Kate's Corner - Mahler 9
Mahler Nine
by
Katherine Walpole
Perhaps one of my favourite symphonies, Mahler’s Ninth is sheer majesty. Lasting 90 minutes, it shares an evening performance with not a single other note. Like an evening meal void of entrée or dessert, a main course requiring no further morsel; this single symphony furnishes a complete concert of perfection.
Pondering one's own death is something everyone does. Mahler was also haunted by it. Beethoven, Bruckner, Dvorak, Schubert, Spohr and Vaughn Williams never lived to write a tenth symphony and therefore Mahler believed ninth symphonies were cursed marking the end of one's life on earth. There were other signs suggesting he may have been composing his swan song, such as diagnosis of a heart condition and three tragic events occurring in 1908, which he interpreted as the three hammer blows of fate. He was so convinced by this suspicion that he tried to outwit it by titling his penultimate 'symphony' Das Lied von der Erde, therefore delaying his post ninth symphony end.
This final complete symphony (yes, he did punch out a sketch for his tenth symphony) is the pinnacle of romanticism, the peak of emotional assertion. Consider what else was happening in 1911; Strauss was writing in a neo-classical style, Stravinsky premiered Petrushka in Paris and the painters around Europe were experimenting with expressionism and futurism. The fact that this level of romanticism thrived and developed in such an avant-garde artistic context amazes and thrills me. It is testimony to his skill as a composer. The symphony not only meditates on his fate but contemplates the beauty and joy of life. The symphony transports the listener to village fairs and walks in the fields and mountains. Mahler believed a symphony must be like the world, that it must embrace all. His wife Alma said of this symphony;
"He has accepted the world and come face to face with the inevitability of death and in that sense is no longer writing about himself. He has embraced everyone."
At the end of the first movement I find myself in a state in which I long to sleep, but alas the second movement’s first utterance flings me to a village in Austria. People are wearing ridiculous clothes, eating and drinking. Merriment abounds as the brass band plays. I awake from my reverie to find myself in a concert hall, my oh my how does Mahler do it?
Mahler makes rather extreme demands on the musicians, demands that hadn't been made before his time. The results create the most beautiful sounds. One tune is divided up and played by more than one instrument, not at the same time but one after the other, in sequence. They pass melodies around the orchestra like a ball in a game of football. Perhaps Mahler had been inspired by the work of Schoenberg and his creation of Klangfarbenmelodie or 'sound colour melody'. Another technique that Mahler mastered is the marriage of different timbres or sounds. An example is how a cymbal crash coincides with the apex of a trombone's tune, helping the melody aspirate its climax. Or the sound of 32 violinists playing pppp. One of the most exciting things about hearing Mahler live is that you hear a gorgeous sound that you have never heard an orchestra make before, enticing your eyes to find those responsible. A musical cocktail of clarinet and harp with a dash of violin or the cellos playing up the fingerboard with the violins playing underneath in their lowest register. Gorgeous.
The end is so special, a long orchestrated diminuendo, all the music slowly dies away and the musicians still as statues, one wonders, has the sound stopped or is it silence? Indeed, the noises don’t stop, they transform from notes to the sound of your own heart beating or your neighbour’s watch ticking. The most amazing blissful silence.
Mahler Nine
Recommendation
Gustav Mahler
For more on Gustav Mahler from Wikipedia.