzrwden Gesellm cycle and was on view
again at the aforementioned I 896 Berlin concert, but this time in
immediate juxtaposition with the complementing symphony. This,
indeed, \vas the very moment when the former 'Symphonic Poem'
nomenclature \Vas dropped, along \Vith the original version's second
movement, an andante, thus giving a four-movement shape to the
\vork along vvith the title of 'Symphony': and yet more signifi-
cantly, all the attempted programmatic explanations \vere aban-
doned. All that was left was Alia Afarcia _(tmebre for the third move-
ment, and even that inscription did not survive to reach the first
published edition (I 899) of the now four-movement Symphony
No. I in D.
Hearing the first movement of the symphony after hearing the
Gesellen cycle's second song, 'Ging heut' morgen i.iber's Feld', might
\vel! have prompted the listener to some interesting and clarif)ing
'i
;
I
f
'
SYMPHO:-.!Y NO. I: 'THE MOST SPOKTANEOUS .. .' I2I
reflections. In both cases, we hear Mahler's hero setting off on his
travels, striding across the fields in luminous spring sunlight. Same
hero; same 'travelling' music. However, while the cycle's second
song soon loses its exuberance and ends in poignant recollection of
lost happiness (thus anticipating the consequences of unrequited love,
of which the concluding song, itself a funeral march, is an unmis-
takable image), in the symphony the narrative goes differently. The
first movement reaches quite another and optimistic conclusion,
asserting the D major that will eventually prove to be the symphony's
final tonal goal: the hero, so far at least, lives to fight another day.
It is entirely logical then that the quasi-funeral march that ends
the song-cycle should resurface in the symphony's own 7i.,dtmmarsch
(as Mahler described it at one stage). The implication of the haunt-
ing last song of the cycle, 'Die zv.rei blauen Augen von meinem
Schatz', is, surely, that the hero has succumbed to his broken heart
and lain down to rest beneath a lime tree. Mahler, >ve may feel,
goes out of his way to emphasize this chilly, albeit romantic,
denouement, by quoting the last stanza of the song and, most signi-
ficantly, those dotted (march) rhythm chords in the wood>vind, in an
implacable, unyielding minor (G minor in the symphony, F minor
in the song-cycle). It is as if in the ne\v context of the symphony's
slow movement, a Proustian reclamation of the past temporarily
overwhelms our hero: he recalls the end of a consuming passion
which must, at the time, have seemed like the end of life itself
Hence the delicate, fragile and nostalgic resurrection of the con-
cluding song in the symphony's slmv movement, of which it forms
the contrasting middle part, a kind of trio, wearing very much its
own orchestral guise - harp, strings, slow woodwind (as in the
song-cycle) - quite distinct from the orchestra that surrounds it.
What surrounds it, in fact, is another funeral march, the famous
(to some ears, infamous) parody funeral march, based, it must have
seemed incomprehensibly so to its first audience, on the old
nursery round 'Bruder Martin' ('Frere Jacques'), \Vhich Mahler
converted into a dirge - he had always, he said, thought of it, even
as a child, as 'profoundly tragic', not cheerful or humorous. In fact,
what \Ve encounter in this movement is not one funeral march but
two, and the march that frames our hero's infinitely regretful look
122
SCRL'Tl:-IY
von
GlAV MAinER.
--- ~ ... __
Cover of the tlrst edition of Mahler's Symphony No. T ( T S9X)
SYMPHO:-IY :-10. r: 'THE MOST SPO:-ITAKEOUS 123
back to the ashes of a disappointed love represents some of the
most original, provocative, prophetic and calculatedly bizarre music
Mahler \Vas ever to unleash. Small wonder that his early audiences
and players were disconcerted by it.
After the shock of the parody funeral march, a further and
immediate shock \Vas in store tor audiences: a triple j(me on the
cymbal - struck with wooden drumsticks - and then a piercing
dissonance - 'a horrii)ing scream', as Mahler described it, \vhich
initiates an outburst of stormy, agitated, despairing F minor music.
The audience at the Budapest premiere was duly scandalized; it \Vas
reliably reported, indeed, that the cymbal crash caused one lady to
add to the clatter by dropping her handbag.
The finale, however, for all the unconstrained violence of its
rhetoric, is brilliantly organized, while at the same time making the
impression of an exceptional freedom of torm and feeling. What
went unrecognized by the \vork's first audiences was the link with
the tlrst movement and its prophetic development section. It is pre-
cisely at the point when the development of the first movement
anticipates the finale that the music significantly asserts F minor,
the very tonality that is to emerge so powerfully in the finale, to be
overcome, eventually, but only after prolonged struggle and con-
flict, by a D major that carries all betore it. F minor it \Vas in which
Mahler, in three unforgettable bars, brings the funeral-march song-
and the entire Geselleu cvcle - to an end.
How the music has spoken to us determines how \Ve 'read' that
cold unmitigated F minor: does the hero dream - or die? What is
certain, hmvever, is that for Mahler it \Vas a tonality symbolic of
his hero's unhappy end, his tragic fate. Hence the re-emergence of
F minor in the finale of the symphony and the important dramatic
role allotted to it.
Yet more fascinating, what Mahler himself is recorded as having
said about the finale contlrms, I believe, the association ofF minor
and death, no less:
A horrif)ing scream opens the final movement, in which we nmv
see our hero altogether abandoned, with all the sorrows of this
world, to the most terrible of battles. Again and again he gets
I24
SCRCTINY
knocked on the head ... by Fate whenever he appears to pull him-
self out of it and become its master. Only in death [my italics] atl:er
he has overcome himself (and the wonderful reminiscence of his
earliest youth [another Proust-like recovery of the past?] has
brought back with it the themes of the first movement) does he
achieve the victory (magnificent victory chorale!).
The 'victory chorale' materializes, along with the final, irre-
sistible affirmation of D, as an exultant transformation of the very
opening bars of the symphony, in which the slo\v sequence of
falling fourths first appears in the woodv.r:ind. Thus the slow intro-
duction to the first movement and the chorale in the last satisfYingly
bind together the entire work in logical evolution, uniting the
\vork's beginning and its end, a triumphant end, but in the light of
Mahler's O\Vn words, not altogether free of ambiguity. Perhaps it is
only in the ensuing Second Symphony, \vhere the narrative of the
preceding symphony is resumed, and specifically in the Resur-
rection celebrated in its choral finale, that Mahler's hero achieves
the ultimate transcendence of death that may have eluded him in
the First.
T
Mahler's Hungarian Glissando
~ : 1991 : ~
When I \vas in Budapest at the end of last year I passed by the
splendid Vigado, facing the Promenade along \vhich residents and
tourists stroll to enjoy a magnificent view of Buda, across the
Danube.
The Vigado was built bet\veen I 859 and I 864 in \Vhat the guide-
books tell us \vas a 'Hungarian Romantic style'; and it \Vas there, in
the concert hall (Redoutensaal) that Mahler's First Symphony was
first performed on 20 November I 8 89, the composer conducting.
At the time, Mahler was Director of the Royal Budapest Opera, a
post to which he had been appointed a year earlier, in a country
which, he exclaimed, \viii probably become my new homeland!'
Naturally enough, as I sauntered along, the symphony began to
unroll in my mind like some accompanying soundtrack. More par-
ticularly, and perhaps stimulated by the overt attempt at something
specifically Hungarian by the architect of the Vigado, Frigyes Feszl,
a few bars from the slmv movement insistently returned, demand-
ing my attention.
The bars that haunted me \Vere bars 58 and 59 of the slo\v
movement, the famous funeral march - A Ia ponzpes _(lmebres, as it
was first described in the I 889 programme. I reproduce the bars
overleaf; it which it is easy to recognize the brief but arresting event
they embody: in particular, a glissando for the strings \vhich the
composer clearly intended us not to miss.
The exaggerated dynamics, which accelerate from pp to f.f and
back top again- the dynamic high point coinciding \Vith the peak
of the glissando - and the very intervention of the strings
Probrramme note written fOr a London perfOrmance of the F i r ~ t Symphony by the
Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra under Claudio Abbado scheduled for 1 H Februarv 1991
bur cancelled due to the First GulfVlar: f i r ~ t published in DMC\'. pp. r;s-So. It a-ppears
here in a signitlcamly revised form.